Picturesque Reduit Beach will again be the setting for the eighth annual Mango Bowl Regatta, being staged by the St Lucia Yacht Club from November 30 to December 1.
Details of this year’s event were provided at a press conference on Wednesday evening at the St Lucia Yacht Club.Commodore Peter Lang and Regatta Director Lily Bergasse were among the Yacht Club officials in attendance. Sponsors were invited but few attended, due to heavy traffic that evening.
After welcoming everyone, Lang gave a brief history of the St Lucia Yacht Club: “It was founded back in 1966 which is about 53 years ago. We are very proud of our club; it is a small non-profit club that has focused on the youth of Saint Lucia.”
He spoke proudly of two sailors from the St Lucia Yacht Club, Luc Chevrier and Stephanie Lovell, who both competed at the recent Pan American Games in Lima, Peru and are trying to qualify for the 2020 Olympic Games in Japan. The Commodore thanked the St Lucia Olympic Committee Inc for its continued support of their programmes.
Lang mentioned that earlier this year the Yacht Club sent a small team to the Optimist World Championships in Antigua. He recognized two of the participants, Celestino Nelson and Bryce Batrick, who were present at the press conference along with their coach Fredric Sweeney.
Turning his attention to the eighth annual Mango Bowl Regatta, Lang said: “This is a big thing for this club. It is where we invite all the people from the Caribbean and further afield to come and sail in Saint Lucia and have a good time. It is normally very well attended. We are talking about 20 boats plus.”
This year, for the first time ever, Saint Lucia has a junior team in the J24s. They were present at the press conference and, under orders from the Commodore, came up and took a bow. Lang, in recognizing and thanking the various sponsors, said, “Without them, we would not able to put on this good show that we have.”
Silver sponsors are BodyHoliday and St Lucia Distillers. Bronze sponsors: Island Water World, Rodney Bay IGY Marina, Massy United Insurance, St Lucia Sailing Association, Admac, Café Ole, Scribble Design Studio, Cariquisine, Natrapure, Greening the Caribbean.
Bergasse announced that, as of Wednesday evening, 18 boats had registered for the regatta and she is confident that on race day they will reach their target of over 20. So far there are 10 boats from neighbouring Martinique with other entries coming from Antigua, Grenada and Barbados plus, of course, the host country Saint Lucia.
She pointed out that Mango Bowl is one of the few regattas that has four different classes of racing. With the exception of the cruising class, all races take place in the bay by Reduit Beach. The cruising class starts in the bay then goes around Pigeon Island to BodyHoliday.
Bergasse mentioned that Sweeney, who was the winning skipper last year in the J24 class on board Attitude, renamed the boat Scotty Boy, in memory of Scott Anthony who passed away a few months ago. She recalled that Anthony, originally from Des Barras, joined the yacht club when he was 13 years old and later made a career out of sailing. Hopefully, Sweeney and crew will successfully defend their title, all in the name of ‘Scotty Boy’.
