In St Maarten the boat and myself were on charter to a group from Calgary. They renamed the boat ‘The Blue Eyed Sheiks of the North’ a clue as to how they make their money. The helmsman was a Canadian Olympic sailor and the navigator/tactician owns a charter business in BC. All ‘old’ guys who every year charter a boat for Heineken as their annual holiday without family. I was determined to make it a good one for them. Experience ranged from Olympic sailor to Charles an English guy who I don’t believe had ever been on a boat. Other then the yearly trip they don’t race at home and very rarely step on a boat so it was an exciting ride for them. Top speed was around 21 knots during the week.

Due to the bridge openings at 7:30am dock call each morning is at 6:45am so this requires the boat captain to be up and out at 5:15am. You don’t get back in till the 3pm bridge if you are lucky otherwise it is a 5:30pm bridge so it is a long day on the water. The guys were there to soak up as much information as possible and as smart successful businessman they tackled the boat head on and maneuvers got better each day. I have a lot of admiration for one of the crew in particular who has prosthesis – his leg was amputated below the knee. He did sewer with gusto and learnt quickly how to band the kite going upwind and pack the retrieval line ready for the next mark rounding. With winds up to 25 knots Yeoman provided them with a few downwind sleigh rides and there were a lot of grins about the 3^rd place at the end of the week. It was hard to compete against the well sailed Swan 56 Noonmark who loves long upwinds and the carbon RP44 Storm a local boat with a lot of talent. The Heineken regatta is a great race week with a mix of coastal courses and windward leewards and I enjoyed the European flavor of the island.

Next stop was St Thomas and BVI regatta which was meant to be the owner’s regattas however, due to tearing his Achilles tendon two weeks before the regattas he was out. A few other key crew members had to bail due to work/visa problems. So with two weeks notice I needed to find four key crewmembers – helm, tactician, main trim and mast/mid bow. They needed to be good sailors, be able to take two weeks off with two weeks notice and needed to be able to pay their way. All in all pretty hard to find! Sometimes things just fall perfectly into place. We ended up with a mixed group of the normal British Yeoman crew and four Bay Area sailors’ three of whom sail together on a J120 and the other a former Farr 40 owner. Five girls and eight guys drank copious amounts of rum and tings and had the best time that I have seen a crew have. I smile a lot when I think about those two weeks we had a lot of laughs. The Caribbean regattas require consistency as they don’t have throw outs so any gear failure means you drop quickly in the rankings – this unfortunately caused us to have two bad results putting us back in 3^rd place overall.

The regatta at St Thomas requires the boat to be anchored out – not something that race boats do gracefully so I was happy when we moved on to Nanny Cay marina. No more rows upwind against the trades in a 10 foot dinghy to the outskirts of the anchorage every night to stay on the boat. I was able to spend my nights tucked up in a nice bed overlooking the straits between Tortola and St Johns. On the delivery trip from the USVI to the BVI we stopped off at Norman Island where I introduced the crew to Willy T’s bar – it was hard to pry them away. Another day of racing took us up to Bitter End on Virgin Gorda the day was very British in terms of the weather – cold and raining – the Rolex flag from St Thomas provided shelter on the rail! The crew split up for the layday – half sailing lasers and half taking to a 30 foot motorboat to site see amongst the Baths and the bars of Jost van Dyke. We raced back to Tortola finishing 3 seconds after the time limit after a very long day on the water going upwind into shifty light winds.

After the first day of BVI regatta we were lying in 3^rd place to ABN Amro and Titan. It was fun sharing the starting line area with these fast boats that of course very shortly afterwards left us in the dust. The second day of racing was Yeoman type conditions with enough wind to get her planning unfortunately we had to retire for the rest of the regatta due to a damaged rig. The rig had to be repaired in a very short timeframe to get us to Antigua in time for our next race week. For Antigua the boat and myself were again under charter.

The boat is fast upwind sailing to her polars and downwind so far our top speed is 25.7 knots. She starts planing at around 18 knots of wind and rewards hard work on the part of trimmers and grinders to pump her on each wave. She is also really forgiving downwind and doesn’t wipe out easily but the helm has to concentrate fully to get the numbers.

The season has been hard work however, it all paid off with the last results of first in class at Antigua Race Week. Thank you to all who helped out on Yeoman XXXII down island maybe we will be back next year J