Tell Tales

BARCOLANA CLASSIC

Classics race on eve of the world’s biggest sailing race

Trieste’s Barcolana race is offcially the biggest sailing race in the world – 2,689 boats in the 50th anniversary race in 2018 and a highly respectable 2,015 in 2019, all on the same two-mile long start line, writes Nigel Sharp. The day before this big race, however, there is the Barcolana Classic race, this year attracting 107 boats, 24 of them from host Yacht Club Adriaco, which is said to be the second oldest yacht club in the Mediterranean. I was sailing on the 1963 Cheoy Lee-built Jan Gilda, one of three Vertues taking part. Jan Gilda’s home port is Jezera in Croatia, about 180 miles down the coast, and she is owned and helmed by Croatian Trnovski (Tiho) Tihomir. My shipmates were Alberto from Slovenia and Camilla from Italy. We were a truly international crew.

Unfortunately at 1130, when the race was due to start, there was not a breath of wind – but there was a friendly convivial atmosphere throughout the fleet as it drifted and gently motored around waiting for something to happen.

Eventually, the race committee spotted some wind further out to sea and the committee boat motored out that way as the fleet followed. The race finally got under way in the lightest of breezes at 1400hrs. Unfortunately, there was no corresponding postponement of the time limit and only 61 boats managed to finish before it expired. On Jan Gilda, we didn’t even