St. Maarten, N.A. (March 8, 2009) ━ In what will go down as one of the windiest, wildest events in the storied history of the St. Maarten Heineken Regatta, a long and worthy list of new champions were crowned today as racing concluded in the 29th edition of the annual Caribbean competition. The final tally revealed a host of new winners─including Ronald O’Hanley’s Cookson 50, Privateer, and Wendy Schmidt’s Swan 80, Team Selene─as well as several past St. Maarten Heineken Regatta victors like Sergio Sagramoso on the Beneteau 44.7, Lazy Dog, and James Dobbs on the J/122, Lost Horizons.

The 2009 St. Maarten Heineken Regatta will largely be remembered as the year a solid northeasterly breeze kicked in on the first day of the three-day event, and continued in unrelenting style for the duration of the racing. Due to the severity of the winds─which peaked out at nearly 40-knots on Day 1 of the regatta─and the massive, confused seaway that soon accompanied them, race officials decided to forgo the usual Saturday and Sunday racing schedule that in past years took the fleet in and out of the exposed French-side port of Marigot.

Instead, the race committee concentrated the weekend competition off Simpson Bay on the island’s southern coast. Even so, there was no lack of drama on the race course, where calamity often reigned and blown sails, toppled masts and bone-jarring collisions were all part of the action.

Sunday’s final day of racing was conducted on two separate race courses: the Non-spinnaker, Bareboat, Cruising Multihull and Open divisions sailed a 17-nautical mile course that included a long windward leg up the west coast of St. Maarten to a turning mark in the Anguilla Channel, while the Spinnaker 1-6 classes raced over a 20-nautical mile track that featured a rugged beat up the island’s eastern side to a mark off the isle of Tintamarre. Once around that mark, however, the all-out racers enjoyed a thrilling run under spinnaker in wicked surfing conditions.

None were faster, or more impressive, than O’Hanley’s Farr-designed 50-footer, Privateer, which capped off a tremendous St. Maarten Heineken Regatta series to win the Spinnaker 2 class with a perfect scorecard of four first-place finishes. Privateer not only left it’s entire class well astern, on the final race they caught and passed the entire Spinnaker 1 division with the sole exception of the Farr 115, Sojana.

“Once we were around that top mark, we were launched,” said O’Hanley, who added that Privateer is on “a serious roll,” having won her class in last summer’s Newport-Bermuda Race, and followed that up with an overall victory in the recent Pineapple Cup from Florida to Jamaica. “Boat speed and wind speed were about the same: 19 or 20 knots.”

Last year, in Privateer’s inaugural St. Maarten Heineken Regatta appearance, the boat finished a close second to the TP 52, Panthera. But in 2009, Privateer’s redeeming performance was untouchable. “It’s another year of experience with the boat,” said O’Hanley, a Bostonian who bases Privateer out of Newport, R.I. “Last year was the first time we’d sailed in any kind of big breeze. But all the effort the crew’s done since then has paid off. Our crew work was perfect and our trimmers were just superb. These were our conditions.”

Another boat with a strong New England pedigree also earned a place in the winner’s circle on Sunday. Wendy Schmidt’s Swan 80, Team Selene, is a familiar presence in Newport and the nearby Massachusetts island of Nantucket. But for the St. Maarten Heineken Regatta─in which the striking 80-footer registered a five-point win over Peter Harrison’s Sojana in Spinnaker 1─Team Selene was truly an international one, with nine different nations represented among the 22-strong all-star crew.

“One of the reasons we came here is because it’s a Clean Regatta,” said Schmidt, invoking the designation that the St. Maarten Heineken Regatta has earned from the ocean conservation group Sailors for the Sea, making it the first Caribbean event to do so. “You can’t be a sailor and not care about the seas.”

Schmidt also sang the praises and ingenuity of the big Swan’s skipper, Chris Besser, who at one stage employed frozen peas and strawberries to cool Team Selene’s overheated winches. Schmidt had only one regret: that the regatta was over.

“Our crew is going to be very sorry to leave St. Maarten; it’s such a fabulous place,” she said. “We’re just getting in our groove.”

But the St. Maarten Heineken Regatta isn’t just about Grand Prix yachts and high-profile crews. And nowhere was this more evident than aboard the Harmony 52, Neerlands Glorie─Dutch for “Dutch Glory”─which won the Bareboat 1 class with yet another perfect line of three straight wins.

“We are the best Dutch amateur team in the world,” laughed crewman Hugo “You-Go” Cooymans. “Our skipper, Ron Gessel, dictated all the rules to us and told us what to do. He is very organized but we call him the ‘mis-manager’ to get him psyched for first place this year.”

“We come every year,” said fellow crew Rob de Laat, “but we’ve never been the winner. Until now.”

The same could not be said of Sergio Sagramoso and his Puerto Rican crew aboard the Beneteau 44.7, Lazy Dog. Sagramoso and his mates are no strangers to success in the St. Maarten Heineken Regatta. But in previous years, the team sailed a Beneteau 40.7 of the same name. With his new 44-footer, Sagramoso picked up right were he left off, squeaking to a one-point victory over Clive Llewellyn’s Grand Soleil 50, Mad IV, in Spinnaker 3.

In Spinnaker 4, Antigua’s James Dobbs’s J/122, Lost Horizons, continued what was a strong showing across the board for Caribbean sailors, dominating the class with four victories in four races. And in Spinnaker 6, Robert Armstong’s J/100, Bad Girl, won a close battle over the Melges 32, Jurakan, whose crew included U.S. Virgin Islands Olympic medalist Peter Holmberg.

In Non-spinnaker 1, the Johnson family’s well-sailed Beneteau 53f5, Rapajam, edged out Burt Keenan’s pretty cat-ketch, Acadia, while in Non-spinnaker 2, Sandy Mair’s Soverel 30, Streaker, was the victor over Colin Percy’s Nonsuch 33, Antares. Ton Deegenaars was the winner of the Open class aboard his Beneteau Idlylle, Goeie Mie.

In the respective winner’s circles for the fleet’s multihull competitors, Henri Jouan’s trimaran, Karibuni, was the top boat in Racing Multihull 1; Chuck Larsen’s Lagoon catamaran, Dream Catcher, matched the feat in Cruising Multihull 2; and Xabier Ross’s Cream was the winning Gunboat cat.

Along with Neerlands Glorie in Bareboat 1, other winners among the charter boats were as follows: C.J. Bartman’s Beneteau Cyclades 50, Gruppo Sportivo, in Bareboat 2; Jeffrey Sochrin’s Beneteau Oceanis 473, Team Goldendog, in Bareboat 3; Ralph Van den Berg’s Beneteau Cyclades 43, French Kiss, in Bareboat 4; and the Harmony 42, Renoir, in Bareboat 5.