It's with great excitement we can welcome a guest writer to Captain JP's Log. We are lucky enough to have the legendary Buff Staysail himself to join the team to cover the recently announced Rolex Celebrity double-handed yacht race.
Footballer Zinedine Zidane's announcement that he is entering the competitive and glamorous world of offshore yacht racing has really stirred up the pot, and a veritable flood of A-list celebrities rushed to follow suit.
Indeed there has been so much interest that Rolex have sponsored an inaugural transatlantic race and already dozens of boats have registered. Foregoing the traditional marinas of Portsmouth, La Rochelle, or Saint-Malo and destinations such as Rio or Pointe-à-Pitre, the more celeb friendly route has been selected, namely from Monaco to Miami.
Now the boats and crews are assembling at in the south of France, where we can hear first hand from our new guest writer, Buff himself. Well known to you all for his fearless predictions ("No Swiss boat will ever win the America's Cup", "Movistar will be unstoppable in the Volvo", and "Ellen who?") he is the touchstone of his particular writing style. No doubt you have heard someone say an article was "Pure BS" - and you know it must have been written by our Buff.
But enough, lets hand over to the master himself. Buff, it's all yours......
Howdy folks, its Buff here, Buff by name and Buff by nature, and boy is the temperature rising here in the glamorous golden city state of Monaco. The quayside is literally heaving - not just with the million dollar racing yachts but the stars of pop and rock as they make their final preparations for tomorrows start.
There have been sensations already with not one, not two, but yes folks, three boats out of the running before the start gun has even been raised.
The first sign of trouble was when Bono stormed out of the race committee after being disqualified. Apparently he failed the rule that each boat should have two crew members as his claim that him and his ego made it two was rejected. Bono has just flown out to save either the rain forest or the melting ice caps, we can't tell as yet, leaving his boat, "Me makes 2" deserted.
A similar problem fell on the Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley. When measured using the Celebrity RORC rating they were so skinny they only counted as 1.36 crew members despite having half a salad between them over the previous 48 hours. On hearing the news they fainted and were taken away to an intensive session of regression therapy.
However I bet J-Lo (pictured above) wishes there had been more skinnies on her boat "Who are you looking at?" which unfortunately sank when it was overloaded by her 50 strong entourage, including make-up equipment, several TV crews, and a crate of glacier water flown in from Antarctica.
My predictions for the race - well its wide open, but I'm keeping an eye on that Jessica Simpson - she's the one to beat.
For now that's all. I'm off to the pre-race party which is said by all of those in the know to be a cracker in the making.
For now its Buff Staysail, over and out.
