For this edition of the biennial Monaco Classic Week, the Yacht Club de Monaco is taking on an American accent, opening the meeting with a rendition of the famous Sousa march, ‘Stars & Stripes forever’ performed by naval military band, Musique des Equipage de la Flotte.This is the only classic boat gathering which invites both sailing and motor boats, with some 130 registered. They include 74 classic and Metric Class sailing yachts, as well as 30 motorboats, represented by those symbols of the Mediterranean, the Rivas, and for the USA a fleet of the Chris Craft icons of American lakes.It will be the first time that Atlantic 2010 (replica of the 1903 three-mast schooner on which Charlie Barr in 1905 set the best time for an Atlantic crossing) will be in the Principality. Another icon, SS Delphine (1921), the 79m steam-boat built for the wife of automobile magnate Horace E. Dodge, makes a welcome return. It was aboard this beauty that three world leaders, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, negotiated at least part of the 1945 Yalta Agreement.
In Port Hercule, on the quays and in the Clubhouse, the YCM celebrates American yachting, those East Coast heroes on New York Yacht Club territory whose members helped write this incredible chapter in yachting history. Through their creations, we will find its designers, the likes of Starling Burgess, Nat. Herreshoff and John G. Alden, not to mention their prolific prestigious successors, Olin Stephens and his accomplice Roderick Sparkman, and Dick Carter whose clients had names like Vanderbilt, Rockfeller, Pierpont Morgan, Gorbes and John Kennedy.
More than a past-time, yachting combines creativity, industry and high-level competition, but also economic rivalry. What more effective and subtle way to conquer the American market, better than with tea or a disposable pen, thought the yet to be ennobled Thomas Lipton and then nearly a century later ballpoint producer Marcel Bich.
It was with American gigantism that the Yankees developed yachting to its highest level to beat the English on their own turf in Cowes, in front of Queen Victoria one day in June 1851. The vanquished wanted revenge, the winners agreed to host them on their waters, and the challenge was named after the victorious 1851 schooner, America, the replica of which will be moored in the YCM Marina.
Initially inspired by the big Maine fishing schooners, these designers were quick to innovate when faced with an onslaught of beautiful British yachts designed by Watson, Fife, Mylne and co. At the same time that NYYC members were building ever larger one-design classes, up to 70-foot for racing amongst themselves, others less wealthy but just as passionate were going for the Atlantic record in the Fastnet race to hear their anthem on the podium. And they were building them solid. The 20-plus out of 70 sailing boats that will be here at Monaco Classic Week will show they had lost none of their flair: Oriole (NY 30, 1905), Chips (P-Class, 1013), Rabbit, real time all classes combined winner of the 1965 Fastnet, and many others.
