The unmissable charm of the RORC Caribbean 600
'I really needed these months of break. At the end of the Route du Rhum I was exhausted, I had completely run out of energy. Thinking about the boat was giving me a headache after the ultramarathon season we had had. But now we're at the start of the season and I'm all revved up to make 'Alla Grande Pirelli' fly. The first objective is to verify that the boat is in perfect condition. Regatta sailing boats are always a compromise between reliability and performance. So we are in the construction site where we are verifying each piece of the boat and how to make it indestructible but also effective'. Ambrogio Beccaria arrived in Guadeloupe at the end of January and has posted on Instagram all his hype for the season ahead.
He is preparing for the RORC Caribbean 600, which he will face aboard his 'Alla Grande Pirelli', the Class40 built at the Italian shipyard Sangiorgio Marine, which remained in Guadeloupe after the exhausting Route du Rhum. And there it will remain until spring, when it will be its turn to sail through winds and seas and the islands of the Caribbean. The departure is set for February 20, 2023, on the island of Antigua, where the finish line will also be placed. It is a regatta in which, even in the middle of winter, there is almost always the sun and the warm trade winds ready to push the boats racing on the ocean waves.
Launched in 2008, this regatta has already become a reference point for sailors and enthusiasts. It certainly has to do with the route, a zigzag – which by its shape resembles an 8 – between magnificent places and incredible views, between Saint Barth and Saba, Saint Kitts and Nevis, then Sint Maarten and to the south, around Guadeloupe, there are eleven islands in total. About six hundred nautical miles – as you can guess from the name – in dream scenarios, with a masterful strategy: in these contexts there are always winds and currents to exploit, there is the possibility of going strong, and risk, a constant component of these races.
In 2009, there was the first official edition of the RORC Caribbean 600, with John Burnie's trimaran 'Orma 60, Region Guadeloupe' setting the first record in terms of times; Mike Slade's 'Icap Leopard' was the first monohull to win; Adrian Lee's 'Cookson 50, Lee Overlay Partners' was the competition's first overall winner. In the first decade of the regatta's history, American boats dominated the Caribbean waters, winning the Rorc Caribbean 600 Trophy on six occasions. On the other hand, a boat with the stars-and-stripes flag also won in 2022: the overall winner of the 13th edition of the Rorc Caribbean 600 was 'Pac52 Warrior One', with Richard Clarke being on board –four times Olympian for Canada and winner of the Volvo Ocean Race– as a tactician.
The program includes eleven days of events, with all the typical specifications of the events and regattas organized Royal Ocean Racing Club – a British sailing club founded in 1925, among the largest organizers of offshore regattas in the United Kingdom, which adds to the Caribbean regattas the famous Fastnet race and the Admiral's Cup.
In 2023, the curtain rises on Tuesday, February 14, with the first coastal regattas around Antigua. The fourteenth RORC Caribbean 600, however, will start a week later, on Monday, February 20 (Italian Time, 16:00). The awards will be handed out on Friday, February 24.
Among the participating boats, there will be eleven multihulls and several boats with large crews, but also smaller vessels. There will be a dozen Class40s, ready for this special slalom between the islands. Among them, Ambrogio Beccaria's 'Alla Grande Pirelli': the Milanese sailor, born in 1991, will try to repeat the excellent results of the Route du Rhum, when at the end of November 2022 he finished second place in his category and first among the Italians, after having crossed the Atlantic in fourteen days, seven hours and twenty-three minutes. The RORC Caribbean 600 will be a very different race, but the spirit with which Ambrogio faces it will be the same: trying to improve and refine even more his relationship with the boat that he helped to design and that will accompany him until 2024.
