Caribbean Cruise 2006: St Maarten

November 9, 2006

St. Maarten

This is a beautful island. We did not get to see much since we had choosen another sailing excursion. This time we are on the 12 meter Americas Cup yachts. See 12 Metre Challenge for details on the boats.
The participants were split into 3 crews with a team captian for each crew choosen by the tour operator. Our team wanted to sail Stars & Stripes. Another team wanted the same boat so there was a coin toss. Our team captian called it right and we got Stars & Stripes. We were told that this was the boat that brought the cup back from down under. Think of the Jimmy Buffet song "Take it back".
We were taken to the boats by "launch", well a pontoon boat, since they had to off load the previous crew before we boarded. Prior to boarding we were assigned positions. I was a main grinder, Toby was on one of the running back stays and Suzette was the timer.
As we began a few practice manuvers it was discovered that one of the back stay winches was malfunctioning. This was repaired while we sailed along. Instead of a 6 minute flag for the start it was shortened to 3 minutes.
We had a fair start and lead Canada II and True North for a leg. We had a poor tack and were not able to regain the lead. Some of our crew were more talk than action. Such is life.
After the race we went to their boutique and were treated to rum punch. You could spend a lot of money at the boutique. We did buy replica crew T shirts and a picture.
It was great to see a 12 metre boat up close and personal. We had a good sail and we were the first American boat across the finish.