The Traditions of wooden boat building in the Caribbean

This article was published in the Enjoy Magazine here that comes out every two weeks and is published by the Observer Group. I write something to do with the sea in every issue. As you will read, it came out just before the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta which our Caribbean boat Zemi ended up winning.


I am woken by the sound of water rushing along the side of the wooden
hull. Dawn is showing its colours above the stern, and as I am taking
in the lovely sounds and colours that I miss so much when I am on land
for too long, I see the day's first flying fish zoom by. For hundreds
of years people in the West Indies have been experiencing mornings
like this out at see while fishing, smuggling, and transporting cargo.
The feeling is similar while out on newer fiberglass yachts, but there
is much more to it when you are on a traditionally built wooden vessel
and I don't think I will ever get tired of it.

Up until the late 1960s and early 1970s most islands in the West
Indies had shipwrights who used the incredible skills that had been
passed down from generation to generation to design and construct
wonderful majestic vessels.

Usually they were built on a beach where
there was a tradition of boat building in the village nearby, but as
islands became more wealthy and "developed" the tradition's slowly
began to fade away.

Instead of learning the age old skills of boat
building, people sought work in the hotel industry or in some related
service. The demand for wooden boats also diminished as steel hulls
and fiberglass vessels were imported and purchased by fishermen and
cargo boat owners. The last wooden boat build for commercial purposes
here in Antigua was finished in 1986, and Antigua isn't alone with
this trend.

In fact one of the only places in the Caribbean between
Puerto Rico and Trinidad where wooden "work boats" are still being
built traditionally is in the Grenadines. The islands of Carriacou,
Bequai and Petit Martinique are still building these fabulous sailing
vessels, but even there the traditions and techniques were in danger
of being lost.

This all changed with a rebirth of interest thanks to a
few passionate sailors who are using these boats for racing and just
pure pleasure. Famous Antiguan photographer, Alexis Andrews, is
leading the fight to keep traditional West Indian boat building alive.

He spent over 10 years visiting Carriacou collecting images for a book
that he published back in 2008 entitles Carracou Sloops.I was
encouraged and helped by him to become one of the growing group of
boat owners, and together we join up to 12 others racing each year in
the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta where we now have a class just for
our boats.

This year the regatta starts on April 14th and will be held from The
Antigua Yacht Club. Please come by and see what it's all about. The
West Indian work boats will all be alongside the dock together and we
will welcome you on board if you would like to see more and hear
stories about how they were built. For more photos of our Carriacou
Sloop that we use for day tours and charters visit

www.adventureantigua.com
http://www.sailing-antigua.com/  

Sailing week finishes and I am lucky to sail the last two days on an amazing yacht.

There is so much to say about this years sailing week. I think I will leave that for another blog post. There will be dramatic changes I hope to the way it planned and organized. There were many brilliant ideas and for the most part it was well run, but wow!.... some of the ideas were so dramatically wrong that there is no wonder the event gets less and less interest each year. Look out for my blog about all of that soon.

Anyway, as the title of this blog post suggests, I managed to sail a few days with an amazing yacht. It was a custom made 60 foot beast of pre-preg carbon fiber made in France for an Italian owner. He and his wife wanted to have one of the fastest luxury cruising yachts in the world and they indeed got what they paid for. Wow that thing was fast!
On day one of race week I managed to snap a few images of the regular cruising yachts racing outside of Curtain Bluff resort. My wife and I then drove up to Shirley Heights and The Lookout to take a few photos of the racing yachts outside of Indian Creek and the St. James Resort. Here are a selection of those images.

On Monday I took out my Eco Tour boat with my wife, my sister Fran and a few friends and we followed the racing class as they zoomed down past Rendezvous Bay passing Carlisle Bay and Curtain Bluff.

Seeing the two fastest yachts in the regatta, Titan and Genuine Risk battling down wind was quite amazing. We couldn't even keep up with them. Driving the boat and trying to shoot a few photos was not too easy. Here are a few I managed:

We then chilled out for a swim in Carlisle Bay which was lovely. You can't swim and watch the yachts racing past during the internationally famous Cows Week in the UK. Antigua's sailing is hard to beat.

Later that day one of the fastest boats in the regatta that was being sailed by a team of paid professionals was so badly damaged by a fire that she had to retire from the regatta. Titan Powerplay possibly will never race again, so these images are some of the last of her racing. She's the large sloop with the red bow and dark stern.

One of my Zemi crew from our Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta was racing on the black 60 footer I mentioned at the start of this post (shown above with white spinnaker and crew wearing green shirts) and when I heard they lost one of their crew in a accident on board, I asked if I could join them for one of the races. As it happened it was blowing 25 to 30 knots on the day that i joined them and it was a very exciting day of racing indeed. This video done by close friend Roddy Grimes-Graeme of http://www.acquafilms.com/ shows some of the action and if you look carefully from 2:27 into the youtube video you will see yours truly trimming the spinnaker at 22 knots. I have spent most of my life windsurfing at speeds well above 20 knots but doing it on a 60 foot yacht was quite amazing.



