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Upon arrival, I was stranded at the airport, but happily I saw Scotty Bradford (Titan's professional boat captain (from Mystic, CT) and also the main trimmer on the Swan)  to .  Fantastic.  He took me directly to the boat and I dived into the nav station and started working on familiarizing myself with the setup (which is sort of similar to our Swan but had some definite glitches and some distinct differences). I started meeting crew.  Five or six I already knew (talented pros all).  I was introduced to a number of new fellows (including a few legendary sailors).  I would meet more on Thursday, our practice day. After two hours of work in the nav station a bunch of us went back to the hotel.  It was a freakin' luxury resort (Maho Bay Club) ... my room was paid for.  Nice!  That night a number of us had a decent dinner and got a bit silly.  I think that was the only meal I wound up paying for all week. Thursday was practice.  We got to the boat (8AM or so), and got underway shortly thereafter.  I was at the nav table, punching in courses and whatnot, and kept working for must have been a solid hour.  When I came up we had 20 guys and 5 girls on the boat (a bunch had loaded on before we left the dock but I had been below, I heard a LOT of feet on deck above my head).  I was introduced to our tactician, Peter Holmberg (a legendary sailor who has participated in three America's Cup campaigns).  Also with us was Josh Belsky, a super-pro from the West Coast.  Also Lat Spinney, Mr. B&G in the US.  Also a bunch of guys who I only got their first names ... obviously SUPER talented.  I think 75% of the crew were paid professionals, and the others were HIGHLY talented amateurs.  EVERYONE on the boat was smooth and good ... to myself I was shaking my head in astonishment wondering just what the heck I was doing with this crowd, on this boat.  In this picture (above) taken on the first day of racing I’m in the white shirt .

This regatta is a navigator's dream.  Rather than simple windward - leeward short-course buoy racing, it was around a variety of marks set all around St. Maarten.  There were usually three courses to choose from, and we always got the longest courses (because we were in the division of fastest boats).  The legs ranged from one to six miles, and the races from 20 to 32 miles.  At all times I had to be able to instantly provide range and bearing to the upcoming mark to the tactician and the helmsman upon request.  Quite a few times we had to come QUITE close up to the shore (so as to shave distance from the course or so strategically we could stay in better water) ... well, we draw 14 feet and the owner told me to "put us right into 20 feet of water".  WOW!  If I screwed the pooch on this one, then clearly I would never be invited back, my name would be in the sailing news (as mud), and I might even sink us (or at a minimum watch the mast and sails catapult over the front of the bow).  My sphincter was FULLY puckered.  I got us into 24 feet of water a few times ... I don't think we got down to 20.

We only had a short practice (it was blowing 25 - 35 we ripped up the #4 jib pretty good and that was the only jib we wanted to use in those wind conditions).   We did hoist a spinnaker at one point and we sped along at 17 knots for a while.  The guys were not terribly happy ... "slow", they grumbled.  Me the fastest I had ever gone on a sailboat before was 14 knots.  I kept that one to myself (as I did a LOT of comments). The instruments were not talking to the computer.  I tried to fix that, fiddled with every com setting and serial port I could find, to no avail.  The captain (Scotty) tried to help, as did the program manger (Mark Ploch, who is Scotty's boss).  No joy.  The GPS talked to the computer (thankfully) so navigation wasn't a problem ... but without the instruments talking to the computer I couldn't do a lot of high-performance navigation like calling times to the layline and wind-shift trending.