St. Tropez

As I sailed my "yacht" into St. Tropez harbor, I thought about all the stories I would tell later on in my life that would begin with the phrase "as I sailed my yacht into St. Tropez harbor." I would undoubtedly drop the quotes around yacht, and pretend I was in with the in crowd. This place is the poshest of the posh. It's like the most upscale mall in Britain was being transported by a giant plane, collided with another plane carrying socialites and cocaine, and then crashed onto a tiny, pretty port city.

The views on the approach to St. Tropez were pretty impressive. As an aside, the Pirates of the Barbary Coast had a longstanding peace treaty with the French, and in fact, fought side by side against the Italian and Spanish forces closely allied with the Pope, so this is one of the few towns that was not bombarded, invaded or otherwise attacked by my favorite people. And you can tell: the town enjoyed long peaceful periods, and buildings spilled outside the city walls.

Sunset on the way into St. Tropez

St. Tropez town, clock tower, and Le Citadel to the left

I was surrounded by enormous powerboats as I approached the landing area in the harbor.

Old Harbor with powerboats. When one of them accidentally turns their radar on while at port,
kids get sparks in their braces and men are temporarily sterilized.

By enormous, I mean boats that could easily have fit 50 minitransats inside. They smell like state ferries. They certainly have gyms inside.

Why? Because they can

The landing area was occupied by professional sailors in blue-and-white striped sailor outfits, for which I'm sure they get paid extra. The predominant language was Russian. Interestingly, as we docked, a British professional sailor pointed at Guizmo and said "now, there's a real boat."

There was only a single marinero at the entire marina, and he turned out to be Bulgarian. It was clear that he was not hired for his interesting French pronunciation with rolled Slavic R's, or the way he said "ce n'est pas mon prrrrrobleme" -- it was his command of Russian that got the job, as the job seemed to demand more Russian than French. Every $1 increase in the price of oil must create a 100 nouveau-riche Russian glitterati, who, like salmon when their biological clocks start to tick, must have a burning desire to abandon Mother Russia for the French coast. If Al Gore, illustrating the scale of global warming on a graph with a cherry picker in his famous movie, failed to convince you of the need to conserve oil, this fact should.

Come to think of it, they actually indoctrinated us in middle school that "Russians have always had a desire to establish a port in the warm seas," referring to various Russian military endeavors to acquire ports in the Black Sea and implying that we should be vigilant against further military aggression from the north. But I never thought they'd skip the whole port-by-port endeavor and just establish a beach-head on the French coast. What a brilliant move.

The Bulgarian fellow assigned a berth to Guizmo and told me that the price per night would be 364 euro. I told him there must be a mistake, like, instead of entering 6.5 meters, he entered 65 meters for Guizmo's length, as that price is about tenfold higher than what I had normally been paying. He then produced a price list that clearly said 364 next to 6.5 meters. Presumably, the budget traveler is expected to anchor outside and take the tender in, which I would, except I don't have a tender, and if I did, it'd be the size of a child's swimming ring. I was getting ready to quibble with the Bulgarian fellow over Guizmo's length actually being 6.49m, which it is, but I noticed that his price list was for the Old Port. The New Port, where my assigned berth was, is only 100 meters to the side, but out of the main promenade where the glitterati have to be seen in their boats. The price of a berth for the New Port was listed at 164 euro. I had to accept, even though it seemed like a huge ripoff. The Bulgarian fellow and I then got talking and built a rapport, using bad French on both sides, and he did not ask for money or documentation in the end, which I thought was slightly odd.

Once at the berth, it was time to explore the town. The famous night club in town is called "Famous Club." If that's not reason enough to say away, perhaps Kanye's potential presence might be a further deterrent.

Not sure if I can name a single person from this list that I would like to hang out with.

All around, there were boats that looked like they would belong to a man named Monsieur Le Chiffre, who runs the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. criminal organization.

No doubt Le Chiffre's henchmen would ride these boats and chase Guizmo.
Unlike a regular Bond movie, the chase would last only 5 seconds and I would lose.

If you liked Zodiacs but thought they were always a bit small, perhaps you'd be interested in these

There are lots and lots of paintings for sale on the main promenade, as well as at countless art stores around the port.

