Call me a virtual “hanger on” but I just love the mega yacht events. Ok, so I have come clean on that and am also at peace that I will never be in such an event. The flavor of the moment for today is the St Barts Bucket, one of two events, with the other in Newport of course, that are held each year as an excuse for the big, really big, boys in yachting to get together and show off their yachts.
So, how is the recession hurting those events? I guess that the 1%, no make that the .001% are back in business and in full swing as this year’s event in St Barts is a whopper with 47 boats in attendance. Even with a $12,000 entry fee. Supposedly they even turned away a number of boats that wanted to participate. I wonder if it’s because they don’t accept AMEX. Probably not . I am trying to imagine what it would be like to have that many boats, most over 100′ and some more than twice that size, competing on a single course. Even if they stagger the starts, that’s a lot of boat-feet moving near each other.
In trying to get my arms around this one I was thinking about what it must be like to handle a boat (I guess that “boat” isn’t the right word) with a 36′ draft. That’s the amount of water that the 190′ Twizzle draws. Yikes! I guess that the Bahamas isn’t on their destination list given the fact that the banks average 6′ in depth. Speaking of Twizzle, check out their site at http://www.twizzle.org/. Normally, I would just highlight the name of the yacht with a link but thought that putting the actual link in this case was better as I am very amused that it’s a .org domain. I guess that all yachts are NOT-FOR-PROFIT anyway, even if their owners are clearly not.
This video on you-tube was filmed at yesterday’s regatta and posted. When I visited it this morning it only had 39 views. I’ll bet that there will be more in the coming days as it will only take one visit each from crew on these yachts to clock up several hundred. Check out the featured boat Twizzle. I’ll bet that Pandora would fit in the cockpit.
Here’s another video, with some fun shore side clips, of the 2010 event. This video has EVERYTHING including great sailing footage, a shot of what looks like a high tech potato gun and even a cooking lesson. This video features Meteor, a real monster. You can charter her for a week for only $106,000. Note how she walks by Maltese Falcon, the largest sailing yacht in the world, like she is standing still, all 289′ of her. Besides, Meteor is a mere 171′. Oh, to be rich, really rich…
Oh yea, I read that the designer of Maltese Falcon is working on a new project based on similar technology that will be even bigger. Bummer to be upstaged.