ur journey begins with a quick and colourful cab ride from the airport on Beef Island over to Road Town, Tortola, home of The Moorings. Here, hundreds of yachts serve as a backdrop to a well-organized and cheery registration process with a cast of characters we would come to know and like over the next week. Each participant selects a Bic Techno II 148-litre board and is supplied with two brand-new Neil Pryde rigs. The buzz is all about how unusually windy it will be for the first few days. Aboard our 43-foot yacht, a twin-hulled beauty with interior teak decks and four private cabins, we meet Pete Ratcliffe, our charter captain for the week of cruising. After quickly stowing our windsurf gear topside, Captain Pete rigs the “iron jib” and we begin our cruise through the British Virgin Islands. We motor all the way up the Sir Francis Drake Channel to Virgin Gorda’s North Sound to anchor just off Saba Rock and the world-famous Bitter End
Yacht Club, which just happens to be a short sail from Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island. The first evening dinner is upstairs at Saba Rock Resort. People have traveled from 13 different countries, including Australia, Thailand, Luxembourg, France, Brazil, Germany, the U.K., Argentina, the U.S., Canada, as well as locals from the BVI, Grand Cayman and St. Maarten. The food is good, and the mood is relatively quiet. Everybody is ready for an early night. Day 2 starts with anticipation running high. There are relatively strong winds, with a prediction of 15 to 20 knots and possibly higher gusts in short, small squalls. A brief skippers’ meeting on Saba Rock by event organizer Andy Morrell and the race committee chairman precedes a quick trip back to our yacht and a dinghy ride to the Bitter End Yacht Club beach to rig up. The action begins with racers having to cross through a narrow opening in the shallow reef, after which we quickly find ourselves heading toward a mark set off Necker Island on open water with seas of five feet. After rounding
the mark, the broad reach back downwind to the opening of the reef in a freshening breeze is exciting. Once back in the sound we round a downwind mark for a second lap. The race ends at a beach on Prickly Pear Island, where we must drop our gear and sprint to touch the Highland Spring flag in signature HIHO finish. An enthusiastic crowd cheers each competitor as they finish. The afternoon course follows a different yet no less spectacular route and ends with similar results: Brazil’s Wilhelm Schürmann wins both, with St. Maarten’s Jean-Marc Peyronnet not far behind. After racing, Ed Sparrow of Highland Spring and his lovely wife and daughters host the first of several pre-dinner cocktail parties aboard their yacht. The following dinner is a veritable feast, and the wine flows freely. The group’s non-sailing members find the afternoon race even more interesting because the close proximity of the racers to the Bitter End Yacht Club makes the whole experience much more personal. They also enjoy snorkeling
Winds are gusting to 24 knots for a classic demonstration of what HIHO stands for: hook in and hold on. A classic beach finish. HIHO photo
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