Every port in a storm
It's midnight in Oporto and a hundred plastic hammers are banging on my head. No, it's not a fiendish hangover brought on by too much port, but the bizarre start to the festival of S‹o Jo‹o, the patron saint of Portugal's second city.
It used to be garlic that city-dwellers playfully thrashed over each other's heads - not the bulb, but the long-stemmed, blue-and-white flowers that bloom at this time of year. Nobody is quite sure how the hammers assumed the power to drive out evil spirits.
The noise is something else. Each "hammer" squeaks on impact, and there's a piercing whistle concealed in the handle. The merriment continues until dawn, or until the pots of herbs put out before midnight are covered in dew. If kept in the home, these will protect against the temptations of the devil for the year ahead.
Like the plastic hammers, the history of the port house boat race is relatively young. A former managing director of Croft, Robin Reid, was concerned about the disappearance of the barco rabelo - a traditional Douro river boat, with a hint of Norse longboat, that until 1964 transported port in casks from the quintas of the Upper Douro down to the port lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia. So Reid conceived a race between the remaining four boats, to be held on 24 June - São João's day.
This is the race's 18th year and there are now 20 barco rabelos, restored or newly built. They are cumbersome and creaky, with an unwieldy oar, and the strong tides carry them helplessly along. Collisions are frequent and beaching inevitable - last year Warre's landed in the city sewer.
"The spirit of the regatta is to participate rather than compete," declares Croft's Johnny Hoelzer, trying to ignore the Calem barco's premature hoisting of its sail. "That's not cricket," he mutters, fastening his black-and-red cape and securing his large, black felt hat - uniform of the Confrerie de Vinho do Porto and required garb for the barco rabelo captain. "And look at them," Hoelzer splutters, as Taylor's managing director, Adrian Bridge, instructs his second mate to trapeze over the side to catch a little more wind. It pays off. Taylor's comes second, Croft third, behind the winning Martinez crew.
Good nature is regained later with copious amounts of port at Sandeman's lodge during the race dinner. So the hammers are back the next day, too - but sadly they're the fiendish hangover type.
by Fiona Sims
