The 3rd annual Bart’s Bash Sailing event is been scheduled to take place worldwide on Saturday, September 17th and Sunday, September 18th. Organizers in San Pedro have planned to make the most of that weekend by holding an open regatta on Saturday, and the qualifying sailing regatta on Sunday. The location for the event will be at the beach side at the Caribbean Villas Hotel just south of San Pedro Town.
The event is a highly entertaining race, where sailors from all over the world in every kind of imaginable sailboat take to their home waters on the same day and at the same time. The sailors are connected together through a computer program that is operated by the Bart’s Bash Committee, while another computer program handicaps all the various boat classes involved in the event.
The event is not only known as a legitimate regatta, but it has been formally recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records upon its inauguration in 2014, as the largest boat race in the world. Since it began two years ago, Bart’s Bash had attracted hundreds of boats to the race, however this year it is expected to be even bigger as organizers anticipate over 16,000 boats to sign up. When the race began in 2014, Belize signed up 28 boats. During the event in 2015, that number went up to 30 boats and this year that number is expected to increase yet again.
The invitation to sign up is open to anyone, and local sailors on Ambergris Caye are encouraged to do so. Anyone interested to sign up for this worldwide event can do so by visiting the website www.bartsbash.com where applications can be filled out online. Sailors from San Pedro Town registering for the race must look for the section labelled ‘San Pedro Sailing Club.’ The four types of small crafts found on the Belize section of the webpage for both Saturday and Sunday races are Hobie, Catamarans, Laser Radials, Optimist dinghies and windsurfers.
The Belize Sailing Center in San Pedro located by Caribbean Villas Hotel has a limited amount of small crafts available for sign up, and they are on a first-come, first serve basis for any sailor who cannot bring his/her own sailboat.
For further information on how to reserve a craft, Race Officer Andrew Milner can be reached at 632-4101. Milner is excited about the event and feels proud that Belize is part of it. He would like to encourage all Belizean sailors and sailing clubs who cannot come to San Pedro to enter the Bart’s Bash, to still register and race in their own waters. The schedule for the official races on Saturday will be given at a 10AM briefing during the start of the event. On Sunday, the Bart’s Bash race will commence at 12 noon.
Bart’s Bash was created to commemorate a beloved champion sailor and philanthropist, Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson and to support The Andrew Simpson Sailing Foundation. The event aims to increase international awareness of participation in sailing, and to raise funds for the Foundation itself, which supports a range of sustainable projects, using sailing to improve the lives of children and young people globally.
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