Nanny Cay Round Tortola Race | St Maarten Optimist Regatta
The 2024 edition of the Nanny Cay Round Tortola Race took place on Saturday 30 November. The ten entries were evenly split between the multihull and monohull classes, including one visiting boat from St Croix.
Conditions were near perfect, with the wind from the east-south-east in the low teens. As usual, the north shore threw up some challenges and a meaty squall made its presence felt in the multihull fleet, reaching the front runners as they were rounding Beef Island.
The monohull fleet started at 09:35 with the line set off the outer marina peninsular. All five boats got away cleanly, heading up the channel to race around Tortola in an anticlockwise direction. One hour later, the multihull fleet started.
Line Honours went to Nacra 20 Fools Gold with Sam Talbot at the helm. They achieved their goal and completed their lap of Tortola in 3 hours, 14 minutes and 13 seconds but were not part of the overall rankings.
Barney Crook with his new Corsair 31, Airgasm3 flew across the finish line just before 2pm with Chris Haycraft’s Ting a Ling2 team chasing hard and finishing just over 7 minutes later. The last tri home was Ting a Ling, skippered by Nathan Haycraft so the question was… had they done enough to beat the bigger boats ahead of them? All of them completed the circuit in less than four hours and ultimately it was the smallest of them all, Ting a Ling who claimed the victory, finishing 19 minutes and 58 seconds ahead of Ting a Ling2 on corrected time.
The first monohull home was Hotel California from St Croix, finishing in four hours, 33 minutes and 4 seconds. Next in was Walter Keenan’s Beneteau first 40 Libertas who would be the overall winner in the monohull class. Third home but also finishing ahead of Hotel California was Nanito II sailed by the BVI Yacht Sales team. Sun Odyssey 380 Calypso Express with Robin Tattersall on the helm came in fourth and Sean Laming’s Namaste was fifth.
Thank you, Nanny Cay, for your continued support for this event, the race committee team and all the sailors who came out to play.
Results
Multihull
Position. Boat name, boat type – skipper – corrected time
1. Ting a Ling, Corsair 27 – Nathan Haycraft – 3:22:52
2. Ting a Ling2, Corsair 31 – Chris Haycraft – 3:42:50
3. Airgasm3, Corsair 31 – Barney Crook – 3:45:20
4. Triple Jack, Kelsall 47 – Richard Wooldridge – 4:00:28
Monohull
1. Libertas, Beneteau first 40 – Walter Keenan – 4:10:50
2. Nanito II, Beneteau First 47.7 – BVI Yacht Sales – 4:27:54
3. Hotel California, Santa Cruz 72 – Steve Schmidt – 4:41:48
4. Calypso Express, Sun Odyssey 380 – Robin Tattersall – 5:03:57
5. Namaste, Jenneau 54 DS – Sean Laming – 5:13:58
Line Honours: Fools Gold, Nacra20 – Sam Talbot – Elapsed time 3 hours, 14 minutes and 13 seconds
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Nanny Cay Challenge (NCC)
The Nanny Cay Challenge was launched in 2010 when yachts visiting the BVI were invited to make an attempt to beat the latest Round Tortola Records. The NCC can be attempted any-time any-day but must start and finish off Nanny Cay, circumnavigate in an anti-clockwise direction and leave Beef Island, Scrub Island, Great Camanoe and Guana Island to port.
Find out more about the Nanny Cay Challenge at: https://nannycay.com/nanny-cay-challenge/
Current Records
Outright & Multihull: Fujin, Beiker 53, Greg Slyngstad – 27 March 2019 – 1 hours, 57 minutes & 16 seconds.
Monohull: E1, Volvo70, Rafal Sawicki – 27 March 2019 – 2 hours, 53 minutes & 08 seconds.
Kiteboarding: Mike Hirst – 18 January 2019 – 2 hours, 14 minutes and 54 seconds
