I wasn’t sure i was goign to be able to have a Thanksgiving as we were so busy getting the christening ready – So I made an excel spreadsheet of all of the steps that had to be done in order to eat by 9pm. This included washing and stuffing the turkey at the base and putting it in the oven for an hour and a half in our kitchen on base.

Then I borrowed a van – it was all clean and ready for the VVIPs today so I had to be very careful. Jensi our logistics guy – the one I work out with who is a perpetual smart ass – told me to be careful – because you know how those turkeys are when the escape and run around in your car. For some reason I half believed that he has actually had a live turkey running around
his car before :-).

Anyway got home – poured the gin and tonic only 30 minutes behind schedule and made dinner:
Turkey and stuffing
Mashed potatoes
Gingered mashed sweet potatoes
Wild rice with sultanas (raisins 🙂 and dried apricots
Brussels Sprouts with burned butter and hazelnuts
VERY nice red wine made with no preservatives so no allergies.

Katie helped and spent the night and Denise our Chef came over – the candles
were lit and the table set – WITH centerpiece and we had a very nice relaxed
Thanksgiving Dinner.

Steve and I got to meet up at the Bitter End Yacht Club Pro Am Regatta on Virgin Gorda. This was the first time that I took a significant other so I had a better time in paradise this time than normally.

While I was out racing Steve took sailing 101, 102 and 103. Here is a picture of him studying on the lay-day. Most of the time we were too busy enjoying the great atmosphere and cool new people to take too many pictures but on the last day we took a Boston Whaler and did a harbor cruise/pub crawl and I finally remembered to break out the camera.

The middle level of our base, over the gym and the store is dedicated to office space and meeting rooms. This is the middle level of windows over the signage.
This summer it looked like a very large and dusty store room. There were no walls seperating the 2 meeting rooms and 10 offices. We had a general idea of where we wanted things but the Spanish Wall Guys were better off with my ‘green marker’ I’d just draw lines and symbols on the floor and the next day there were walls there. Quick and dirty.

Somehow I ended up with the corner office 🙂

It has been said that an America’s Cup Campaign is a long series of meetings followed by a sailboat race. 🙂 with that being said I have never had as much room as we do now to hold those meetings!

Tish and Dan Roske came to Valencia. It was a great but VERY BUSY 2 days. They arrived on Monday and we threw Dan out on the boat as 18th man. It started out to be a slow day with no wind and a return to the dock hold for an hour or so. The wind only came up to moderate but the racing against the Germans was HIGHLY intense. Dan has a bit of our boat to proove it.

Tuesday night we went to dinner and i flew out VERY early Wednesday morning. We went to a local restaurant the Docks and had a fair amount of wine — that is the excuse for the poor quality of photos 🙂 we also ran into some of the Swedish team and the Hockey trash talk got quite heated.

We had the challenger commission meetings in Milan at the beginning of last week. The last time I was in Milan was for one of my first meetings with America True and I became friends with Luis Sanez from Prada and we toured the city including the Cathedral and towards the end of the day, we ended up outside of La Scala. Of course there were no tickets we tried
to scalp them and then when that didn’t’ week – he said – well lets’ just try to get in for free — that didn’t’ work either 🙂

So as soon as I knew the schedule of the meetings in Milan, I looked on the web site and found that they were performing two very ‘odd’ operas. One essentially Saint Suzanne was a turn of the century (2 ago:-) German Opera that was scandalous and didn’t get performed for 40 years after it had been written. The other one was about Don Giovanni and his women. A little more traditional but both had a lot of death and sex.

Anyway I suggested that we shorten our dinner meetings and try to go. I had no idea that everyone would want to go but they ALL did. Even through we were in the TOP row – it was still pretty amazing.

Here are some pix of Caroline Cutler and me – Sheri Clyde, John and Caroline and the ‘bulk of the rest’ of the commission.