New Categories for 31st Harris Paints Regatta: BTA enlists Barbados for 2 Sailing Tournaments
Channel: bajanreporter
Date: 2014-07-04

The highly popular Harris Paints Regatta is set for this weekend and director of the event, Peter Burke, says some fierce competition is anticipated.

Burke told the media during a press briefing held at the Yacht Club, Bay Street, this morning that five classes would be competing with the first two races for the J24 Class scheduled to start at Carlisle Bay this Saturday at 2 p.m.

The juniors would also be racing on Saturday in the dinkies event which would be supervised by head instructor of LRN2 Sail Barbados Inc, Isaac Brown and his wife Marianne Brown, who is a director and sailing administrator at LRN2 Sail Barbados Inc.

On Sunday the event climaxes on the South Coast with all the classes competing including the racer cruiser class which would do a long race as well as the multihull class.

"The South Coast from a spectator's point of view is a good view to take in the action and the boats come quite close to the shore which would be good for spectators," Burke said.

The 31st staging of the Regatta would also be the deciding factor in the J24 National Championship which would be a tussle between Esperanza and Impulse which are the two leading boats. These are expected to be going all out to secure the national championship on Sunday.

In the J24 class there will be 12 participants which include two overseas entries from Grenada and St Lucia. The racer cruiser class will have about nine entries while in the multihull class there will be seven and in the juniors about 15 are scheduled to take part.

Wind surfing will also be introduced for the first time in the regatta which will just be a one-race event.