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.