This is the story of a party .. in fact it is really a story of two parties.
For years, the Wednesday at Cowes has been dominated by the the "Silly Hats Party" of the good ship MERAKII, who have had a rum punch 'do' on that evening. The formulae consisted of the Silly Hats mixing up their special concoction of fruit juices, eye of toad and various recreational drugs of unknown origin in a large plastic dustbin. They then dressed in sexy Caribbean gear, switched on the ghetto blaster and waited for the guests to arrive.
The rest of us then turned up bringing alcoholic offerings (Rum and Aviation Fuel being the favorites) and these were added to the plastic dustbin. Four hours later the contents of the dustbin had been transferred to about 120 Contessa sailors with largely predictable effects.
Each year it got better .....and longer .....and funnier ... and more damaging to the liver! We thought nothing could ever beat the MERAK rum punch party! But we were wrong!
This year there was no MERAK (Nick got married and this somehow stopped him sailing? ... the logic escapes me) and we all thought Wednesday would be quiet and we would all sit on our boats and study the Racing Rules. However, Keith, Vernon and Rosie had different plans. Their boats GREEN PEPPER and POLAR STAR were 25 years old this year and they decided to have a Champaign party.
Before Cowes week they went to France (by car!) and purchased the entire contents of a Dunkirk supermarket's Champaign section and bought it back to Blighty - must have cost them a fortune! When we arrived at the party, both boats had their cockpits full of ice and bottles - a truly remarkable sight!!
Fairly soon the Champaign was being transferred to the sailors!
This process continued all evening and soon the bottles gave up the unequal battle to retain their contents and retired to the guardrail to lick their wounds and wonder at the capacity of the sailors.
Being a serious party we had to have some girls!
..... and some boys!
Eventually the girls found the boy they really wanted!
Not all the boys were as cool and
sophisticated as our Treasurer.
Take young David Feltham (GREEN PEPPER) for instance. Here you can see him trying to look
nonchalant!
Here you can see him being pulled out of the water after he had fallen over the side. Maybe when he grows up he will be more like our Treasurer! I think his Dad should do something about it.
One of our special guests was Pernille! Pernille came all the way from Denmark just to see the sailors. For those of you that don't know, the Vikings actually originated in Denmark not Norway and we all know what the Vikings did when they arrived. Here she is giving our Treasurer the 'Viking treatment' and getting her evil way!