Everything here has a nautical theme

I'm so out of it, I can only recognize Prince. Who is the woman?

An intense evening discussion about painters and art

Artist on the main promenade

The place was full of very tall, skinny women and even taller men, with strikingly sharp and weird features that make you immediately think "interesting, they could be models if they wanted to." Then you realize that they did actually want to become models, and indeed did become models -- they're in St. Tropez, naturellement, for a photo shoot. The next morning at 10am, came across the following photo shoot.

Now you know what'll be in Vogue a month before it's published

Here's a hint of how lecherous this town can be: two women wearing bunny ears were walking on the main promenade at night. Inured to St. Tropez at that point, I thought nothing of the bunny ears and thong outfits -- it's out there, but it doesn't really stand out. Then a guy called out "Hey Bunnies!" from one of the giant powerboats in the old harbor. I thought "in the history of mankind, how many successful pickups have started with the line 'hey bunnies'?" Well, the answer turns out to be at least one, as the women immediately responded to this call to join six guys on a powerboat. The pic was taken as they rushed to the boat when the pasarella (the little gangway for walking from the dock to the boat) was being lowered for them.

Privileges of a $1000+/night berth in the old harbor

But the place has a lot of cool little interesting parts to see.

Original occupants of the Old Harbor have been pushed aside by powerboats

Balcony overlooking the Med

French shutters are very different from that of the Spanish

Pour La France at 18, leaving behind a cushy life in St. Tropez.
The town cemetery stands in stark contrast with the youth-worshipping culture of the town.

Signature clocktower

Street scene

Came across a wine and cheese reception, free and open to all, at 9:30 am while looking for a creperie. Once you're within a certain circle, things like putting food on the table that are difficult for most people, suddenly become non-issues.

Shortly after the wine and cheese reception, ran into the fish market. The last pic has one of my father's favorite fish, accompanied by lobsters in wool sacks that are very much alive and moving.

 It was time to leave. I went back to the Capitanerie, took a deep breath anticipating the 164 euro charge and told them I needed to pay. They printed out a bill for 34 euro. What a lovely surprise.

Statue of Virgin Mary on the pier, likely the only virgin in town, bids farewell

St. Tropez from the sea

Pto Pollenca

Panoramic shot from Puerto de Pollenca. See if you can locate Guizmo for +25 points. +3 points for each kiteboarder with their kite up, +1 point for each kite on land, +1 point for each topless sunbather (visible or implied), -4 points for each erroneously identified top-ful sunbather. Not sure what you get in exchange for the points, but we'll think of something.

Pollenca Bay

Here's a panorama from the pier where I'm keeping my boat. You can also see Lucas's older minitransat right next to mine.

Pto Pollenca Nautical Club

Shots taken in May, I recently stitched up the pics.

Edit: Apparently, Blogger shrank my huge panoramas. Sorry if you can't see much.

The Retreat on Pto Pollenca

Pto Pollenca is a beautiful place.

Apparently, this was a retreat for Spanish intellectuals at the turn of the previous century. It's a giant complex built in neoclassical style, around a tower designed to defend the Bay of Pollenca from Dragut. There is even a lighthouse on premises. It was apparently sold to a businessman for 9M euro, who recently sold it for 32M. It's unused at the moment though, and is completely devoid of life. This is a huge pity, as the place has a lot of potential. I firmly believe that the government should be able to nationalize any property from people who're doing too lame a job with it. This applies to domain names for sure, land, cars, boats, and anything else, really. It's a new, more radical doctrine of eminent domain. For proper effect, someone like a TSA agent should come to your house and say "I'm sorry sir, you're doing way too lame a job with this thing you've got, so we the people have decided to repossess it." Because this place is begging to host a computer science conference.

The Regatta

Amador

Pablo

Guizmo was painted yesterday and needs to dry out. So no launch today; I cannot even climb into Guizmo as I would have to touch the paint and that would ruin it. Two local sailors, Amador and Pablo, invited me to race with them on their 38-footer in a regatta off of Alcudia (next bay over from Pollenca), as they were short-handed. I had nothing to do and had not yet been to Alcudia, so naturally I jumped at the opportunity.