See all the sailing week videos that were quickly edited after each race and uploaded for everyone to see on this link

Anyway, the boat I was on is called Ourson Rapide and the owner and his wife just wanted to have a good time racing their amazing machine in Antigua Sailing Week. There was an equipment malfunction the day before I joined them and one of their crew was badly hurt taking him out of the competition. They probably could have done with about four more experienced crew. The first mate on board was a extremely experienced French racer and probably would do very well on one of those single handed races. He wasn't the best at communication and I think the main reason he was on board was to help the owner and his wife learn how to race the vessel. The hot shot racer was down below doing who knows what when we were sailing back upwind towards some rocks when the owner decided we should tack. Naturally this was the only decision that could have been made. Anyway, the hot shot came back up after the tack arguing about why we tacked. Needless to say and argument ensued that resulted in him leaving the boat after the race. The boat was now short of two experienced crew. The hot shot was the man who usually did the starts and sailed upwind leaving the downwind sailing to the owner. Anyway, you know where this is going..... I was asked to come the next day and when I arrived I was asked to do the start and the upwind legs. I was then asked to do the down wind legs too. I had come on board to be used as what I like to call on my boat "intelligent ballast" and next thing you know I am on the helm of a multi million dollar racing machine in Antigua Sailing Week. Sometimes you just have to laugh at how things pan out. Anyway, we were doing very well until we had another equipment malfunction which prevented us from using our spinnaker on our second and third down wind legs. It was ultra enjoyable for me anyway and an honor to be given the helm on this beautiful boat. Here are a few images I took from their site:

And these shots were taken by Jame Miller using the wide angle gopro camera. He's friend of mine back home in Antigua between terms from Med school: As you can tell, I was ultra happy to be on the wheel for this race. In fact, I would be ultra happy sailing that boat anytime!!!

This year I ended up staying for Antigua Sailing Week instead of going to the West Indies Regatta because for many reasons I just couldn't go. I was very upset about not being able to race in St. Barth on my boat Zemi especially after we just won the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta. Anyway, after sailing with Ourson Rapide for those last two days of Sailing Week I didn't feel so bad.

www.adventureantigua.com

MD Overseas: Day 114: Adventure Antigua Eco Tour

MD Overseas: Day 114: Adventure Antigua Eco Tour: "Sunday started out a little overcast, and had us a bit worried. However, by the time the day started, it was blue skies with a few clouds. ..."

Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta summary 2011

Well after getting our boat Zemi ready to race the day before the regatta started, we didn't have much time to do much training. We had spent a month on the dock sanding and painting, making a new rudder, making new spreaders and modifying the mast. We also had to melt up lead and add internal ballast.

We put new winches on the boat as well as a bunch of lines and blocks. Our crew was one of the best i have sailed with though and we got out on the course every day before any of the other yachts had left the dock.

Here you see us wearing some t-shirts which were a gift from a lovely clothing shop in St. Johns called  Rasta Pasta. The hats and later the red shirts were a gift from Mount Gay rum. Thanks guys!

Leaving the dock early each day helped us fine tune the equipment and get a feel for the boat in the light air. The winds were unusually light and shifty which helped us as we were don't have enough internal lead ballast and the wooden boat is still fairly "dry". It will take a while before the wood has soaked up all the water it can. Anyway, before the first race we made a big mistake before the start by getting ourselves nearly into a penalty position between the start boat and the shore just before the start.

To avoid this we had to sail to the opposite end of the start line which caused us to start slightly later than the rest of the class.

There were seven Carriacou Sloops in our class with New Moon being the newest one straight up from Carriacou. Our boat was the largest but with a solid wooden mast and boom, we didn't have the worst penalty "rating". The worst rating went to Summer Cloud who with aluminum mast and boom and a bunch of other race modifications which made her quite unique in the class. Anyway, as expected, Summer Cloud raced ahead with Genesis behind. It took us a while to slowly pass other boats and move into second. In the end we finished over the line in second and after the penalty had been calculated (also known as corrected time) we ended up in second by just ten seconds. This race had taken over three hours and to be beaten by just ten seconds was a wake up call to all of Zemi's crew that the regatta could easily be ours. We enjoyed a swim before getting to the dock. That's the beauty about sailing in the Caribbean. Imagine trying to do that at the famous Cows Regatta!

There were three more races scheduled and we finished first on corrected time in the next two putting us in the lead.

We needed to make sure we won the last one and from the start we lead the race and the fleet until we got to the down wind mark where a massive "hole" enveloped us all. There was no wind at all and we drifted around until a gust of about one mile per hour appeared. Summer Cloud got it first and managed to slowly move around the mark while we watched our lead vanish. If she won this race the overall result would be a draw. It was a long race and they would need to beat us by about 8 minutes. When we got to the windward make we were three minutes behind them and possibly gaining in the fresh breeze. Way down behind us the majority of the fleet now sat motionless in the big hole we had sailed through. On the way to the last mark we heard the race committee over the radio say that sadly they were abandoning the race due to the lack of wind on the course. Our crew cheered knowing that there wouldn't need to have a result of the last race to make us winners.

Summer Cloud who said they heard our cheer wasn't happy at all. Of course, we will never know how far they would have finished ahead of us, but everyone on our boat knew that we would have beat them on corrected time. I know our competition all thought the opposite, but that's racing and it wasn't the first time i have seen a deciding race abandoned. So as you can imagine we were all very proud of our boat and crew. Zemi is a fast boat and may get faster when we have more ballast on board. We are looking for lead and have so far collected four hundred pounds of used wheel alignment lead.

Before the regatta we melted up the same. There is a big regatta this weekend in St. Barth (St. Barts), but sadly we won't be able to make it. Our other boat will be racing in the regatta without us and hopefully will do well in this one.  

Photos were taken by many of our crew as well as by some of the Adventure Antigua crew who came out to watch us one day. A special thanks to our crew seen here collecting our prizes.

Zemi was helped to her win by: Eli, Serge, Guilli, Nikolai, Kat, Hugo, Olly, Justin, Josh, Tom, Alan, Peter, Big John. As you can see we had plenty and they were all needed and appreciated! We also had some help getting in and out of the port from some firendly cruising yacht crew as our engine isn't here yet.

www.adventureantigua.com