The Centre nautique de St-Barthelémy (CNSB) is the local club affiliated with the Fédération Française de Voile. It organizes all the events on the water—and a few on land—associated with the regatta itself. The CNSB’s flagship events are the St Barth Fun Cup, Le Tour, an annual catamaran and windsurfing championship, and, of course the St Barth Cata Cup. All week long, its main players will be hard at work ensuring the safety of participants as well as giving them plenty of varied, fun courses.

For the four days of the regatta, Pierrick Guilbauld serves as the St Barth Cata Cup’s safety chief. His role is to manage all the motorboats on the water: safety, moorage, the race committee and boats that might be coming from elsewhere, to ensure they do not disturb the races. Gilles Reynal and Jean-Christophe L’Hermite are the anchoring boats who mark the courses. They leave at the crack of dawn and don’t return until evening, when all the racers have returned to St-Jean beach.

The ninth edition of the regatta will have more variety compared to previous years. Some 30 race formats have been approved by the organization, and the Race and Safety committees will be able to choose from among them every morning, based on wind conditions. There’s no way for the racers to know about them in advance, since the organization is maintaining a little element of surprise, along with the Tour de l’île, a classic of the St Barth Cata Cup. For the moment, it looks like there will be favourable winds of between 12 and 15 knots on Thursday and Friday for the launch of the regatta. But everything can change… like the race format!