Amador is a pro sailor who has done 3 transatlantic crossings, one of them solo. Pablo operates a large hotel in Alcudia and has crossed the Atlantic with Amador. It was great to sail with people who know what they're doing and speak good English to boot.

Pto Pollenca Bay, calm in the morning

The sail out to Alcudia was in very choppy seas. I had to go down to the cabin to get clothing and equipment, and ended up getting very queasy for half the voyage. I was beginning to question whether I was ready to embark on the Med crossing with Guizmo, but apparently everyone else, including Per Antonio in his boat and Amador and Pablo on ours, were also affected. Luckily, I kept my breakfast down and managed to do things around the boat, but I had major tunnel-vision and felt pretty awful. The panorama below, although unintentional, accurately reflects how I felt and saw the world.

Alcudia Bay, after a wavy, bumpy passage

Once we got to Alcudia, we pulled into port and had lunch at the yacht club, followed, of course, by a siesta. The siesta fixed me up and I felt great for the rest of the afternoon, throughout the regatta.

View at the pier in front of the Alcudia yacht club

Amador's very young girlfriend and a friend of hers joined us as well. They didn't speak English, weren't involved in sailing at all and just hung out on the rail. I told them that this is known in the US as being "railmeat," whose Spanish translation, "carnetas de barca," seemed to amuse them.

It turns out that most Spanish sailing terms are exactly identical in Italian and Turkish. Pasarella, foc and iskota are the few that I can remember right now, but for the most part, I was able to follow fairly easily even when Amador and Pablo spoke to each other in Catalan. The one new term I learned is "tangon," which means "spinnaker pole" and apparently has other uses in slang as well.

After a double up-and-down course with two well-executed spinnaker sets, we crossed the finish line in fourth or fifth position, practically side by side with another boat. On corrected time, we were fourth, so we did not get a trophy or a mention at the award ceremony. But the award ceremony had open-buffet Spanish food accompanied by a giant vat of mojito, so no complaints.

Da plane! Da plane!

There is a small airforce base in Pto Pollenca, not far from where I keep Guizmo. They have a few fire-fighting planes, and they seem to constantly practice takeoffs and landings on the water. It's quite a sight, and a welcome break from working on painting the inside of the boat, covered in paint flecks and breathing fumes. 

Palma

I went down to Palma for some sightseeing.

As always, the food was excellent.

Shaving off thin tasty slices off of
pigs' legs seems to be a national pastime

End result, well worth it

The city has all the usual features one might expect from a port city that has been attacked repeatedly over the centuries. Specifically, it has a nice port, an old quarter with tight streets, and highly geometric city walls that are probably shaped like a 20-gon, with interesting guard towers.

There is something retro and iconic about this building

In Spain, Goldilocks appears at her tower
only after 1am, and parties until sunrise

But in addition, the city walls feature one of the most impressive moats I've ever seen. Moats are an awesome home improvement idea that should be featured more, or ever, in This Old House. I can conclusively assert that every single little boy out there, and probably every girl as well, has dreamt of living behind a moat. But at some point during the growing up process, this fantasy gets displaced by the tedium of grownups' mundane aspirations. Temporal logic dictates that there must be some definable point, a specific instance in time, when the moat dream dies off for good. I suggest that we define that point as the definitive end of one's childhood (the end of the "floor is now lava" game can be used as an early indicator of this impending, irreversible change).

Wonder if they ever brought alligators from Africa to this moat

But how awesome would it be to have a moat? I bet that if you put one around your Manhattan apartment, its price would triple overnight. I'm surprised no one has done this; it combines Americans' love of gauche, show-off ideas with their distaste for strangers. Mallorcans have pulled it off incredibly well. I assume it was borne out of necessity initially, but then they must have taken delight in extending their moated city. As if to scream "nyah nyah, can't get past our moat" at the world, they've placed a gorgeous Cathedral just barely inside their moated city walls. Kudos to them for keeping the dream alive.

Moat and Cathedral

The geometry of the door is identical to that of the Pope's hat

Shark Attack

Beach in Pto Pollenca.

Can anyone ID if this is a shark or a skate egg?