31st Annual Heineken Regatta: "Serious Fun"

As you can imagine, there are a lot of perks going to a Caribbean medical school, but I'm going a little bit further and saying there are way more perks going to med school on St. Maarten as opposed to Dominica, Saba, or Grenada.

There is civilization here.

And we get the Heineken Regatta.

The Heineken Regatta is a yacht race held in St. Maarten every year. It first began in 1980, as a local affair with only 12 boats racing and now, in its 31st year, the event has grown into an international boat race boasting 300 yachts entries this year and representing 32 different countries. The Heineken Regatta began March 1 and ended March 6 in explosive fashion with a "final party" in Simpson Bay's Kim Sha beach featuring Wyclef Jean. The picture below is from the event last Sunday, but unfortunately I was in my dorm studying!

Although I missed the final party, myself and 200 other AUC students/Professors enjoyed the Regatta Saturday thanks to Phi Chi, the medical fraternity here on campus (I'm currently a pledge for Phi Chi and I'll be devoting a whole post to it at a later date).  The members of Phi Chi were selling spaces on boats that they secured for the Regatta. They started off with three boats, but because of the high demand, they got an additional two boats to accommodate all who wanted to attend. If you are in Phi Chi, it was $100 a spot, and for those not in it, they had to pay $120. I know the prices seem a bit expensive, but it is open bar for the duration of the boat trip (8:30-4:30) and snacks, lunch was provided. I ended up being on the boat "Tango" with my close friends and with a lot of people in my first semester class, so I knew I had a great group going into Saturday. Around 60 of us ended up being on Tango so I also got to meet some other students from the third and fifth semesters. The fifth semesters had just taken the Comp exam the day before, so you know they were ready to party. 

On Saturday, I woke up at 7:00 and met some friends at 7:30 to take a cab over to the marina. It was only a 10-15 minute ride. Once we arrived to the docks we had to wait for the rest of the students to arrive before we could climb aboard Tango. At this time I took various pictures and even signed a petition to "help save the dolphins forever". Direct quote right there. The girl saving dolphins was probably eleven years old. I got a nice little ribbon bracelet out of it with three beads. 

Once we were all gathered and the crew finished stocking/prepping the boat for our departure, we climbed on. First thing I did was grab a Presidente. That's all I would drink for the rest of the day. I know my limits from college and I've realized that if I just stick with beer the whole time, I last much longer. Mixed drinks go right to my head. We set off and 50 photos later, we got to where all the races were happening. I was shocked when we arrived because I'm fairly certain that spectator boats and the actual racing boats were all jumbled in together. There was a point when our boat jumped right in the race.... I think. There was a long line of boats with crew members all wearing the same outfits jumping from one side of the boat to the other, and we just sailed right into them. Perpendicular. Then the captain turned us so we were then parallel to the other racing boats and we were then just sort of in the race. It was strange, but pretty cool. I wondered if this was some sort of interference, but apparently not. After watching the races for some time, Tango went to a rendezvous point at a nearby beach to meet up with the 4 other AUC boats. We had lunch here (subs and chips), and then went swimming. A lot of people jumped in to get to the beach, and a lot more people jumped in the ocean to swim to the other boats to visit friends. I checked out the Mirabella (the largest of the 5 AUC boats) and was slightly jealous that they had a slide.

Below are few of the boat pictures I snapped during the day. I ended up with 6 pictures of the actual Regatta and 120 of everyone on Tango. The last picture is pretty much all the first semester students that were on my boat.