Lee Overlay Partners 3 © Laurens Morel / CMC
The 56th Antigua Sailing Week is shaping up to be another stellar edition. The regatta, renowned for attracting some of the biggest names in yacht racing, continues to welcome everyone, including international & local sailors, long-term cruisers, and bareboat charterers, across a broad range of monohull and multihull classes.
A strong lineup of competitors includes notable large performance monohulls and multihulls. Roy Disney is skippering and leading the Pyewacket team in a family tradition that goes back a generation when his dad, the late Roy E. Disney, built the first of many successful offshore racing boats named after a black cat in one of his favourite movies. Although the Volvo 70 Pyewacket70 hails from California, it has spent the last few years campaigning in Europe and the east coast of the USA with a top-notch international crew. Roy is racing in the Caribbean 600 and will stay on for ASW. A boat of the same name, but skippered by his late father, lifted the regatta’s prestigious Lord Nelson Trophy in 2002.
Pyewacket V070 © Alex-Turnbull.com
Disney will be joined on the racecourse by Philip Rann, who has switched from his Swan 80 to the higher-octane VOR 65 Sailing Poland. Meanwhile, Lennart Davidsson’s 79ft S&S Maxi Kialoa III is currently the largest yacht entered. They will race on new longer courses, along with the fastest multihulls, as Race Manager Jaime Torres explains: “We created these 20 to 50 mile courses specifically for the high-performance monohulls and multihulls to stretch their legs on very fast reaching angles, along with tactically challenging upwind and downwind sections.”This season Adrian Lee has moved from a Swan 60 to a high-powered HH66 catamaran named Lee Overlay Partners 3. He is fully committed to supporting the regatta and development of the new courses, saying: “Antigua is a perfect location for multihull sailing, and the team at ASW has designed some great courses in addition to the Peters and May Round Antigua Race, which happens the day before the ASW officially starts.
“After 40 years of monohull sailing, multihulls are new for me,” adds Lee. “It feels a bit like moving from a propeller plane to a jet and I’m inviting other performance multihulls to come out and race with me on these great new courses.”
Australian sailor Guy Chester, who won this class in 2023, will be another strong competitor in his Crowther 46 trimaran Ocean’s Tribute. Chester is also founder of the Windies Multihull Trophy, a new initiative this season in which the Peters and May Round Antigua Race and Sailing Week form the final two events of the series that runs throughout the Caribbean, with the five best results to count.
“Oceans Tribute is flat out trying to win the inaugural Windies Multihull Trophy,” Chester said. “We have raced in the Caribbean Multihull Challenge, the Antigua 360 and next up is the Caribbean 600. However, the multis that sailed in Barbados and Grenada are ahead of us on points.”
Nevertheless, the core of the regatta remains the mid-size monohulls in the CSA-rated classes. The J/122 charter yacht El Ocaso has been a dominant force in this category for the past few editions of Antigua Sailing Week, winning last year’s Lord Nelson Trophy – the event’s biggest prize. “This is a lovely place to come sailing,” said charter skipper Tony Mac. “I have been to world championships, but I have never been to a prize giving like this! The message to anybody is: if you can come and race out here, do it! Antigua Sailing Week is great fun.”
There is an exclusive club of two boats so far who have won the Lord Nelson Trophy three times: Larry Ellison’s Maxi Sayonara and Sir Peter Harrison’s Farr 115 Sojana. Although El Ocaso has also won three times, only two of them have been with the J/122. A win in 2025 would secure a place in ASW history.
El Ocaso J/122 at the 55th edition of Antigua Sailing Week – @pwpictures.com
This year, El Ocaso will be raced by Steve Rigby, whose last raceboat was a Swan 45. We can be sure his top-notch crew will be doing their utmost to lift the trophy for a third time. However, they will be up against plenty of talented teams, including scratch local boat Jim Voss’s RP37 Warthog, which won the RORC Nelson’s Cup series in February. This carbon racer had a complete refit ahead of this season and has the potential to be an exceptional performer.
So, what lies behind the magic of Antigua Sailing Week? “Antigua is a world-class destination, and Sailing Week benefits from top-level race management, but off the water we have incredible venues, both intimate and large, to ensure every party is a lot of fun,” says ASW President Alison Sly-Adams. “This is what makes ASW so attractive, especially to other Caribbean Island teams. The French islands contingent from Martinique, Guadaloupe and St Barts has been growing for years. Their hard-core sailors come in with a contagious sail-hard and party-harder attitude! The Bajans have been racing here for a long time and will make another strong showing in 2025.”
Dragon Fleet © Ted Martin
If one-design racing is your thing, a fleet of Petticrow Dragons is available for charter from the Antigua Yacht Club marina. A lot of racing is planned for them and the RS Elite fleet, with a maximum of 15 races over five days. “You can fly in, get on a race-ready boat right at the epicenter of the action, and go rock this regatta” says Jaime Torres. “The plan is for racing to take place outside Falmouth Harbor, with the option for tracks to be set inside Falmouth Harbor if the weather gets too extreme. The courses will be mostly windward/leeward designed to test skill, strategy, and endurance.”
For the die-hard cruisers, the Club class will have just one race per day and competes without spinnakers. “We offer a simplified, self-declared rating system that is inexpensive and easy to get,” adds Sly-Adams. “The idea is to provide good racing with lots of fun afloat and ashore while aggressively minimizing any barriers to entry.”
There’s still time to charter a boat for this year’s event, whether a large Grand Prix raceboat, a mid-size CSA-rated yacht, a bareboat, or a one-design keelboat. Find out more here: www.sailingweek.com/charteroptions. No matter how you choose to participate, the welcome and party atmosphere at Antigua Yacht Club, which hosts the daily socials, prize giving, will be equally exciting.
For more information, go to SailingWeek.com.