April 12/2026: It’s a good thing I decided to attend this year’s PAYS Yachting Festival in Dominica (March 21-27), otherwise no one might have noticed it was the festival’s 10th anniversary. As it was, I almost didn’t notice myself. Originally labeled as Yachtie Appreciation Week, the week-long event was conceived by Hank Schmitt, an old friend of mine, who organized it in conjunction with PAYS (a.k.a. the Portsmouth Association of Yacht Security). The point being to encourage cruising sailors to frequent Dominica, one of the less visited, more unspoiled islands in the eastern Caribbean.
Those involved were perfectly aware that this was in fact the third anniversary of the Race to Mero, a feature of the festival I was particularly interested in. This sees a group of visiting yachts racing 10 miles down the coast from Portsmouth to Mero on one day, then racing 10 miles back the next day. Of course there is a huge party to fill up the night in between. The point being to spread the love from PAYS down to MAYS (a.k.a., the newly established Mero Association of Yachting Security/Services), which hopes to attract more cruisers to the charming beach-side village that is Mero.
The competition is extremely informal. The start sequence consists of one horn blast as a 10-minute warning, whereupon all competitors drop moorings or hoist anchor, raise sail, and scuttle out toward open water. At the sound of the next blast, everyone switches off their engines and starts racing. There is no rating system, nor are there formal finish lines. As explained by Hank during the pre-race dinner, the winner is selected by Hank, per his “gut feeling” as to which boat has performed best over both legs of the course.
This year there were 12 boats racing down to Mero and nine racing back, out of a total of 28 boats and crews participating in the festival. The winner was Lalaria, a Hallberg-Rassy 55 owned (and sailed) by Julia Sloman and Julian Thornton, from the UK, seen below at the awards dinner receiving the nod from Hank. They finished second on both legs of the race and were deemed supreme because the first-place finisher on leg one did not sail the second leg, and the first-place finisher on leg two shit the bed on leg one.
I raced on Hank’s boat, Avocation (a Swan 48), which had by far the largest crew (see image up top). We finished third on both legs, but never considered ourselves serious contenders, due to the obvious conflict of interest. Our job was more to observe than to compete.
Speaking then as a strictly objective observer, I can tell you this is a fun, very interesting race. Racing up and down the leeward shore of a high Caribbean island is mostly not about simple boat speed. The very quirky nature of the course instead favors those who can intuit where the dramatic terrain will accelerate the wind, where it will block it, and where it will bend it in weird ways. For sure, everyone will be badly becalmed at some point, and this gives the laggards a good chance to catch up with the leaders. At one point during this year’s race, for example, the smallest boat in the fleet, a Sabre 36, was actually fastest on the course. Soon afterward, on the second leg near the finish, we on Avocation were running neck and neck with another boat, within a mile of each other, pointed in exactly the same direction, sailing closehauled on opposite tacks.
Aside from the racing, the festival was mostly about celebratory dinners and touring the island, which boasts a fantastic rainforest, the only surviving population of indigenous Carib Indians in the Caribbean, some fabulous waterfalls and swimming holes, various points of historic interest, and other bits of exotic terrain.
The celebratory highlight, I have to say, was the big carnival parade the villagers threw for us in Mero:
Which filled me all up with rastaman vibrations:
POSITIVE!
MORE PIX!
As was the case when I attended the first iteration of the festival back in 2016, I sailed to Dominica and back from St. Maarten on Avocation, together with Hank and company. I was pleased to see that the IGY marina in the Simpson Bay Lagoon, which I last visited in 2018, shortly after Hurricane Irma, was in great shape. But this XP44 I found on a dock there was hurting. Word had it she had been dismasted by U.S. Navy cadets racing in this year’s Heineken Regatta.
Mark Dietrich (another old friend of Hank’s), Bob Bell, and Hank aboard Avocation as we departed St. Maarten.
First thing we saw on arriving at Portsmouth on Dominica was this wrecked fishing boat, festooned with children diving off of it.
It wasn’t the only wreck there.
Mother Ken, who led us on our tour around the island.
Where chocolate comes from!
Mark and Hank borrow a local boat-boy skiff.
Laundry day.
A boat build in progress on the beach at Mero.
A rain squall seen clinging to the hills of Guadeloupe as we sailed back to St. Maarten
For info on next year’s PAYS Yachting Festival, be sure to keep eyes on the PAYS website and on Hank’s site for Offshore Passage Opportunities. Note too, if you are planning on visiting Dominica, be sure to arrive at Portsmouth first, as PAYS can handle all aspects of officially booking into and out of the island!
