The Caribbean big boat racing season now has its place firmly established on the international racing circuit. From January through early May every year, the world’s best racing yachts now set their schedule to include the Caribbean Tour.
Professional sailor and past president of the Caribbean Sailing Association, Peter Holmberg, can be credited for recognising the importance of ensuring that all the islands collaborate in order to better the entire Caribbean region. By working together with each event to select its week of the year and keep it constant in successive years, the entire region can offer one clean non-overlapping circuit for sailors to plan for. This affords owners, teams, sailors and the press a much easier time of scheduling without conflicting events. And finally, it benefits each of the different islands and events by enabling them to own their week and get the maximum marketing and economic benefit.
The CSA now keeps a five-year rolling calendar of the international events for just this purpose – keeping it up-to-date on the website and working each year on a rolling basis with event managers to establish the following year’s calendar and iron out any potential calendar clashes.
Of the circuit Peter says: ‘The Caribbean has now matured and grown into its well deserved place on the international race calendar. Each event has the challenge and incentive to meet the demands of today’s race fleets as well as ensure it maintains its uniqueness and offers improvements each year.’ He goes on to say, ‘Teams can help organisers by entering early. Experience tells us other boats will be monitoring entry lists for their competitors and will be more likely to enter if they see their ‘friends’ are entering a particular event.’
The latest version of the calendar with dates from 2017 – 2021 can be found on the CSA website here.
