Sailing “champagne” at Antigua Sailing Week. Who wouldn’t want to be there?

From our correspondent in Antigua Ida Castiglioni – Yesterday’s trials saw the boats busy for most of the trials with winds between 10 and 12 knots on an ideal day for Caribbean sailors and especially for all the competitors involved in Antigua Sailing Week.

Antigua Sailing Week, sailing champagne

Throughout the day a very hot sun alternated in the sky with large and small clouds. Sun so strong that some women in the boat covered their faces like Lawrence of Arabia did.

Boats from CSA Racing classes 2, 3, 4 as well as boats from all the classes ‘invented’ to allow everyone here on the cruise to experience a regatta. In fact, there are classes such as CSA Bareboat, where the hulls are chartered by the big companies and equipped to participate in the regatta. The demand is very high and there are not enough boats to meet the demand from all over the world. CSA Club Class A and B boats are cruising boats of different lengths and tonnages, in some cases chartered directly from the owners to those who want to get the experience of racing in the Caribbean without crossing the ocean. In these categories are some Italian crews who have chosen the fastest route to be at the Antigua regattas.

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Winning a world championship in your own land is a crazy thrill. Right Magdalena?

The most competitive CSA Racing 2, 3, 4 classes competed in three short races totaling 22 miles that resulted in engagement situations at the buoy turns and led at the end of the races to parallel rankings in the different classes, with the top two boats really close together in the rankings indicating the technical level of the races. The three races were each won by a different boat: one win went to Dauntless, Don Terwilliger’s Beneteau First 47.7, the second to WakeWalker, Woody Cullen’s Swan 58, and the third to DNR, X-Yachts’ XP50.

What a “créme” aboard Fox Hunt

In the CSA Racing 4 class on the rise are the placings of Carlo Falcone’s 47ft Racer Caccia alla Volpe, which lines up two great young sailors aboard: Federico Colaninno and Rocco Falcone, the owner’s son (Shannon Falcone, the eldest son, is running the RAN).

Federico and Rocco held the trimmer roles and won the Young America’s Cup last September in Barcelona for Team Luna Rossa after a series of fleet races reserved for foiling AC40s on the one-design helmed by Marco Gradoni and Gianluigi Ugolini. Fox Hunt collected two first-place class wins and a third-place finish.

The other Italians in the regatta

In Club Class A, ABA, the hull of owner Andrea Maccaferri’s Afra and Tobias Scarpa, a 60″ built for the oceans and ill-suited for light winds, participated in the trials, while the Bareboats featured the all-Italian crew of Andrea Zuppiroli on Shore Thing.

Interview with Andrea Maccaferri, owner of ABA

Interview with Enrico Maccaferri, Andrea’s son

Interview with Claudio Guadagni of ABA

Racing finished with the day’s awards ceremony at the Antigua Sailing Club amid much beer with the background of a reggae orchestra. Today is a rest day for racing.

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• The first installment from Antigua Sailing Week