![]() ![]() As the small ferry coursed its way, under the stars, it was like I was amid the skyscrapers of the sea. Barths being one of those places where there’s no pier and only the most premium cruise lines can loiter. The sun had firmly set, and I set out for the tender that would take me out to the liner, St. I bid a quick farewell to my garrulous waitress, whilst giving a kill-’em-with-kindness smile to the woman with the tween twins. My own ride, as it were, was leaving - the good ship Silversea that’d brought me here to the French Indies. (By the way, because the boats are of varying sizes/speeds, the race is subject to a very complicated handicapping system - one that only a statistician like Nate Silver could perhaps explain! What I do grasp is the long-held tradition that the slowest skipper gets what’s described as the Escargot Cup, i.e. This year, I gathered, Richard Branson was here for the “gentlemen’s race.” Another year, as Forbes once reported, Canadian doughnut king Ron Joyce made friends at the event by airlifting live lobsters from Prince Edward Island for dinner. And forget Naomi Campbell - the nautical equivalent of winding up on the set of RuPaul’s Drag Race. The “bucket regatta” is for superyachts only, and the island famously limits the fleet to 35 boats, though what it lacks in numbers, it certainly makes up in size. I was fairly sure there was a Monet out there, too, floating. And the arrival of the Maltese Falcon at a port is much like the manifestation of Naomi Campbell on a fashion runway. ![]() “I heard there’s a Rothko on it,” the guy sitting behind us - a Christopher Plummer-type - piped.Ĭlearly, everyone was into it. The Maltese Falcon had already had its close-up on 60 Minutes and been the subject of a prize-winning biography, Mine’s Bigger: Tom Perkins and the Making of Greatest Sailing Machine Ever Built by David A. He, having conceived the mega-yacht in 2006, and helmed its maiden voyage in from Turkey to Italy via Malta, before Elena scooped it up - becoming not only the owner of the world’s most impressive sailboat, but the only woman with a mega-yacht at all. Once Britain’s best-paid female exec and now Cyprus-based, she bought the sleek beast for $120-million from its original owner, Tom Perkins. She being Elena Ambrosiadou, the woman who now owns the 289-foot Maltese Falcon, with its 25,000 sails unfurlable with the push of a single button. “She’s in hedge funds,” my New Best Friend was telling me. This, as a nearby woman in DVF, with her twin tweens - bilingual twin tweens, I deciphered - scowled at my hoarding of the server. Waitress chit-chat being a necessary part of my métier - I’ve been snooping too long not to have mastered this basic life-skill - it wasn’t long before she was telling me everything. The Maltese Falcon is 289 feet long, and its 25,000 sails are unfurlable with the push of a single button Barths Bucket Regatta, the world’s largest sail race. She was pointing in the distance towards one of the gargantuan vessels - super-yachts as far as the eye could see, here for the annual St. Nah, neither a Dashiell Hammett disciple. “The Maltese Falcon,” said the waitress, as I set up shop al fresco. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. ![]() Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt. ![]()
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