Diary of the Russian Business Regatta. Day FIRST

Hooray, it's happening!

On Saturday, July 6 at Palme de Mallorca VI Russian business regatta. Those of you who are deep into sailing do not need to know much about the event. You already know everything.

The following summary is addressed to the rest of us. The RBI is one of the main culprits behind the sailing boom we have seen in our country in recent years. Have you noticed that all of a sudden, instead of ordinary beach bouts on vacation, many of your friends have started to spend time on board of boats, in secluded bays of Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Montenegro, and other Mediterranean and Caribbean islands? Well, the roots of all this are right here.

In the same way as the Harvard graduates grew up around the global social network Facebook, on the yeast of the RBR phenomenon the popularity of amateur sailing trips in Russia has grown dozens of times over the past 5 years.

In fact, sailing has already become for all of us an analogue of skiing activities, only in summer time, and there is considerable merit in this for Russian business regattas.

Thanks to the well-chosen format, which combines businessmen and professionals «big» sailing, the RBR organizers eventually manage to make «both mind and heart»- that is, useful business contacts are well combined with a healthy, active, informative holiday. There are at least a dozen clones of RBR, in the form of various industry regattas or events with names like «Siberian Business Regatta» (lolshto?). But the right guys know that we have only one real business regatta.

ItBoat, by tradition, acts as the main yacht infopartner of the RBI, and keeps the official diary of the whole mess.

By its sixth year, RBI has matured into a well-oiled machine. The programme is well-established and the organisational team is running like clockwork.

A landing party of 160 people has landed in Mallorca, which is hosting the RBI for the second time, in response to numerous requests from regulars. In the lobby of Tryp Belver Hotel, which sheltered the participants for the first couple of days until they went to sea, the guests were met by RBC Deputy Director Alexander Belonovskiy.

17 boats in three divisions will start the VI RBI.

But that's tomorrow, and today is the first, introductory day. It didn't involve any serious activity on the water, but it didn't make it any less important.

Immediately after breakfast, at 11 a.m., Mikhail Saveliev, RBI Sport Director, gave a brief lecture on sailing safety in the hotel conference room. For those who will find themselves on a boat for the first time it was popularly explained that, first of all, you should immediately obey your captain (and if the captain is wrong, then see point 1). Other secrets of correct behaviour on board from Mikhail Saveliev we will tell a little later.

After that the business seminar, in which RBI participants - executives and company owners - in an informal atmosphere talked about the latest trends and the little secrets of their business areas. The process was moderated by RBC Strategy Director Georgy Mikaberidze and RBC TVhost MarianneMinsker. Nikita Gorchakov, the founder of itBoat, also put his two cents in on the yachting industry, as you may have guessed.

«Then around lunchtime the official program ended, and the free time began». The skippers went to the yacht reception.

The sportiest participants, among whom Boris Boltyansky, founder and general manager of RBI, set the tone, chose the only right way to spend the day - cozy loungers and cool rosé at the local Nikki Beachbranch.

But some others quite unsportsmanlike decided to get out on the water and have an unscheduled workout in half to check the combat readiness of their vessels. Among those few were the owners of Prawns café Evgeniya and Sergey Doronin, managing partner of BEST-Novostroy Pavel Rodin, general director of Clarus Capital Vladimir Kozlov, as well as the editors of this blog.

In the process of training in the port of Palma was discovered the megayacht Venus, built at the Feadship shipyard for Steve Jobs (itBoat repeatedly wrote about her earlier).

At sunset all competitors gathered at the Royal Yacht Club of Palma (RNCP) for the opening ceremony of the regatta. We will share the rich history of this club with you in the next issues.

The evening opened with energetic opening speeches from all the organizers of the RNCP. After that captains including acting European Champion Andrey Arbuzov, Master of Sport International class and one of the most rated Russian yachtsmen Evgeny Neugodnikov, head coach of Russian sailing team Sergey Dzhembaev and member of one of the leading Russian professional sailing teams RUS7 Nikolay Kovalenko have divided numbers which they will carry on board during the whole regatta by drawing lots.

Communication between the teams under the accompaniment of champagne, light beach music and the rustle of the surf continued until deep into the night.

If you participate in the Regatta, don't forget to take photos of the most interesting moments on your smartphone and post them to Instagram with the hashtag #rusregata. The best photos will appear in our daily report.

See you tomorrow!