Swanning off

Sailing invitations come along like London buses - nothing for a while, then two or three all at once. I just had a text message with an invitation to join a Swan 47 in a cross-channel race at the weekend. Since I'm not back from Antigua until Friday and since I wouldn't get back from the channel race until Monday I could foresee various problems:

Jet lag (chronic), marriage (out-the-window), work (impossible). Still, it's not every day you get the chance to sail on a Swan, unless you own one. I hate to say "no" but there we are.

Two days sailing on Artemis, an Open 60 boat, have completed a circumnavigation of the island. It all looked the same from the sea. So today I'm going to explore the interior and plan to meet a distillery owner.

Eric Clapton has a home here. He's also set up a rehabilitation centre that's free for the locals who can't afford this kind of treatment but not free for the likes of Britney Spears who was here a few weeks ago before she checked out, then shaved her head.

Apparently there is a little road by the side of the centre that leads down to the sea where there are the sort of sand flats beloved of bone fish. I might try to get down there with my fly rod. But, as I said, you can't do everything.

Mount Gay Rum hats

I am not a serious party-goer but I know enough about party-going to tell you that if you ever fetch up in Antigua at the start of the annual regatta (i.e. now at the time of writing in April 2007), the Mount Gay Rum party is the place to be.

Some might argue that best thing about the Mount Gay Rum party is Mount Gay Rum. Not so. The best thing is the red Mount Gay Rum hat. Among serial Antigua week sailors a Mount Gay Rum hat, salt-faded and tattered as the years go by, is the hat to have.

The Mount Gay Rum people are very clever and restrict supply. To get a hat you need to have a red ticket acquired in certain places the previous day.

At the party there is a man in a small cubicle who supplies the hat on receipt of the ticket. One ticket buys one hat. But getting a hat with a ticket is too easy so I was quite pleased that we didn’t have one. Arriving ticketless makes the party more fun and the acquisition of a hat more of a challenge.

Hats off

First you need to talk to people with hats to get the low down on hat acquisition technique although you should not expect them to part with their own hats. Those with more than one hat seem to know what has to be done.

To avoid a free-for-all between the hatless and the hatted the Mount Gay people have inserted a clever ritual. At an appointed time in the evening one or two specially selected Mount Gay representatives begin to mingle with the party goers. If they find a hatless one who looks deserving enough, a ticket or two will be slid surreptitiously in to the palm of the hand.

I don’t remember enough about the party to know how I came by three hats but there we go. Much rum was consumed, friends were made, invitations extended and the upshot is that today I find myself among the crew of Pindar, a former Volvo Ocean Race yacht, sailing with Alex Thomson, Ian Williams and Brian Thompson, each of them recognised single-handed sailors taking the opportunity to work as a team.

Keel failure

Alex suffered a keel failure on the Hugo Boss Open 60 yacht in the Velux 5 Oceans solo round-the-world race that is still running. He was rescued by Mike Golding on Ecover. Ian Williams, just now, is leading the rankings in the world match racing circuit. Match sailing involves sail-offs between two boats competing head to head over a short course – very tactical stuff.

Ian would almost certainly have represented Great Britain in the Olympics had match sailing not been dropped as an Olympic sport. Having devoted the best part of his sailing career to this type of sailing I suggest to him that this must have been a bit of bummer. He agrees.

He decided to enter a profession and took up law. But a love of the sport, not to mention the potential earnings in top flight professional sailing, have lured him back in to serious sail-racing.

One thing I had forgotten about sailing when I came out here is that I get seasick and 20 knots of wind in a lumpy sea is just about enough, particularly since my rumometer had slipped off the scale the previous evening.

Big wave

The plan was to do a few tacks on the East side of the island before turning round for some downwind jibes so that every manoeuvre could be practiced before the start of racing tomorrow. That was before the accident.

Sailing close-hauled before the wind we hit a big wave and the shock was sufficient to break one of the diagonal rods that help to stabilise the mast. Usually when this happens, the whole mast collapses, but the sails are dropped quickly and the mast survives. It’s a tense moment all the same. New struts have been ordered before the boat is back in port. But there will need to be a thorough rig inspection to check for other damage.

I was feeling pretty grim in the swell and was thankful to be given the helm to take my mind off it. Ian tells me to steer for a headland but perhaps I take him too literally and Brian suggests I might be getting a tad close. Still it was good to take the wheel of this former Volvo Ocean Racer. I’m used to getting the grunt work on boats so it was a pleasant change and made my day. I hope they get everything fixed for tomorrow.

The Mount Gay Rum site where you won't find a hat.

N.B. This was written two days ago but because of a server error can only be published now. Apologies to anyone who tried to access the site yesterday. Pindar was back out on the water today and narrowly finished ahead of Artemis in the big boat class.

The Albatross and the Whale

The joys of travelling with a laptop. I've managed to find a bit of shade to write a quick note about English Harbour in Antigua where I'm staying this week. This is one of the few safe havens from hurricanes in the Caribbean, hence its establishment as a British naval base in the late 18th century.

The yachts are gathering here and in nearby Falmouth for the annual Antigua sailing week which starts on Sunday. I'm hoping to be sailing on the Open 60 yacht, Artemis, which won line honours in last summer's Round Britain and Ireland Race.

I'm staying in Admirals Inn, a quaint old place in the dockyard next to the old dry dock. It's humbling to think that most of the yard was built by black slaves who also quarried the rocks from the wharves.

The trouble with setting up office on the dockside - and it's not really trouble - is that the world comes to you. Lots of interesting sailing people keep dropping by and chatting. I have just been comparing children's books with an architect called Jamie Weisman who lives in Martha's Vinyard. He has a schooner moored across the harbour - a modern boat built to a 1930s design.

We were talking about whales and whaling - as you do - and he told me had written a book about an Albatross that laid an egg in the blow hole of a whale. "I was sailing across the Pacific and there was this albatross and I just got to thinking about," he said.

Then a couple called Sonia and David Stone were telling me about sim cards and the rip off charges imposed by the big mobile phone service companies. I'd forgotten about the exorbitant charges levelled simply when you take a call on your mobile phone. So the PR woman who rang to tell me about a pet food company this morning - a story in which I had no interest whatsoever - probably cost me about £5 just because I answered the phone.

In desperation she said that the son in the family had a sideline tasting cat food. That was quite interesting but not, I think, for FT readers and certainly not worth £5. For £5 I want takeover bids.