The Second Annual Lagoonies regatta, held on Saturday 25th June, was an outstanding event. It’s a one day, one design event that was marked this year with very close sailing, intensely challenging conditions, an outstanding regatta lunch and passionate expressions of the race experience at the after party.
Lagoon winds were as usual shifty. But typically after these regattas some consensus can be found about which directions provided the most consistent gains. Such consensus seemed to be missing this time .The win by the well named Friendly Sailor team of Ernst Looser, Nina Manley and our own colleague Bernard Sillem, was earned by making a large number of smart decisions and carefully trimming over their seven races. Second place by the Shore Support team of Simon Manley , Kim Manley and Luc Knol could have been first by just any one tiny change in conditions as the teams both had 12 points and only one difference in placing to break the tie. Third place result for Frits Bus’s Team Island Water World with Joep Groenendijk and Huub Lambooy was not without major effort on the water .
The winning team recieved a Raymarine weather station courtesy of Budget Marine who also, as usual facilitate boat launching and storage. The sportsmanship award went to Arthur Banting whose main sailing task was to hold the mainsheet on the Alec Scarabelli entry . When the boom suddenly broke on his boat and he landed in the water, he did not abandon his post but held on to the mainsheet untill he could be hauled aboard by the same main sheet .
The one design boats – Budget Marine
A strong French contingent participated in this event and particularly in the later races started taking some good positions. Efforts to choose the best French performance were stymied by surprising sudden new claims of French status.
Lagoonies Bistro has once again shown to be an effective partner for sailing in Sint Maarten and the outstanding performances on the water may have been eclipsed by the performance of the Lagoonies kitchen, where there were clearly no adverse wind shifts. They delivered a superb culinary product with their usual flair and friendliness and the prize giving crowd confirmed that with ovation.
Robbie Ferron, during the Captain briefing
