Chester Race Week: At the Top of its Game

By Tom Mason
Andreas Josenhans was watching the big yachts jockey for position in the choppy waters between Chester and Tancook Island when an idea hit him like a flash. The year was 2007 and Chester Race Week was in full swing. “I began thinking of things that could be done better; things that would improve the race,” he recalls. “I thought I could do something about it.”

If anyone could, it would be Josenhans. After all, the Nova Scotian sailor has an impressive list of racing credentials stretching back to the 1976 Montreal Olympics when he and his Soling crew mates were the youngest sailors competing at the Games. They placed eighth. The next year Josenhans, Glen Dexter and Sandy MacMillan won the world Soling Championship, a success they would repeat in 1980. Josenhans has continued as a world class sailor and ocean racer ever since. “I decided that day in 2007 that I would take the next three years to see if I could improve Chester Race Week and make it closer to what the racers wanted,” he says.

Race directors have been tweaking the Chester regatta for a long time. According to local legend, Race Week started with a friendly wager over a few beers, as far back as 1856 when a group of sailors from Lunenburg, Mahone Bay, Big Tancook and Little Tancook met in Front Harbour to prove once and for all who were the finest sailors and boatbuilders on the South Shore. The community hosted a grand regatta early in September to settle the bet. Everything that could float was pressed into service: gigs of four oars, whaleboats, flats, punts and canoes all competed for cash prizes and bragging rights. Sailboats raced as well, nine boats in all. A boat named the Katy Darling, skippered by E.J. Robinson, won a silver cup and $24, beating out a boat called Secret. It isn’t recorded whether the boats were sloops, ketches or schooners. In a village where a few dozen families normally lived, 3,000 people are said to have lined the shore around the peninsula that separates Chester’s front and back harbours to watch the regatta. More spectators filled rowboats and small sailboats along the race’s course. When it was over, the village held a torchlight procession down Chester’s light-festooned street, culminating in a large fireworks display on the harbour front.

More races, both official and unofficial, followed until the Chester Yacht Club made the impromptu tradition official in 1904 by sponsoring the first annual Race Week. The event continued to evolve and grow. By the 1920s the Chester Yacht Club was the home to a fleet of Chester C-Class sloops, sleek racing and cruising yachts that were designed and built in the area. In the 1950s a Bluenose one-design fleet built in nearby East Chester and later in Mahone Bay dominated the race.

Today, what was once a contest between wooden boats with no motors has become a race for state-of-the-art fiberglass craft with sophisticated electronics, roller reefing and composite sails. Everything from multi-million dollar oceangoing racers to classic Bluenoses and Chester Cs participate. Race Week is billed as the largest fixed keel regatta in Canada, with more than 1500 sailors and non-sailors taking part every year. More than 150 boats are expected this year.

“We’ve got sailors coming from all over Eastern Canada and down into the U.S.,” says Josenhans, “so we have an obligation to run a good regatta for them that’s in step with the times.” That means making sure that every boat gets a chance to pack in lots of intense racing over the four days of the event, he says. And it means setting courses that are challenging, interesting and exciting for every boat involved – a tall order when you’re dealing with a variety of boat classes ranging from 23 feet to well over 50 feet.

Josenhans devised a program of setting the three race courses based on wind conditions, just a few minutes before race time each day. That way the race could be oriented so that the wind direction was square, with tight upwind tacks and broad downwind legs. Charlie, the shortest of the three courses for the engineless Bluenose class, would be laid out inside a triangle made by Quaker Island, Meisner Island and the Chester Golf Club. Bravo, the course for boats from 22 feet to 50 feet would be placed outside of Meisner and Quaker. Alpha the course for the big oceangoing yachts, would start near Tancook and would cover about 30 miles, much of it in open water outside Mahone Bay.

Two types of boats take part in race week. The one-designs — Bluenoses, J-24s and J-29s — are the sailing equivalent of NASCAR. Each one is basically the same design and sail configuration, with few modifications allowed. One-designs eliminate any advantages that the boat might afford, stripping things down to who is the best sailor and tactician. Handicapped races, on the other hand, are a mathematical way of eliminating the advantages on boats that are drastically different. The Premiers are the elite of the handicapped racers.

For the Premier class sailboats chugging along on their diesel engines, it usually takes 20 minutes or more to reach the starting line off Tancook Island — time to rig sails and engage in a little psychological warfare before the main event gets underway. Boats blast their favourite inspirational rock and roll from on-board sound systems, fly intimidating faux pirate flags, even don Viking headgear in a few cases. Some crews wear matching T-shirts; all do their best to look confident and in control, and better than the competition. It’s an appealing show for anyone watching from the sidelines. And when the gun sounds and the controlled confusion at the starting line morphs into a straight line of colourful spinnakers, the real beauty of the race begins.

John Curry has been taking part in Race Week for a long time. The chairman of the Regatta Organizing Committee of the Chester Yacht Club first sailed in the regatta back in the mid-1950s. “I was on Ripple, the Chester C class boat that still sails at Chester Race Week,” Curry recalls. “I was about 14 or 15 years old the first time I took part.”

In those days, Race Week lived up to its name and lasted a full week. “We would race every day and then cap off the week with the Princes Inlet Race on Saturday,” says Curry. “The boats would start in Chester and finish at the Lunenburg Yacht Club on Hermans Island. It was a real spectacle.” About 20 years ago, Race Week was shortened to four days and the Princes Inlet race was permanently shelved.

Curry says that the changes that race director Josenhans has brought to the race have met with a positive response from all of the skippers and crews involved, particularly the Premier class racers. But there is another dimension to the regatta – the public profile – that is also top of mind for race organizers. In the last century, Race Week has grown to become the premier event on Chester’s annual calendar, and the billowing spinnakers of racing yachts have become a logo for Chester village, even appearing on the road signs on Highway 103. “There are a lot of people who have traditionally come just to watch the races,” Curry says. “The problem for us is that with most of the big boat action taking place offshore now, they don’t get much of a view.” To improve things for land-bound participants, Curry and his organizing committee have been encouraging skippers to continue flying their spinnakers as they sail into Front Harbour at the end of each race.

The other public face of Race Week is the ongoing party that takes place at the Chester Yacht Club every night during the event. Punctuated with live music, barbecues and other entertainment, the evening events have become part of the fabric of Chester, attracting crowds that swell the village population to twice its number. A few of the events are invitation-only affairs for skippers and crew, but most are open to the public. This year’s live entertainment will include the Mellotones and perennial Race Week favourites, the Hopping Penguins. “It’s a lot more than just a club event,” says Curry. It’s a regional event that attracts a lot of sailors and non-sailors to the Chester area.”

Andreas Josenhans says the changes that have taken place under his stewardship have improved Race Week’s reputation as an international sailing event. “There’s been a great response,” he says. “At other regattas, participation has declined by half, but Chester has grown in the last few years. The international yachting press has named us one of the top 10 regattas in North America. We’re very proud of that.”

For more information see www.chesterraceweek.com