Schooner ELENA is one of the entrants and featured in this video

An Introduction To The Mount Gay Rum Round Barbados Race – The Mount Gay Rum Round Barbados Race will be held on January 21st 2011 organised by the Barbados Cruising Club, in association with Mount Gay Rum and The Barbados Tourism Authority.  The name, gives the game away.  It’s a race, around Barbados. “One Day, One Race, One Goal” we’ve said – and that’s it… a straight race, around Barbados….simple!

There’s been a core team of people working tirelessly on this race for the last 10 months, lead by Howard Palmer with Mike and Alene representing the Cruising Club, Sen. Peter Gilkes and Hayden Coppin representing the BTA and Raphael, Marc and Andre representing Mount Gay Rum.  We have a great group of enthusiastic event sponsors, The Barbados Tourism Authority, Mount Gay Rum, Albion Insurance, Miele, Scotiabank and The Beach House, all of whom are committed to creating a three day event that you won’t forget.

Why January 21st?: All Barbadians will know that date is Errol Barrow Day.  A bank holiday in celebration of our first Prime Minister.  Errol Barrow was also a keen sailor, and one of the Cruising Club’s founder members.  Sounds like a pretty good date to hold the club’s biggest event!  It also puts the race at the start of the international sailing calendar, gives us a chance to draw in yachts from around the world to take part.But it’s been done before… right?  Yes, the race has been running since 1936, making this the 75th anniversary race!  Back then 5 trading schooners raced around the island.  Captain Lou Kennedy’s schooner Sea Fox was the winner in 10 hours 20 minutes.  Many sailors have raced around Barbados.  Current record holders are Destination Fox Harb’r  – 5 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (Monohull) and Silver Bullet 4 hours 40 minutes 33 seconds (Multihull).  You all know Silver Bullet, she’s down at the club..  But this year, and for the future, with help from our sponsors we’ve put the race on the international sailing calendar.  We’ve moved up a notch.. (or 10!)

Who’s Racing? Right now we have 24 entries.  Ranging in size from the magnificent A Class racing schooner Elena at 55 metres to 4 of our friends from the Barbados J24 club.  We have boats from other Caribbean countries and the UK.  We have world class race officials who’ll be overseeing the event, Pat Bailey and Angus Buchanan.  And we have some fabulous prizes.  There are class prizes but the headline one is of course that the yacht breaking the absolute record will win the skippers weight in Mount Gay Rum Extra Old.  Now, that *is* a prize!

Can I enter my boat? Yes, there’s still time.  We’d love you to join the fun!  Though we have banned Commodore Mike from entering Indigo as she’d have to start the day before to finish on time.  So, if you can race faster than Indigo, come and join us!  Everything you need to enter is on the website.  Keep reading, we’ll get to that in a minute.

Media Coverage: Oh yes, polish your ship’s brass, clean the hull and look photogenic please.  We have journalists from major yachting and lifestyle publications from around the world covering the event.  We also have Rick Depp (sorry ladies, no matter how often I request Johnny, I’m told his name is Rick), a world famous ocean cinematographer who will be filming the race.

How do I follow the race? Well you can spend the day at the club, that’s a good start! Next week we’ll give you a list of locations and times around the island that you should get a good view from.  Don’t forget thanks to sponsorship from Miele, and some hard work by Kris, all yachts will have tracking transponders on board.  We’ll follow them on the large screen from the website.