An Q&A with regatta chair Sara Filbee about Canada's Chester Race Week

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 12 Aug 2016 Canada is fortunate to have some of the most magnificent cruising grounds and some of the heartiest sailors afloat, but they are also “blessed” with long, cold and dark winters that place a premium on enjoying the fine summer months. Because of this, Canadian sailors are famous for bringing plenty of sailing skill and even more enthusiasm to their regattas and distance races. A prime example of this is Chester Race Week (August 10-13, 2016), which takes place each August in Chester, Nova Scotia, and which bills itself as Canada’s largest keelboat regatta.

According to Chester Race Week’s (CRW) website, the event traces it roots back to 1856, when an Annual Fishermen’s Regatta was created, and when sailors competed for prizes and bragging rights. The event’s early years saw crowd draws that were measured in the thousands, however, as history stretched its legs, the regatta (as did all regattas) fell on tough times in the first half of the 20th century (with the notable exception of the 1920s) thanks to the international turbulence of World War I, the Great Depression and World War II.

By 1955, the regatta was again on the rise, both in terms of interest levels and participation numbers, and today CRW draws more keelboats than any other Canadian regatta. Impressively, entrants come from all over Canada and the Canadian Maritimes, as well as from the USA and other points aboard.

I caught up with Sara Filbee, CRW’s Regatta Chair and a longtime competitor, during this year’s event to learn more about this prestigious, historical and fun event.

What makes Chester Race Week such a special regatta?
It’s not just one thing. It’s very beautiful here; a lot of people say it’s like sailing in a Monet painting. There’s good racing, we spend a lot of time trying to make sure that we have a really good race committee and really good running of the courses. There’s a history here. A lot of people have come here year—this is the first year since the early eighties that I have not actually sailed in race week.

The only reason I’m not sailing [this year] is because I’m chair of the regatta and I kind of feel like I have to be available in case things go bump. [Chester is] a place that a lot of people come to during the summer; a lot of folks have summer houses here from the States and, you know, all over, basically. So it’s not just one thing, it’s tradition as much as anything. It’s a community [that] sort of re-establishes itself every summer.

How did this year’s entry numbers stack up to past events? Also, has the regatta recovered to its pre-recession numbers?
[Our registration numbers are] about the same as last year, but we had a dip a number of years ago and [the event] sort of took charge and revamped and tried to do some fixes and so on and so forth. This is a regatta that’s been going on in various forms for years…I think a hundred and sixty years since the first regatta here. Not necessarily a Chester Race Week regatta, and it was prior to even having a club house here, but it’s been going on for a long time, and with a longstanding race it’s really important to always stay vigilant and not get complacent about the success. So we keep on trying to build upon the past.

I think throughout the sailing world there was a bit of a dip [during the recession years]–I wasn’t Chair, so I don’t remember the actual numbers around 2008 or so, but we’re holding on. [Getting strong numbers is] an ongoing fight for all regattas around the world, I think.

You mentioned you guys did some things to revamp the regatta, can you mention just briefly a couple of those things?
It’s more just sort of building upon what was said in the past and trying to see, “What could we have done better last time?” and sort of pick that up and make it a bit better. So it’s, again, just trying to raise the game on every area [of the regatta], and so [being] green will be what’s new about it.

Can you tell me about CRW’s partnership with Sailors for the Sea? How has this partnership helped to improve CRW?
One of the things I think for sailors and for most folks increasingly is a concern about a clean environment and healthy oceans and so on, and so the idea was floated, and we embraced it get certified with Sailors for the Seas. [We registered] with them, and then they have a bunch of actions that [regattas] can take. [For example,] during the [race] week you take pictures and you show that you’ve taken those actions and then they will come, after the fact, and certify you as being at a various level.

We’re going into the first year at the bottom level; we’re trying to get certified at the bronze level, and it’s one of those things that I just believe it’s an important thing to do, and so does the community think it’s an important thing to do. So that’s why we’re doing it, and we’re learning as we’re going. You know, you have the usual lumps and bumps as you learn things: “Well, this doesn’t work as well; this works better…” and stuff like that. It’s time to do this sort of thing. Sailors for the Sea [has] been very supportive in terms of providing us with advice and resources.

Now that you’re working with Sailors for the Sea, do you visually see any differences thanks to this partnership?
I don’t know. We’ve always been trying to be real careful about having proper recycling and stuff. This is more sort of being a little bit more disciplined about putting some additional things in place, like we now have water stations so that people can refill refillable bottles. Stuff like that, but we’ve always been pretty careful about keeping garbage in the right spots and all that sort of thing.

So it looks pretty clean to me. We’re very proud of Chester, we’re very proud of the yacht club, and we want it to be a welcoming, clean, fun place for people. So it’s—part of it is also I think just getting the awareness out to everybody that participates. You know, we say we’re working to be a green regatta. OK, that just raises the whole issue of healthy oceans, which hopefully has a ripple effect when sailors go back to their local yacht clubs and it’s just in their life and being conscious about the importance of healthy oceans.

Can you tell me about the Outer Islands Race?
It’s [long-distance] race around the islands. I haven’t done it for a couple of years, but it’s just a really great sort of kick-off to the whole Race Week.

Is the Outer Islands Race actually part of CRW or is it something different?
Not really. No, it’s not, it’s a yacht club thing, but it’s always the Sunday before [CRW starts].

Can you describe the level of competition and camaraderie that one typically finds at CRW?
I used the word “community” before, and it really is a community. There’s a lot of competition. We’ve got sailors of all skill levels, and that’s the way we like it. This is not just for the pros; this is for all over in terms of competency levels. We’ve got some fierce competitive-like the Bluenose Fleet, and they are fiercely competitive, but they’re all friends and they sort of get together at the end of the day and they laugh over near misses and “Who won this?” and “Who won that?” and so on.

An example of that is they have a championship and at the end of it, whoever wins gets thrown in the water. It’s that kind of just fun, fun, fun relationship. And a lot of these people have competed year after year against each other, and every year they make new friends as well. So it’s just a really fun—you know, with its significant competition and one thing we have is Andreas Josenhans, who two-time World Champion in Soling and Olympic athlete. He comes and on the mornings, just on the porch, nice and informal, has a chat about what he’s seeing and what he’s thinking in terms of how people can better their skills and so on.

And are you drawing competitors mostly from the Canadian Maritimes or from all over Canada, the US?
We have them from all over. Mostly the East Coast of the States and Ontario, and places like that. Bermuda, we have one or two, but mostly it’s around the Maritimes. We might get a boat or so from Newfoundland, but it’s not as often. It’s the Maritimes and Nova Scotia. But we do have some from all over.

I was talking to a crew that is actually coming up here sailing a Bluenose and they’re from Ontario. Which is great. A Bluenose is a local boat, by the way. It’s a twenty-three-foot day sailor designed by the same person that designed the famous sailing schooner Bluenose. …It’s an old design [by] William J. Roue. He designed the famous fishing schooner, the Bluenose, which is on the Canadian dime.

Anything else that you’d like to add about CRW?
Every year [CRW is] something that people look forward to; they build their vacations around, and there’s always room for more boats to join us.