One of the most arduous of all tasks that fell to yachting journalists covering the Perini Navi Cup is the judging of the cocktail competition held on the evening of the first day of racing.
This year the event was sponsored by Vhernier the Italian jeweller whose up market bling is very bling and highly sought after.
The idea behind the concept is that crews on each of the competing Perini Navi sailing yachts concocts a cocktail of their own and serve it to a panel of judges made up from members of the worlds attending press.
In events gone by the judges started at one end of the dock and worked their way to the end. 12 cocktails later and they found writing the scores on paper rather difficult. One resorted to writing the scores on the shirt of another while another fell off the passer else and found the contents of the Porto Cervo dock water to be not too dissimilar to a cocktail she had tried thee yachts back. So in the interests of journalist safety the event has become more mundane and the press are grouped into manageable teams who are each given up to four yachts to judge.
It may not be so comical as in events gone by but it is a whole lot kinder to the liver!
This year the conviction to win was strong! Sailing aboard Helios on day one we among those journalists who were served lunch by Chi Chi who made it very clear how hard she was working to win our votes. Richard the Captain even suggested she might have been plying us with too much Domain Ott over our lunch in a bid to buy votes!
If points were awarded to yachts for their enthusiasm to win then the crew of Helios would have won without us even having tasted the cocktail. Having done so however I am so glad to proclaim that Helios was among the winners and despite the fact that i awarded then 10 out of a possible 10 in the interests of transparency I must confess that the yacht was not on my list of cocktails to judge!
Two other yachts shared the podium to collect a trophy for the cocktails at prize giving.
They were Panthalasa and Heritage.