Her­bert "Eng­lish" Her­nan­dez's first trip to To­ba­go left all the oth­er kiters in the wind as he showed what tal­ent our neigh­bours to the west have to of­fer.His per­for­mance raised the bar of this year's re­gat­ta in­spir­ing ster­ling ef­forts by lo­cals Ori­an Jackerov, Jack "Mad dog" Azar and Richard " Light­en­ing" Mo­hammed. The in­clu­sion of Bri­an "Ac­tion man" Tal­ma in the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al team saw changes to the dai­ly for­mat in the Ma­rine Park with wave jump­ing and "beach cul­ture" added to the line­up. Blue skies, aqua ma­rine wa­ter, big waves and 20+ knots of wind set the scene for an ac­tion packed week­end.

Or­gan­is­er of the event, Ni­ki Bor­de, was very hap­py with the pro­ceed­ings say­ing: "We are very hap­py with the way Bri­an han­dled the event. He is one of the top wind surfers in the world and an ex­cel­lent wa­ter man. We in­vit­ed him to bring his 'Beach Cul­ture Tour' to our event and he has mo­ti­vat­ed all the par­tic­i­pants to 'hit it hard­er' and to en­ter­tain. As a beach by­stander,I have seen the stan­dard rise in the ath­letes but this year both the men and the women gave it their best and had fun."It was a beau­ti­ful site to see sails fill the la­goon as wind surfers and kite board­ers played in the park on one side and the young Op­ti­mists take on the lo­cal Bum Boat sailors on the oth­er. This year we host­ed over 152 young sailors from the Vesigny Vikings, Point Fortin, San Fer­nan­do, Care­nage, the Bon Ac­cord Po­lice and the To­ba­go Sail­ing School."

The top five op­ti­mists sailed with the Bum Boat sailors rac­ing against 16 of their best friends in Op­ti­mists boats."This year we in­te­grat­ed young sailors with the lo­cal bum boats mak­ing the two sail­ing class­es com­pete cre­at­ing more in­clu­sive re­gat­ta, the young sailors tak­ing on the old­er guard. It worked well and it's some­thing that will be­come a per­ma­nent fix­ture in the event," added Bor­de. The To­ba­go Car­ni­val re­gat­ta with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, the Min­istry of Sport and the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T as its pri­ma­ry sup­port­ers has grown in to a true "Fes­ti­val of Wind" ac­cord­ing to Bor­de.

"We have tried to raise the bar each year fo­cus­ing on de­vel­op­ing each seg­ment, the Op­ti­mists, Bum Boats, Wind surfers and Kite board­ers. Plans are al­ready in place to move the re­gat­ta back a few days to start on Car­ni­val Sun­day (March 3, 2014), that way we can in­clude J'Ou­vert in the cel­e­bra­tions with a Shade Sailor Mas for all reg­is­tered sailors so that they get some ex­pe­ri­ence in Car­ni­val. Lay day will be on the Mon­day and the com­pe­ti­tion con­tin­u­ing Tues­day and Ash Wednes­day.""Our in­ten­tion in the com­ing year is to de­vel­op clos­er ties with the neigh­bour­ing re­gat­ta or­gan­is­ers in Bonaire, Mar­gari­ta and Bar­ba­dos a process that has al­ready be­gun. Teams par­tic­i­pants and spec­ta­tors can look for­ward to many new sur­pris­es next year."Bor­de went on to thank ma­jor spon­sors for their con­tin­ued sup­port in­clud­ing the man­age­ment of the To­ba­go Her­itage Park, Carib, the Shade, To­ba­go Wa­ters, the To­ba­go Sail­ing School, the Bon Ac­cord Po­lice Youth Club, the Aquat­ic As­so­ci­a­tion and Kei­th Wyke.