Fantastic Fleet assembled for the 2024 St Barths Bucket

20. Mar 2024

20 March 2024 - St Barths - Most of the fleet has arrived, and some of the entrants are working off the rust with early week practices. Sunshine and wind are what we’ve all come to expect in St Barths, and early forecasts suggest there will plenty of both when the racing starts on Friday, march 22.

2024 regatta highlights will include:

Unparalleled ORCsy class racing in the popular pursuit racing format will provide yacht owners with exciting, close competition against yachts with similar sailing characteristics. 2024 Entries.
The Corinthian Spirit Class racing will return to its roots and once again be a non-spinnaker competition.
The 90-foot class is making a return to St Barths.

One never knows with weather forecasts nowadays, but 13-18kt Easterly tradewinds is what the experts are telling us. Rosehearty, Hanuman, Nostromo, Inukshuk, Hetairos, Nakupenda, and L’Hippocampe are already at the dock with the finishing touches being applied to the race village at the Capitainerie. With racing less than 2 days off, spirits and expectations are high!

33m Nakupenda - Danish Yachts/Fontaine © Cory Silken

The seven classes include 11 Corinthian Spirit entries in two non-spinnaker classes, a 90-foot class, and the debut of an ‘Open Class’ that includes a combination of cruising yachts and one racing superyacht.

2024 Bucket fleet classes:

A - Les Gazelles des Mers - 4 yachts - Performance-oriented group of sloops with the fastest ratings in fleet, low DLR and LOA’s between 47-60m. All feature high upwind sail area/displacement ratios and extremely high downwind sail area/displacement ratios, with none having to furl jibs to tack.

B - Les Elegantes des Mers - 5 yachts - Sloops, not rated as fast as those in Class A. They have similar waterline lengths and upwind and downwind sail area/displacement ratios, with a reasonably tight rating band of 34 seconds/mile.

C - Les Petites Dames (90 Foot) - 3 yachts - These sloops feature the same designer and builder and an extremely tight rating band of 16 secs/mile.

D - L’Esprit-1 (Corinthian Spirit-1) - 6 yachts - This class features the smaller of the 11 non-spinnaker Corinthian Spirit class entries (LOA 30-33m / Displ 90-115 ton). All six are sloops. Three of the six yachts in class are racing with headsails set flying (not spinnakers).

E - Les Mademoiselles des Mers - 5 yachts - This 6-yacht class features a mix of different rigs all with high DLR and low upwind and downwind sail area/displacement ratios. The rated speeds are considerably slower than the yachts in classes A and B.

F - L’Esprit-2 (Corinthian Spirit-2) - 5 yachts - This is the second of the non-spinnaker Corinthian Spirit classes. All five are large superyachts (45-77m / 240-720 ton) with relatively low sail area/displacement ratios.

G - Les Performance Ouvertes (Open Performance) - 5 yachts - This ‘open performance class’ is comprised of the four Class A yachts and one racing superyacht, Spirit of Malouen (racing yachts as defined by the SYRA Cruising-Superyacht Definition.

There are four impressive entries making their superyacht racing debut – the 59-meter Maximus (Vitters/Frers), 47-meter Nilaya (Royal Huisman/Reichel-Pugh) 31-meter Zemi (Baltic/ Malcolm Mckeon) and the 33 meter Gelliceaux (Southern Wind/Farr). The first two will do battle in Les Gazelles Class A which features some of the fastest yachts in fleet. We count no less than 8 former Bucket class winners among the 30 entries this year.

110ft (33.5m) Malcolm McKeon sloop Zemi © Claire Matches

The class breaks have been posted for weeks and remain unchanged from the earliest preliminary version.

The official 2024 Bucket social schedule will again be unrivaled, providing yacht owners and their guests with a unique, fun filled experience shoreside and on the water as well.