t wasn’t just time to celebrate 25 years of Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez in early October. Quite a few of the sailors present were remembering 1980s days when the event was known as was looking fantastic on the water, she was beaten by the 60ft (18.3m) 1939, another of the seven S&S boats in this class. The pride of the fleet was surely herself, the 1973 Swan 44 that started it all when her owner/skipper Dick Jayson and wife Celia stopped into the port in 1981 at the end of the season after they’d competed in the Swan Worlds at Porto Cervo. Patrice de Colmont, owner of the Pampelonne beach eatery Club 55, suggested a duel with the 69ft (21m) 1964 Boyd 12-M , whose owner and skipper Jean Laurain was pleased to oblige. The seeds of an international regatta were sown, with the event becoming the Nioulargue in 1983. is now back in the family with Will Graves and his wife Gillian, Dick Jayson’s granddaughter buying the boat back earlier this year. won (as she had back then), but it didn’t matter because the race was mainly about the lunch afterwards, in the spirit in which this event was founded.
