The Caribbean season is the dry season, and the calendar follows the boats. It opens in the first half of December with the Antigua Charter Yacht Show, when the fleet that spent September on the Riviera has crossed the Atlantic and gathers in the harbors at Falmouth and English Harbour for the brokers' inspections, and it closes in late April and early May with Antigua Sailing Week, after which the yachts head north or back to the Mediterranean before the hurricane season. Between those two dates St. Barts is the season's center: New Year's Eve in Gustavia, the St. Barths Bucket in March and Les Voiles de St. Barth in April are the three fixed points, with the St. Barth Gourmet Festival in November as a prologue.
Florida sits alongside the Caribbean season and shares its crowd: Art Basel Miami Beach in December, the Miami boat show in February, the Palm Beach boat show in March and the Winter Equestrian Festival throughout are the mainland half of the same winter. This is one of the few seasons on the site where the events are secondary to the place, and where an ordinary visitor sees most of what there is to see from a harbor wall.
01Направления
02Как это движется
The season begins with the trade. The Antigua Charter Yacht Show in early December is a working event; the public face of the season starts when the boats disperse to St. Barts for Christmas and New Year, and the harbor at Gustavia in the last week of December is the fullest it will be all year. January and February are the quiet middle: the boats cruise the Grenadines, the Virgin Islands and the Leewards, and the fixed calendar moves to Florida, with the Miami boat show in mid-February the season's largest trade fixture.
March brings the season back to St. Barts with the Bucket, three days of superyacht racing around the island in the second half of the month, within days of the Palm Beach boat show on the mainland. April has Les Voiles de St. Barth in the middle of the month, a week of racing that ends with the fleet in Gustavia, and then Antigua Sailing Week at the end of April, which is the traditional close: racing by day, the prize-givings at Nelson's Dockyard by night, and a fleet that begins the transatlantic crossing east as soon as it ends. By the middle of May the harbors are quiet and the same boats are in Palma or the Riviera.
03Мероприятия
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4DecEnglish HarbourAntigua Charter Yacht Show
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26DecGustaviaSt. Barts New Year's Eve
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17MarGustaviaSt Barths Bucket Regatta
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1Apr
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21AprEnglish HarbourAntigua Sailing Week
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9NovGustaviaSaint-Barth Gourmet Festival
04Погода
December to April is the dry season across the Leewards: warm days, cool nights, steady trade winds from the east that make the racing in the Bucket and Les Voiles what it is. Rain comes in short showers. The Christmas winds in late December can be strong enough to keep the smaller boats in port. By late April the humidity rises and the first rains arrive, which is why the sailing calendar stops there and does not resume until December. The hurricane season runs from June to November, and nothing on the international calendar is scheduled in the islands in those months.
05Что дальше
After Antigua Sailing Week the yachting calendar crosses to the Mediterranean: the Palma boat show at the end of April, the Loro Piana Superyacht Regatta in Sardinia and the Rolex Giraglia from Saint-Tropez in June. The Florida side of the winter ends with the Miami Open and the Masters in April. Most of the St. Barts crowd is next seen in Cannes in May or Monaco in June.