Half Pint-o-Rum Regatta

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Some Couta Boat Division 2 sailors at Sorrento Sailing Couta Boat Club have been engaged in a most fruitful and enjoyable exchange of emails regarding changes (or not) to the sailing programme and introduction of more fun into our events.  Suggestions to award a prize to the second-last boat rather than the winner have prompted me to have another look at what others around the world are doing in this regard.

Last May, I reported the goings-on of the European Flensburg Rum Regatta (organised by the Flensburg Museum) where the winner takes nil and the second boat received 3 litres of high-quality Johannesen’s rum.  And now I have come across an event in the United States (reported in Classic Boat magazine) which fits quite nicely into the sail-to-have-fun category – and ‘rum’ is the word:

The Ancient Mariners Sailing Society has for the last 25 years organised the Half Pint-o-Rum Regatta in San Diego Bay, California.  The entry fee is one fifth gallon (755 ml) of “good rum” which is mixed in a wooden keg.  If yours is judged bad, it is tossed and you are given a time penalty.  This makes this the only race in the world where the quality of rum can have an effect on the finish!  The last race had 23 entries – so, if you do the math you can work out how much fun you can have with that.

At the end of the race, skippers have to swim back to the beach and swig a tot of rum.  After an 8-mile race across the Bay, the skippers thus dived from their boats and raced in to drink from the keg before they are scored.  With no restrictions on finishing the sailing leg, one of the slower boats’ skipper swam more than a mile to the beach AS IT WAS FASTER ...