An elegy on yachting

A very long time ago I wrote in these here pages that spending a summer on the Riviera or the Greek isles without a boat was as useless as a eunuch in a cathouse. That was then and this, alas, is now. The French and Greek seas are the same, if a little bit more crowded, but the people with boats are very, very different. Back then one knew almost everyone worth knowing — that is, everyone with a smart sailing boat, and a few with gin palaces that were graceful. These modern horrors that look like refrigerators on steroids, with top-heavy superstructures from bow to stern, helicopters, jet skis and even submarines on board, chartered to celebrities with hookers included, have killed elegant yachting and then some. Gulf bandits specialise in owning or chartering such abominations, and they have made finding good crews an almost impossible task. As many professional old salts have admitted, why work on a boat whose owner knows about the sea when you can fake it, relax tied up in port, and get paid for doing almost nothing on one whose owner knows only about hookers.

The charismatic Gianni Agnelli, who sailed his beautiful boats very close to the wind, and de-masted one of mine, insisted that one could instantly judge a person by the boat they own. One sure could, and the majority of the good ones were sailing boats. Loel Guinness had an elegant gin palace, as did Onassis with the Christina O, but the majority of elegance was to be found in sailing boats. Today I can think of only three beautiful ships that are diesel-powered classics, and they are Mark Getty’s Talitha, Tara Getty’s Blue Bird, and Lord Bamford’s Virginian.