Burn

Walking into the marina complex, there must be one or two hundred white masts in the foreground of the seaview. I spot a group of guys having lunch and feign sending a text nearby them, until I've narrowed the language down to German. I'm in time to join the boys for lunch. Thomas, Valentina's new owner, is a Berliner, somewhere in his early forties. Jean-Pierre, our French captain, hailing from Paris (obviously, if not implicitly,) is somewhere in his fifties. A strongman-built Austrian, Roland, is perhaps in his late thirties. Finally, there are two young boys, Manuel and David, Austrian and Swiss, respectively. Around the table, everyone has a beer and all but one is smoking. I'm a big fan of these continental types. The whole thing absolutely exudes the special brand of continental eurotrash nonchalance that I so fondly remember from the bank. I think that this will work.

Photo: Channel 4. Antoine, the original continental European

Valentina is a twenty-five tonne, fifty-odd foot sloop, made of steel. She looks solid. The deck is a intensely masculine mess, covered in tools, rope and wire. I'm guided down into the saloon and am pleased to find myself enveloped by dark red woods, reminiscent of any of my favourite lovely pubs. However, on a narrowly closer inspection, everything slightly crappy. The floors, and walls, and ceiling, and everything else looks to be only very loosely cobbled together. It looks like the work of a carpentry hobbyist whose enthusiasm doesn't compensate for his total absence of ability and skill. It's no matter though. The aesthetic is irrelevant, she looks solid.

Post dinner, the boys and I are sitting on deck, still with beers in hand. Our conversation twists and turns through languages as much as topics - English, German, Spanish and a touch of French. All of a sudden, we plummet into darkness. The light coming up from the saloon has switched off. In fact, all of the lights are gone. After a few seconds we each seem to notice an ever so slight and almost organic orange glow. After a few more seconds, we trace the glow to the seams of the lid on the battery house at the back of the cockpit. It's on fire. My less than heroic reaction, is to back out of the cockpit, onto the deck from which point I could leap off the exploding boat. This may be a sign that I've seen too many movies. In retrospect, I suppose it was unlikely that even three twenty-four volt could create a fiery-enough explosion for me to mimic Stallone, Willis or even early-Gibson. Roland is the quickest of us, and is able to subdue the flaming batteries with a very sharply acquired fire extinguisher.

It's unusual to have a fire on a boat, but it wasn't a big deal really. She looks solid.