St. Barth Bucket

Billion dollar line

The St. Barth Bucket "the greatest sailing spectacle in the world" because of the number of great, large yachts — 11 of them over 155 feet — sailing in nearly ideal tropical conditions. Although the number of entries in this year's 18th edition was down to 36 from the maximum of 43, we still believe it's the greatest sailing show on earth.

One of the most attractive qualities of the Bucket is the variety of entries, a variety that mandated they be broken down into four divisions. There were 12 boats in the Grand Dames de Mer class, most of them two-story giants by Perini Navi, all of them over 150 feet. The 10 yachts in the Mademoiselles des Mer class included two big schooners, the 205-ft Athos and the 181-ft Adela, as well as a variety of other yachts including the Los Angeles-based Frers 100 Symmetry. The nine boats in the Les Gazelles des Mers were the speedsters, from the tiny — relatively speaking — Farr 100 Leopard 3, owner of the Fastnet Race record, to Hasso Plattner's revitalized R/P and Baltic 147 Visione. And finally there was the J Class which, depending on who you talked to, was either the largest gathering of J Class yachts ever or the largest gathering since World War II. The Js were the only group to sail four races instead of three, and the only group to use the traditional racing format rather than pursuit racing.

Maltese Falcon

Unless you've been to a Bucket, it's hard to appreciate how massive and how beautifully maintained these yachts are. The 289-ft Maltese Falcon, which Belvedere's Tom Perkins had built and owned before selling her to Cypriot hedge fund manager Elena Ambrosiadou, is naturally very large. But even the much smaller Perini Panthalassa displaces 540 tons!

Thre J's

Despite the fact that participants are allowed to use electrical and hydraulic power assists, it takes a navy to run almost every one of these boats. For instance, repacking the spinnaker on the 154-ft ketch Rebecca is a 25-person job, and stretches from the bow to the stern and halfway up the boat again. The sail inventory sitting on the dock for Jim Clark's J Class Hanuman was bigger than a Volkswagen bus.

Despite the presence of five J Class yachts, all sailed by world-class sailors, the overall winner of the Bucket was Adela, a 181-ft schooner that was built of timber and steel in 1903, decades before any of the Js. She was nearly entirely rebuilt in 1995, and refitted several more times after that. Her skipper is Greg Perkins, who sailed at the St. Francis Big Boat Series in 1987 when he was on the maxi Ondine. But Adela's driver is St. Martin's Shag Morton, the ultimate antithesis of today's typical corporate-looking big boat helmsman. J Class honors went Hanuman, which had four bullets. She's a more modern version of Endeavour II, owned by Silicon Valley's Jim Clark.

Adela