Sailors looking to sail the regatta who don’t have their own boats have always had the option of racing in the bareboat fleet. In the early 2000s, the bareboat fleet topped 70 boats, but only 15 raced this year. Sunsail promotes the event and organizes the teams, with plenty of demand from repeat customers, but the number of available boats has decreased over the years as the company has switched its fleet to cruising catamarans that do not race. A popular option now is the availability of charter race boats through companies such as LV Yachting or boats that can be chartered directly from owners, such as the J/120 Jaguar that was chartered by a team from California.

The J/133 Bella J tucks in close to the island while sailing the around-the-island race.

Laurens Morel photo

“We formed a group of sailors we called RSW Racing after the names of our core sailors,” said Long Beach-based Marcos Weinstein, the logistics organizer of the group that mostly races a Beneteau 36.7 in Southern California. “Our first regatta was the 2019 12-Meter World Championship in Newport. We went looking for our next big bucket list race when we found the opportunity to charter Jaguar for the Heineken.”

Weinstein organizes chartering the boat and renting lodging, and said that each member spends about $3,500 to $4,000 including airfare, with some of the crew coming from other parts of the country.

“I am a bit of a dandy, so I want to stay in nice places, and we lucked out renting a penthouse condo with an ocean view in the Las Brisas Villas right next door to the race village,” he said. “The hardest part was getting used to the early boat call because we had to make the first bridge opening.”

While the team stayed next to the Port de Plaisance race village that featured live music nightly, a daily raucous awards presentation and plenty of food trucks and libations, including Verve Clicquot and Heineken, Weinstein said the crew is reaching an age where late party nights don’t work well with early boat calls. It was the racing they came for, and Jaguar recently went through a complete refit and had several new sails, Weinstein said. The team finished in fourth place in CSA 6.