Regatta on the Douro

It was a pleasantly sunny afternoon when the gun went off to start the annual barco rabelo regatta on the Douro this past Sunday (we're going to be bouncing around in time a bit with these Portugal entries; bear with). I'd abandoned my usual journalistic neutrality and was rooting for the Sandeman boat, largely because I was on it. 

In way of background, rabelos are the shallow-bottomed, keel-less boats once used to transport port casks down the Douro to Vila Nova de Gaia, the sister city to Oporto and home of the major port shipping companies. Back in the days that people actually used these boats—which are steered by a single long oar poking into the water from the stern, and feature a large square-rigged sail—the things were treacherous, since they were piled full of full port casks (heavy) and were sailed down the Douro before it was dammed (full of rapids) and had no stabilizing keel. Ours, on the other hand, were lightly loaded with empty casks and sailed on the Douro at the mouth of the river; entirely different proposition, which is to say that to become a fatality statistic in the annual regatta would take a lot of doing.

In any case, my role on the boat as described by George Sandeman was to drink port and eat snacks, and to blow into the sail a lot if we slowed down too much. This was the rest of our group's role as well; Sandeman had wisely (as had all the other port producers) hired some sturdy Portuguese fishermen who actually knew how to pilot a boat up the river to run the thing. George himself had the rather more dramatic role of standing in the prow wearing a scarlet cape and black hat and smoking a prodigiously long Cuban cigar. I'm not sure how this was supposed to help us win, but it looked impressive if nothing else.

The initial gun went off, and the Croft boat shot ahead, into the lead—not surprising, since we'd all been told to wait for the second gun. So, when the second gun went off, we all forged ahead. Meanwhile, the Croft boat was being towed back into starting position. Needless to say, they didn't win.

For a while there, it looked almost as though we might win. The wind billowed our sail magnificently, and we sailed into the lead, challenged only by the suspiciously swift-looking Warre's boat to our right. Thrilled by this, we all drank more port and ate snacks: chopped pigs' ears with cilantro and olive oil, and little fried doughy things like Portuguese mini-samosas. The pigs ears were crunchy and piggy; the dough-things were mushy and greasy. Both were not what I would normally pair with port, but this was a learning experience, so what the hell.

Unfortunately, as George had noted earlier, while almost every other boat in the regatta had been dutifully hauled out of the water some weeks before and assiduously cleaned, our boat had not. This meant that we were dragging along with us a veritable kelp bed of seaweed, algae and assorted barnacles, mussels, and who knows what else. In other words, drag. Our lead diminished, vanished, and became a dreamlike memory (dreamlike, no doubt, because of all the port we'd been knocking back). I think in the end we came in 14th or something. Our efforts, such as they were, were ignoble but valiant, I like to think. And whatever else one can say, at least we beat Offley, who both ran aground and broke their mast in two.

Afterwards, all of the boat teams retired to the Sandeman cellars for the official victory dinner of tripe stewed with white beans and sausages, along with—wait for it—more port.