The boat has a new captain.

Waiting for the party to arrive, the talk was all about the headliner. Matias Aguayo, he’s got a few good songs, and when he DJs he sings along to them – ok – so what’s so good about this guy? I mean, we’ve all jumped around in our bedrooms having a dance and a singalong to a favourite tune. Singing our own interpretation, dancing flamboyantly, eyes closed, our whole body feeling every beat. You know the cliche: “Dance like nobody’s watching.”

A few hours later we knew. It’s such a simple maxim, but I’ve never seen a performer run with it like Matias Aguayo. Here is a guy playing SingStar in his living room and giving it his all, except he’s surrounded by sweating fans, eyes wide with love and wonder, clawing for him, grinding against him, feeling the energy of that very personal moment he’s sharing with us.

And his equipment, well it’s not quite a PlayStation. It’s a couple of CDJs where discs seem to change without us noticing. He rarely has the headphones on. It’s a microphone hooked up to a Pioneer mixer’s effects controls. That’s the input for his voice, his bag of instruments (drums, a slide flute), and anything he can grab, basically. When a group of punters boarded the boat with a horn and started trumpeting all over the dancefloor I grunted to myself, “This is a Pirate party, not the Manchester derby.” But when Aguayo had the hornblower play into his mic, then looped and stretched and bent the note on the fly, well, my mind was blown.

I guess I had fallen into the trap that we all find ourselves in after years of clubbing: being narrow-minded. The whole concept of PLUR is a bit of a wank, we all discover, and once we’ve found our music and our crowd we become, on some level, intolerant of the rest of the scene.

Three years after the first Pirates of the Underground, I should’ve known better. This party rewrites the rules, and if you come with an open mind, you just might learn something. I didn’t know, for example, Matt Aubusson could slam out a tough set of minimal techno on par with our friends in Germany. Sensational. I didn’t know you could still find a vodka and (full can of) Red Bull for $8 in Sydney. I didn’t know Sasha from Diatribe was so skilled with the bongos. I didn’t know massive container ships could dock in the middle of the Manly ferry route – but well done to Deep As Fu*k for going the extra mile with the decor.

And most of all, I didn’t see how Matias Aguayo could possibly fill the shoes of Alexkid, who captained the first two Pirate parties with his brand of banging tech. How was a guy on Kompakt going to match that? The answer was already apparent before Aguayo came out from behind the decks to dance and sing and play with us. This was a beautiful, visceral, intimate, unique display of how good music can be. We felt every note, every chirp, every bark, every thrust, every grind.

The rest of the party was as special as I have gushed in previous years. Everywhere were people having their own little adventures, costumed molecules splitting, combining, revelling in a frenzied chemical reaction, imbibed with that something special that is only found on this rickety boat. Yes, for the third year running, this was the party of the year.

The harbour and all its sights was again a feast for the eyes, a study in colourful contrasts. At one point the boat took a slow stroll past the packed Darling Harbour foreshore. Drunk bogans in Santa Claus hats hung out of the windows of their boats as rowdy pirates brandished swords at them. I don’t know what they made of the music pulsing from our party. Could they even understand what we were experiencing?

Inside, seemingly oblivious, was a man with long hair, pink pants and closed eyes being mauled as he made music. Aguayo’s performance was nothing less than one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. We watched, jaws on the floor, spellbound, trying to compute what we were experiencing. We all asked, “How?”