French West Indies

Heroina, the 74-footer that sailing legend German Frers designed for himself.

 

If you wanted to do a tropical regatta that is about as good as it can get, you needed to be at last week's 4th Annual Voiles de St. Barth in the beautiful French West Indies. The tradewind sailing conditions were nearly ideal, with mostly 14 to 18 knots of wind, gusting up to the mid 20s at times, and three- to six-foot seas. The sun was out, the sky was blue and so was the ocean. It was the tropics, so when you got hit by spray or a wave, it was delightfully refreshing. Furthermore, the courses were scenic, not sausages, and there was plenty of opportunity to display your derring-do by kissing reefs and rocks.
Turning in a stellar performance again this year was Peter Aschenbrenner's San Francisco-based Irens 63 trimaran Paradox. "The boat is really built for ocean passages and ocean sailing," he said, "so we feel very much at home when the wind gets up to solid trade wind conditions, like 20-plus knots and big waves. The boat acts really nicely and goes really fast." The fun news is that crewmember Cam Lewis told us the tri is headed for San Francisco.



Paradox