One's Rio Party

Rio is a party town, but there must have been just one party to be at last night - ABN's celebration of another victory for Moose and the boys on Black Betty.

And they deserve it. Yes the boat is clearly fast, but they also sailed a clean race without any of the screw-ups that slowed down the others. If you need any evidence of that, just look at where ABN-2 came in.

And it was good to see the two most troubled boats having good races. Movistar with the open doubts about their boat after their near sinking and Ericsson with their much published crew problems got the two other podium positions.

Not such good news for home team Brazil or accident prone Pirates. But then isn't there a tradition of pirates over-indulging themselves in wild on-shore debauches before staggering out to sea? It reminds me of this quote from the journals of that famous "buccaneer" William Dampier from his pirate days:

"There were about forty Frenchmen aboard one of the ships where was a good store of liquor, till the after-part of her broke away and floated over the reef. She was carried out to sea with all the men drinking and singing. Being in drink they did not mind the danger, but were never heard of afterwards."

ABN-1 now has a commanding lead at half way point of the Volvo Ocean race. I am resigning myself to not hearing from Emma about our promised day sail until at least the end of June when the distractions of her fiance's string of victories will end.

In the mean time I will cheer myself up on a grey London afternoon with some memories of the parties I enjoyed in Rio nearly a decade ago.


Picture from www.volvooceanrace.org