Creation of the Richard Mille Record Trophy
by Les Voiles de Saint-Barth 13 Mar 2018 07:15 PDT
8-14 April 2018
Les Voiles de Saint-Barth 2017 © Christophe Jouany
The highlight of the 2018 edition has to be the creation of the Richard Mille Record Trophy. The principle behind it is simple: reward the boat that racks up the best time over a course amongst the islands spanning some 60 miles or so.
"The record will be open to the fastest classes, namely the Maxis, the Spinnaker 0s and the Multihulls," said Luc Poupon, Les Voiles Race Director, who first tested the concept back in the 2015 over a 42-mile route between Saint Barth and the island of Tintamarre.
"At the time, Lloyd Thornburg's MOD70 Phaedo 3 completed the course in a stellar time (1 hour and 53 minutes) and the resulting feedback from the racers was very positive."
Richard Mille, Title Sponsor of Les Voiles de Saint Barth
A main sponsor of Les Voiles de Saint Barth since the event's creation in 2010, the Richard Mille luxury watch brand is now stepping up a notch by becoming title sponsor for the event.
"I love being involved in a project from the get-go," Richard Mille said. "We put our trust in Les Voiles de Saint Barth before the race even existed and each year we've worked towards setting it up. Now that it's firing on all cylinders, Les Voiles de Saint Barth is an event not to be missed in the Caribbean. François Tolède and Luc Poupon take great care in making this a top-notch event on a global scale by striving to give it increasing appeal both at sea and on land. We are demonstrating more loyalty than ever this year and we are bolstering our participation with complete solidarity for the organizers of Les Voiles. It seemed key to me to develop this type of project in line with the teams in place. Creating such a successful event fills us with shared pride, which ultimately manifests itself as a deep sense of camaraderie."
With this move, the event will have a new logo and there will also be a special watch designed to reward the winner of the Richard Mille—Maxi Cup.
Free Concierge Service
As in prior years, Les Voiles de Saint-Barth has a totally free concierge service to help all of our participants reserve housing in a great villa or at a hotel, by way of our partner at WIMCO Villas, as well your rental cars with our partners, as well as reservations with caterers or restaurants.
Please feel free to contact us:
The Run Eco Team as part of Les Voiles
As part of this special edition of Les Voiles de Saint-Barth, the organizers decided to partner with Tiru-Ouanalao Environnement to add an ecologically minded race to the schedule, the Run Eco Team.
This initiative, born on Facebook, in January 2016, includes running or walking on the theme of 1RUN1TRASH "RUN FOR A CLEANER WORLD." Very quickly, the idea was popular with many runners around the world, including Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, Prince Albert II of Monaco, and French journalists Laury Thilleman and Alessandra Sublet, our French ambassador 2018!
The St Barth race will take part of Sunday at 8am, starting at the incinerator in Public, in the presence of Alessandra Sublet. Accordingly to the goals and physical capabilities, participants can walk or run, while picking up trash they find along the 6km itinerary. The course goes along the port of Gustavia as far as the Collectivity and goes back to the starting point by way of the infirmary passant and La Tourmente: the route provides a beautiful panorama of the island for ecologically minded athletes who would like to help preserve the environment!
For additional information:
Update on Entries
The classes for Les Voiles are filling up, especially in the Spinnaker classes, which, like every year, represent the largest portion of the fleet! We are pleased that many of our regulars will be back, some of which raced together in the Heineken Regatta last weekend: Taz, with a crew from Antigua led by Bernie Evan-Wong, as well as a team from St Barth aboard Maelia Cepac Antilles, and Lazy Dog from Puerto Rico:
"We want to support all the Caribbean regattas, specially this post hurricane year, even though we have a lot of damage in our island of Puerto Rico. We just finished the Heineken St Marteen regatta where we finished first in class and we are also doing Antigua Sailing Week after les Voiles. I believe this will be a very exciting Les Voiles! The first after the storm! We will be the hardcore sailors!"
New participants complete the fleet such as the latest entry, Gordon's, a Baltic 50 belonging to Konig Jurg of Switzerland, plus the Americans on Avanti, often see on the Caribbean circuit, who will sail on the waters of St Barth, the French crew of Esprit Scout, led by Marc Dubos, and the Englishmen aboard Power of Love.
Would you like to join the fleet? Register now here.