Thursday, March 28

The Illes Balears Clàssics begins on Thursday


08/09/2022

Updated at 5:28 p.m.

The month of August brings us the most important event of the year for the Club de Mar – Mallorca, as if normality had been restored: the Illes Balears Clàssics Regatta, which this year reaches its 27th edition.

The event was presented today at the Museu Marítim de Mallorca with the presence of the general director of the Club de Mar – Mallorca, José Luis Arrom, the entity’s commodore and head of the Illes Balears Clàssics, Manuel Nadal de Uhler, with the presentation by the director of the Maritime Museum of Mallorca, Albert Forés.

This year the regatta recovers the three days of regattas, after two years of health restrictions, and the dates chosen are from August 11 to 14. Starting this Thursday, once again, the best international classic sailing boats will gather at our club to celebrate this magnificent event in which the beauty of history is perfectly combined with the sport of sailing.

Nadal de Uhler highlighted in the presentation the presence of boats such as “the Fjord, Uruguayan, the Argyll, La Spina or the Meerblick Classic, the Argos, the Giraldilla or the Stella Polare of the Italian navy. They are all great teams and it is a privilege to have them in the regatta” .

For his part, José Luis Arrom apologized for the inconvenience that the remodeling works of the facilities may cause to the participants but assured that the entity will do its best so that boats and sailors can enjoy the event as always. In addition, Arrom announced a great edition of the Illes Balears Clàssics for 2024, coinciding with the reopening of the Club de Mar: “We are preparing a special edition of the regatta, the best gathering of classics in the Mediterranean. Based on our experience after so many years organizing classic sailing competitions, we are ready to face this great mega-regatta, due to the beauty and quality of the boats that we want to come to Palma the year the club is reopened” .

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In this edition of the Illes Balears Clàssics more than 20 boats will fight with their respective crews to get a good place in the different heats after three days of competition. On this occasion, we will be able to enjoy for the first time at the Merrymaid Sea Club, the oldest ship in this edition as it was launched in 1904. It is a beautiful 34 meter long Gaff Cutter, built by Camper&Nicholson in 1904, the year in which he had a glorious regatta debut as he won the King’s Cup in England in the presence of King Edward VII.

In this year’s edition of the Illes Balears Clàssics, at least two other boats directly related to royalty take part: the Giraldilla and the Meermin. The Giraldilla originally belonged to Don Juan de Borbón, grandfather of King Felipe VI, recovered in 2002 by the Hispania Foundation when it lay 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 a comeback in the Club de Mar regatta after a complete overhaul, is a riveted steel ketch, usually moored in the port of Pollença. She was launched in 1951 in Antwerp (Belgium) and originally she was owned by a member of the royal family of that country. She later moored for many years in Ireland, where she almost perished on a dangerous excursion to Greenland. When her owners were on a route through the Mediterranean, she suffered a breakdown and an American destroyer towed her to the port of Palma, where her current owner bought her in 1991.

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Each boat that participates in the test has a long seafaring life full of adventures. We can also find stories of espionage among the participants of the Illes Balears Clàssics. The Gipsy, launched in 1927, carried out these secret jobs during the Spanish Civil War under the British flag. The schooner So Fong, launched in 1937 in Hong Kong, was accused of collecting sensitive information for the United States in Vietnam in the 1970s, a fact that was about to destroy the ship, because after being prohibited from leaving the country, it ended up abandoned in a mangroves of the Asian country until its complicated recovery.

The regatta also recovers its social program this year and in its new location on Pier 7 of the Club de Mar, apart from a welcome to the participants on Thursday, the 11th, the crew party will be recovered the following day. Every day, the return to port will be enlivened with music and ‘After Race Drinks’ and on the last day of competition, Sunday, the trophy ceremony will be held that will bring this year’s edition of the Illes Balears Clàssics to an end.



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