LES VOILES DE SAINT-TROPEZ IS SAILING’S GREATEST SPECTACLE.DAN HOUSTON EXAMINES ITS ENDURING APPEAL
While for many of us October sees our thoughts turn to bringing boats ashore or preparing them to overwinter, in Saint-Tropez some 2,500 sailors are enjoying a 10-day international regatta in T-shirt weather.
This year saw Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez celebrate its 25th anniversary, though its history stretches back further, stemming as it does from the Nioulargue, which began in 1983. Over 40 years the event has established a precedence as being the first and finest regatta of its kind in the Mediterranean, with the Société Nautique de Saint-Tropez (SNST), managing to create a world class sailing spectacle from its modest clubhouse in this former fishing port.
The south of France town usually hosts a population of just 3,600, its numbers swelling to almost double that for 10 days during the regatta.
And the little harbour is full of yachts – 250 of them from large classic schooners to dayboats. With a mix of maxi, modern and classic yachts the roads off the small port are a jostling jamboree of designs from the latest launches to the gaff-rigged gentlemen’s yachts of the late 19th century.
Unsurprisingly, the event is a photographer’s paradise. The late summer light is just beginning to suffuse slightly at either end of the day, while the Golfe de Saint-Tropez often enjoys a slight swell which gives a boat a ‘bone in her teeth’ or even a proper bow wave with lots of spray. It was the iconic photographs from those early runnings, published around the world, which drew yachtsmen of all waters to sail here.
Some years have seen a spinnaker-exploding Mistral come barrelling down from the pine-covered Maures mountains, but this October instead saw small breezes usually begin to establish in the late morning which created enough wind to race. Only Tuesday brought significant wind this year, peaking at 24 knots – with all fleets racing that day it proved enough to send a steady stream of sails to the North Sails tent behind the quay for repairs. The service team working through the night said they had 17 to mend. “We’re hoping to be done by 3, maybe 4am,” one of them told me.
BIG BOAT OPENER
The fleet of 40 Maxis opened the racing on Sunday 1 October, in a nod back to the days of the Nioulargue which traditionally saw the modern Maxis race first. The first start was delayed until 1300 when the light easterlies got up enough puff to move the Maxi yachts. Peter Harrison’s Maxi 72 Cannonball won, followed by Wendy Schmidt’s Deep Blue. Schmidt is wife of former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and founder of the 11th Hour project which backed the winners o
