William’s off hobnobbing with Becks, and Kate’s off having breakfast with handsome yachters and posing with enormous trophies that have their own Louis Vuitton luggage. How was your morning?
America’s Cup is a yachting race — Wikipedia, keepers of all great and unassailable truths, tells me it is the “oldest international sporting trophy” — between, uh, two yachts. And like all things that have a long Wikipedia entry, it’s actually totally secretly fascinating and also seemingly somewhat complicated. Basically, the America (spoiler: an American yacht) beat the Royal Squadron Yacht in a race back in the day of Victoria, and got this giant trophy and henceforth, other yachts can CHALLENGE for the trophy and if they win, they get it. The United States had the trophy from 1857 until 1983, when the Australians won it (god, the American team must have come back from that race very dismayed and quite in trouble with the American Yachting Community, which I’m sure is a thing) and the whole thing is actually really interesting. There are legal battles! Ted Turner got involved at one point! Ted Turner sailed the freaking yacht at one point! People try to disqualify people! Yacht teams throw MASSIVE SHADE onto other yacht teams! Teams are challenging other teams and side-eying the legality of their ship construction! It seems VERY dramatic, and also at certain points, the entire Wiki entry turns into yachting-ese that I barely even understand! ANYWAY, this event is because yachting is crazy expensive and Great Britain is getting their ducks in a row to challenge for the next race in 2017. I think. But I do know two things for sure: that this dress is mad nautical and also Simon Le Bon was there.
(PS: She also went to the Buckingham Palace Garden Party today, but I’ll cover it later. I’m just waiting for the photos to trickle in. I HAVE NOT FORSAKEN THE GARDEN PARTY.)
[Photos: Getty]
