Ben Ainslie’s Honeymoon Rescue
If you think you’re too hot a sailor to ever get in trouble with your boat, think again. Shit happens. Even to top pros. A case in point was when British sailor Sir Ben Ainslie — acknowledged as the most successful Olympic sailor in history — was sailing his yacht with his newlywed wife Georgie Thompson through the reef-strewn waters of the British Virgin Islands, not far from Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island resort.
In his blog on www.virgin.com, Sir Richard reported Monday that aboard Ainslie’s yacht "the furling system broke on the main sail and the sail became so twisted that it couldn’t go up, down, in or out." Sir Ben put out a call for assistance and three members of the Necker Island watersports team came to the rescue.
As Branson wrote, "The only way to avoid going onto the reefs was for Marco to go to the top to cut the sail to pieces, whilst George and Ben were winching Marco up and down and Georgie was helping in the boat. Unsurprisingly, Ben kept an amazingly cool head whilst directing operations — he just needed more hands to sort out the mess."
The incident ended with no further harm to the boat, and afterward Sir Ben and Georgie later spent several peaceful days at Branson’s spectacular Necker Island Resort. All’s well that ends well. (Yeah, we’d bet that Sir Ben’s boat was amply insured.)
On a side note, we’ve always been a little suspicious of in-mast and in-boom mainsail furling systems, although some sailors swear by them. If you’ve had experiences — either good or bad — with such systems, we’d love to hear about them. Email us here.
No Photos!
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"No photos," said the guard at Careyes, the remote high-end resort between Puerto Vallarta and Barra de Navidad on Mexico’s lightly-populated Gold Coast. He said they were "renovating," so nobody was allowed to go down and take photos. Bummer, because taking photos of the various Gold Coast anchorages and marinas is the reason we did an 8.5-hour round trip from La Cruz. The first time we visited Careyes on our own boat was probably 1983. There was a Club Med on the northernmost of the three bays. You can just see a tiny bit of the bay in the far right of the photo. We tucked in closer to that bay than was wise because we were young and stupid, but we survived.
There are two islands in that part of the photo, and either between the mainland and one of the islands, or between the two islands, there is/was a suspension bridge high above the water. A Hollywood individual told us the ‘Kill Bill’ wrap party was held at the site, and, in a moment of madness, director Quentin Tarantino and star Uma Thurman got on the middle of the 150-ft high bridge and tried to shake it to pieces. They weren’t successful, but the bridge reportedly fell into the water of its own accord a few weeks later.
We’ve anchored outside the island in the middle of the photo, between that same island and the little peninsula in front of it, and in the little bay right in front of the main resort. The latter made us a little nervous, as it was a bit of a squeeze for a cat that’s 63 feet by 30 feet. But, once again, we survived, despite the surge and crashing of waves on the nearby rocks.
We’ve always been welcomed by the resort staff, even when we landed the outboard-powered inflatable on their beach. The first couple of times we stopped there, a small crowd of guests was staying at the Bel-Aire, which is the main resort. The last two times we were there, we had the whole place to ourselves. How high-end luxury resorts in Mexico can survive without any customers has always been a mystery to us.
The two most memorable features of Careyes for us have been the pool, which winds all around the circular area in the middle of the resort, and the always-empty restaurant. These days a resort like Careyes would probably assess a $100/person day-use fee, but back then they seemed delighted to have a group of fun-loving sailors give the otherwise empty pool a workout. Actually, the last time we were there, an aristocratic woman was in the restaurant. She must have been a little lonely, because she even made overtures to our somewhat ragged and boisterous crew. We put an afternoon of fun into her life. But we never did see recording star Seal and his then-wife Heidi Klum. They have/had a big house on the hill.
Two years ago, a security guard could have kept us from achieving our goal of getting a nice photo of the Bel-Aire Resort and the three bays of Careyes. But now we’re armed with a drone, so we backed our car about 100 feet away from the security hut, launched the drone, and flew a couple of hundred feet over his head. He was none the wiser.
If you’ve been to Careyes and had an interesting time, we’d like to hear about it.
P.S.: This photo and item were posted on Richard Spindler’s Facebook account yesterday, and we’ve already got a lot of responses, including ‘appearances’ by the likes of Paul Cayard, Lowell North, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models, and more. If anyone wants to ‘Friend’ Richard Spindler, feel free. We mostly post sailing porn we don’t have room for in Latitude 38 and/or ‘Lectronic Latitude.