By Edwin Gifford
A young Antiguan sailor was among the victorious crew who raced to a first place finish in the 10th edition of a prestigious trans-Atlantic race.
Tristan Louwrens, 25, of Willoughby Bay, was aboard Yacht Warrior Won, a PAC 52, which took part in the RORC Lanzarote to Grenada race, winning the coveted RORC Trans-Atlantic Championship Trophy.
Captained and owned by Chris Sheehan, of the United States, Warrior Won traversed the 3,000-mile course in 11 days, five hours and 18 minutes.
The race started on January 7 off of Lanzarote Marina, in the Canary Islands, and finished last Thursday off the Port Louis Marina in Saint George’s, Grenada. With a crew that included world champions and a five-time Olympian, Warrior Won raced against and beat out 21 of the world’s fastest and most technologically advanced sailboats in this epic and elemental ocean racing marathon.
Louwrens was also aboard Warrior Won for the 2022 edition of the RORC Caribbean 600, which begins and ends in Antigua each year, and aboard Roy Disney’s Pyewacket, a Volvo 70, winning both races. His latest feat makes three blue-chip championships in as many years for the young Antiguan sailor.
Louwrens was also a member of the Antigua and Barbuda National Star Sailor’s League team, the youngest team in the 40-nation competition, which advanced to the round of 16 in the Star Sailors international tournament this past fall in the Canary Islands.
The former Island Academy student is a product of the Antigua Yacht Club’s youth sailing programme and has been working as a professional sailor for five years.
Fellow Antiguan and youth sailing programme participant Giles de Jager also raced in this year’s trans-Atlantic aboard Leopard 3, a Farr 100. Leopard 3 was the first monohull to finish the course, completing it in 10 days, 17 hours and 23 minutes, winning the RORC IMA Trans-Atlantic Trophy.
Deciding on a course across the Atlantic, Warrior Won captain Chris Sheehan had the option of staying to the north in the hopes of getting the stronger, faster winds off the passing winter Atlantic low pressures or sailing the more conservative downwind and not quite as fast easterly trade winds course to the south. He chose the latter.
Warrior Won reached speeds of 30mph, an astonishing speed for a sail boat. Consequently, conditions were wet and hectic on deck and hot below with temperatures as high as 38C. During the day, eating, sleeping and resting were difficult. Yet Captain Sheehan observed that over the course of the 12-day race “there were no problems or tensions on board” – a remarkable feat of cooperation under any circumstances, much less the ones that these intrepid sailors were experiencing.
Captain Sheehan had effusive praise for his championship team but made a special effort to commend Louwrens, describing him as “an absolute, intuitive, exceptional and natural sailor. He’s incredibly kind, polite, intelligent, responsible, reliable and has a bit of a whimsical island humour which is very welcome on board and is sometimes exactly what the programme needs; let’s call it ‘useful exuberance’. He’s a great team player”.
“That he can almost perform the job of two people hauling around 150-pound sails in a heaving sea at night, makes his physical strength a huge asset on board,” he added.
Louwrens said racing home to the Caribbean on board Warrior Won and winning the race was “fantastic, really great”.
“I’ve never done a trans-Atlantic race before, never been at sea in a race for such a long time,” he explained. “It’s great because you get into a rhythm after a while and it’s just so different from the short races where you feel like it’s a constant push. After a while, you start to get into the flow of things.”
He now plans to take some time off from the continual globe-trotting required of a professional sailor.
“I’m looking forward to spending a couple of months at home, just hanging out, doing all the things that I love, like fishing and surfing,” he added.
