Classic sailing once again fills the Bay of Palma with the Illes Balears Clàssics

Club de Mar Regatta – The regatta organised by the Club de Mar-Mallorca starts today, 11th August, with more than twenty historic boats in the competition.

This year the regatta returns to three days of racing, after two years of health restrictions. Once again, the best international classic sailing boats will gather to celebrate this magnificent event in which the beauty of history and the sport of sailing merge perfectly.

Competing for the fist time at this regatta is the Merrymaid, the oldest boat of this edition, launched in 1904. It is a beautiful Gaff Cutter of 34 metres in length, built by Camper & Nicholson in 1904, the year she won the King’s Cup in England in the presence of King Edward VII.

At least two other boats directly related to royalty are taking part in this year’s Illes Balears Clàssics: Giraldilla and Meermin. The Giraldilla originally belonged to Don Juan de Borbón, grandfather of King Felipe VI, and was recovered in 2002 by the Fundación Hispania when it was lying in very poor condition in an estuary of the Tagus. Its use and conservation has recently been ceded to the Fundación Vela Clásica de España. The Meermin, which can be said to be making its debut in the Club de Mar regatta after a complete refit, is a riveted steel ketch, usually moored in the port of Pollença. It was launched in 1951 in Antwerp (Belgium) and was originally owned by a member of the royal family of that country. It then moored for many years in Ireland, where it almost perished on a dangerous excursion to Greenland. While her owners were on a Mediterranean route, she broke down and was towed by an American destroyer to the port of Palma, where she was bought by her current owner in 1991.

Each boat that takes part in the race has a long seafaring life full of adventures. We can also find stories of espionage among the participants in the Illes Balears Clàssics. The Gipsy, launched in 1927, carried out this secret work during the Spanish Civil War under the British flag. The schooner So Fong, launched in 1937 in Hong Kong, was accused of gathering sensitive information for the United States in Vietnam in the 1970s, a fact that almost put an end to the boat, as after being banned from leaving the country it ended up abandoned in some mangroves in the Asian country until its complicated recovery.