The Puig classical sailing regatta returns to Barcelona

Throughout this week, a good number of historic sailboats have been arriving in Barcelona. Entering through the northern mouth of the port, they have headed into the waters of the commercial dock under the watchful eye of those who work at the World Trade Center, other sailors, and also visitors to the Port Vell area, for whom these wooden classics of traditional construction have not gone unnoticed. The destination of these boats, some of them centuries old, were the pontoons of the Real Club Náutico de Barcelona, meeting point of the Puig Vela Clàssica Barcelona, which takes place from July 14 to 17, with the participation of some 200 international sailors.

The regatta, named after the fashion and perfume multinational born in Barcelona in 1914, is a commitment to the city and its nautical tradition and has been held since 2008, with the only interruption being the 2020 edition, suspended due to the international health situation. This also affects the normal development of the event's parallel activities, as although all sea trials are being recovered, in the 2021 edition there will not be the intense social activity in the village that is set up on the Muelle de España, next to the club's facilities, and which the organizers hope to recover in 2022, when it will be the 14th edition of the event.

The fact that there is no activity next to the pontoons does not mean that from different points of the coast one cannot enjoy the sight of these boats sailing. To see them at full sail in the open sea and within the regatta courses, there are three remarkable points to do so: the new Paseo del Rompeolas, at the foot of the W Hotel and above Marina Vela. Also good vantage points are Barceloneta beach, the Paseo Marítimo and the outer promenade of the Olympic Port, while to see and photograph the classics up close, a good vantage point is the Rambla de Mar, an obligatory passage for all participants, or the Moll de la Fusta, from where departures and moorings can be seen.

25 classics in the city

Those responsible for Puig say that Barcelona is the only international capital that hosts an event of these characteristics, as other classic sailboat meetings are usually organized and depart from much smaller ports in the Mediterranean, both on the French Côte d'Azur, the Costa Smeralda and Liguria in Italy or Menorca, in the Balearic Islands. The organizers also boast that over the last decade and a half, the coincidence in the waters of Barcelona of sailboats loaded with legends has been facilitated and that at various times in history they have been owned by world-class figures such as the marriage of Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi with Grace Patricia Kelly, princes of Monaco, the Gucci family or the 35th president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

And it is that each of the participating boats, in addition to a unique beauty, has a special history. Let's take, for example, the case of the Manitou, a beautiful 62-foot (almost 19 meters) Bermuda yawl converted into a chic icon by photographs of JFK enjoying days at sea aboard a sailboat built in Maryland in 1936 for businessman John Lowe, whose fixation was to win the Chicago Mac Race on Lake Michigan.

With a four-ton keel and mahogany and oak hull and a teak deck, it achieved its goal: it won the great regatta of the Illinois capital in 1938, came in second place the following year and won the next two again. With the mission accomplished, Lowe sold the yacht and it ended up in the hands of the US Coast Guard as a complementary training ship in their school.

JFK, who had always been an enthusiastic sailor, saw the boat in Annapolis and during his term (from January 1961 to November 1963) made it a personal refuge. Of course, the sailboat was fitted with a series of technological improvements, especially in the field of communication, which turned the Manitou into something akin to a floating White House, as the president could enjoy his free time on board without ever losing contact with his advisors and even had a direct line to the Kremlin, which at the time had Nikita Khrushchev as its tenant. In the realm of rumor, it was said that Marilyn Monroe was a regular crew member of the sailboat, although that is already a story within a story that is as distant as Kennedy's mandate, which ended abruptly in Dallas.

Like the story of the Manitou, there are 25 others, with other names, other protagonists, other seas sailed and different owners who have been preserving these jewels that in some cases are more than a century old and are maintained with care, impeccability and pride to be able to participate in regattas like the one that starts this Thursday in Barcelona, a city of the sea… and these days also a city of classic sailing.