The fourth edition of the Voiles de Saint Barth drew to a close on Saturday, rounding off a week of intensive ocean racing in the breeze and hot sunshine of the Caribbean. Richard Mille, the race’s principal partner from the very beginning, is delighted with the success of this competition, which brought over 60 sailing vessels and 800 sailors together from the four corners of the world for this remarkable nautical event.

Once again, the Voiles de Saint Barth kept its promise, decisively staking a claim as a key event in the very exclusive world of ocean racing. Navigation conditions lived up to the island’s reputation, with an ample breeze throughout the week and moderate seas of an exceptional blue. In this spectacular setting, the courses selected by the Organisers afforded their quota of tactics, finishing in splendour on Saturday, the last racing day and the windiest of the week. Facing a steady 20-knot breeze and regularly high seas, the Maxi/Racing, Maxi, Spinnaker 1 and Spinnaker 2 classes competed over a 17-mile course west of the island, while the Spinnaker 3, Melges 24, Classic, Non-Spinnaker and multihull classes sailed a 26-mile course to the north and east of St Barths.

Although the last day made for particularly spectacular racing, the whole week offered an outstanding show, with magnificent duels between the leaders in the various categories. Especially noteworthy was the wonderful victory, in the Maxi Yachts class, of the Swan 80 Selene, star of this year’s event, and its owner Wendy Schmidt, who was awarded a Richard Mille RM 028 diver’s watch in titanium at the prize-giving ceremony. This very high-performance timepiece featuring a unidirectional rotating bezel complies with the ISO 6425 standard for diver’s watches and is water-resistant to 300 metres (30 ATM). The deceptively simple silhouette of the 47-millimetre case conceals a distillation of technical expertise. The watch is rendered perfectly waterproof by the unique tripartite construction of the case and bezel, completed by lugs incorporated into the case assembly. The skeletonised automatic movement of the RM 028 is equipped with a variable geometry rotor, an exclusive Richard Mille concept that adapts the automatic winding of the watch to the activity of the user using two white-gold wings. Richard Mille was pleased to present this exceptional watch to the winner of this flagship category, as the Swan 80 Selene is a real Formula 1 of the seas: its extreme technology and innovation are devoted to ultimate performance, reminiscent of Richard Mille’s own approach.

Worth noting in other classes:
In the Maxi/Racing class, the victory of Jim Swartz, patron of the 2013 edition, who held an undisputed lead over the entire race, secured the grand slam for his TP52 Vesper with 5 wins. Meanwhile, the Spinnaker 1 class gave a series of superb, exciting regattas with duels at daggers drawn, ending with
South-African James Blakemore on board his Swan 5 Music clinching the win. In the very popular Spinnaker 2 group, it was the Puerto-Rican Sergio Sagramoso (Lazy Dog) who reached finish line first, banishing Irishman Rohann Eamonn’s First 40 Ramanessin to 3 points. Meanwhile the Classics were firmly back in the swing of things, culminating in the victory of the Frers Heroina, which dominated the week.

The curtain has fallen on the Voiles de Saint Barth 2013, but the dates are already confirmed for 2014’s event: 7-12 April. Richard Mille will, of course, attend the fifth consecutive year given that sailing is one his favourite sports, as a handful of his exceptional timepieces demonstrates: the RM 014 and RM 015 Perini Navi sailing watches, as well as the RM 025 Tourbillon Chronograph, the RM 028 Automatic, the RM 028 Voiles de Saint Barth or the RM 032 Flyback Chronograph diver’s watches.