The cool thing about BVI Spring Regatta is the number of teams who come back year after year, as well as the new faces competing for the first time; it’s a blast for the organisers to welcome back old faces and welcome newcomers. One thing we love to do each morning is walk the docks and get to know some of the sailors enjoying their time; meet a few of them here.
Colm Crilly, from the management team at Riteway, a long-time BVI Spring Regatta sponsor, is leading the charge again this week as skipper of Team Riteway on board Roaz, a Moorings 46. Last year was the first time that Riteway put forward a team; Crilly, a keen sailor, puts the team together that includes a mix of RiteWay employees and visiting staff from head office, and suppliers, including representatives from Regatta sponsors Mount Gay Rum, Heineken, and Coca-Cola.
“We are delighted to be here again, it’s Mount Gay Day at the BVI Spring Regatta 2025 and it looks like it’s going to be an epic day,” Crilly said. “Our preparations have involved getting to know the boat which we chartered from Moorings and picked up last Sunday; we’ve been putting the boat through its paces and learning it a bit better. More importantly, behind the scenes we’ve been gathering different businesses, including our sponsors, and inviting them to the Race Village at Nanny Cay to enjoy and celebrate Spring Regatta. Today we have the Mount Gay crew from Barbados on board, Darren and Ricky from Foxy’s, and our local managing director, Neal Hayes. I think everyone is well aware of what’s ahead of them today – getting wet and enjoying themselves! I’m looking forward to making sure everyone has a great day.”
Alice Martin (Chicago IL) is racing with her Team Painkiller in Bareboat 1 on Sea-Battical, a Sunsail 46. She started cruising in the BVI some twenty-five years ago, moved onto racing and has enjoyed that aspect of the sport ever since. Way back when, she noted, the regatta boats docked in Road Town and she has wonderful memories of the early days chartering Moorings and Sunsail boats. She’s been on and around boats since age three, growing up in Lake Erie, OH. Her dad built her a little dinghy when she was 8, a bunch of her friends had similar dinghies and off they set.
When she moved to Chicago in 1975 she started buying her own boats; a Hobie cat, a Pearson 28, a J30, a C&C37R, a Sydney 38 and now she owns a Beneteau 36.7 and is the vice chair of the North America Regatta Series for the Beneteau 36.7 fleet. This year is her first in a while returning to the BVI Spring Regatta, and she’s racing with a young crew, three of whom met each other racing 420s on the McGill University sailing team.
“We’re back to the BVI because we’ve been reading great things about the Regatta and the timing worked out,” Martin said. “We have wonderful young crew and my job is to organise and helm, although lately, as I have become a little older and the breeze comes up like it has this week, my husband Ted Jones takes the wheel upwind and I try to do the downwinds. We came in fourth in the first two races this week, missing the podium by a couple of minutes; we’re hoping in these next three days we get on the podium at least once!”
Camille Torloni (BRA), and Karl de Becdeliever (FRA), are racing in CSA 3 on Pepsi Zéro – Montebello, a 34-foot FC10, a team from Guadeloupe racing the BVI Spring Regatta for the first time. According to de Becdeliever, it felt like they had raced an entire regatta by the time they laboured through 35 hours of rough seas and big winds to get their mother ship and race boat from home base in Guadeloupe to the BVI.
“It was very hard as the boat is very different to a typical boat because you take on the waves all the time,” Becdeliever said. “We were constantly wet and you have to move all the time if you want to keep up boat speed because the boat is very weight sensitive, so we were adjusting our weight continually and had no sleep!”
The team is a group who race together through a sailing association in Guadeloupe and for Spring Regatta friends from around the world, including French Polynesia, have joined them. The core of the team has been racing the FC10 for the past five years, competing in many other Caribbean regattas in the boat.
“It’s a very dynamic team which trains as much as possible and our goal for this week is to get to know each other because we’re sailing together for the first time,” Torloni said. “We hope that we get on the podium; maybe a second or hopefully first place? We love sailing here because it has been between 20-30 knots every day; we get to have amazing weather with good wind although the longer distance Round Tortola race was hard for our boat because it doesn’t do well in big waves!”
David Baker (USA) is chartering this week with his family and friends on the Ocean 45 Windfall. He’s had the boat in charter with Moorings, it just came out of charter and he and his family are now taking ownership of it. They raced Windfall in Spring Regatta in 2018 and several other years on charter boats. This is the Denver, Colorado-based team’s fourth Spring Regatta; back home they race Lightnings in Denver, and on Dylan Lake, Colorado, they race keelboats including Snipes, J24s, Melges 24s, and Melges 32s. Baker joked that he has two age groups on board this week – the grownups and the children – but it’s time for the kids to take over.
“This is the pass-the-baton regatta for us, it’s the children’s turn to take it on,” Baker laughed. “We love being here, it’s a sailing mecca, the people, the support, the friendliness, the regatta organisation – it’s just great. Our goal is not to damage the boat, to have a great time, and perform to the potential that we have. We have a lot of awesome sailors on this boat, it’s the most talented team I’ve ever sailed the regatta with. We’ve taken a second place in the past so we have high expectations. Most of the Spring Regattas we have raced have been light air and this is the first time where it is really windy so that will be interesting for us.”
While Mariano Ruiz (PUR), boat captain on Timbalero 3, a Gunboat G4, has spent a good part of this week “under the hood” making repairs, he was certain that the first day of Spring Regatta would be the day that his team would start and actually finish a race! It’s an intense boat but Ruiz is a well-seasoned sailor, growing up dinghy sailing in Puerto Rico and racing with his family on their various boats. He did an Olympic campaign in the Finn for the ’96 Games and finishing as an alternate for the US team; he was a bronze medalist in the Central America Games in Cuba in ’83 racing a Snipe with his brother; and he’s raced with Timbalero’s owner, Eduardo Perez since 1992, including on Timbalero 2, a Beneteau 54 F which competed in prior editions of Spring Regatta.
“Timbalero 3 was built in 2015 and she’s all carbon with plenty of limits in terms of strains and pressures so we do break a lot of gear!” Ruiz noted. “It was also a rough delivery from Puerto Rico to the BVI last week with 6–7-foot seas and 20+ knots of wind, so we’ve had to do a lot of maintenance work. I’ve been sailing this boat since about 2020 and it’s the kind of boat that you are always trying to figure out how to squeeze more speed out of it – I still feel like we’re learning it! We have an all-new crew this week and it’s hard when none of these guys have sailed the boat before. Rob and Brent from Portland Ship Yard, a Regatta sponsor, are on board, and we’re really happy to have them. We hope to do well this week boat to boat and stay upright!”
