YOU TOO CAN SAIL AN AMERICA'S CUP WINNER
How to Spend a Great Day in St. Maarten

"First gear - go, go, stop. Second gear - go, go, go, stop. Third gear - go go Go Go GO GO!"
I was in St. Maarten racing on a sailboat that had raced in the America's Cup.
The winds were at 25 knots -- typical in the Caribbean waters of  St. Maarten -- and we were 5 minutes before the start of the race when the mainsail blew out with a loud rip. It took only minutes to get us into another boat, and then we were racing again. I was on True North, and we were racing against Stars & Stripes, the incredible racing machine that won back the America's Cup
in Fremantle, Australia, in 1987. All this happened as a shore excursion option on a cruise I had taken on the wonderful old classic ship the S.S. Norway.

Anyone who is a sailor and who is on St. Maarten should treat themselves to the experience. The St. Maarten 12 Metre Regatta is available to anyone on vacation on the island or as a shore excursion option by all cruise ships stopping at St. Maarten.  Or you can come down to St. Maarten just for the 12 metre sailing experience. A a new package, the St. Maarten 12 Metre Challenge, is being offered by owner Colin Percy for persons to come down for a week to be immersed in the experience with a week of racing a series of match races  on the 12s, with time in between for swimming, sunning, shopping, and partying on this half Dutch half French island. This program is available to individuals, couples or to "rival" yacht clubs to come down and compete against each other in a series of races. Another new package, the St. Maarten Corporate Challenge, offers team-building and problem-solving to groups of corporate executives.

It was 1987 when 27 of the sleek multimillion dollar specially designed 12 Metre boats raced in the America's Cup, with Star & Stripes sailed by Dennis Conner taking back the trophy for the U.S. after it had been won by Australia at Newport in 1983. This was the last America's Cup in which the 12 metres competed. The idea to buy some 12 metres came at a beach party during 1989's Antigua race week where Colin Percy and friends were enjoying racing Nonsuches. A Toronto businessman who had been a sailor since childhood, Percy and his wife Jill opened a small charter business in St. Maarten with a fleet of  Nonsuch sailboats. Then came the 12-metre idea. After  months of planning and negotiating they were able to buy Canada 2 and True North and ship them to St. Maarten. After refurbishing and some modifications for safety, the boats, and the Percys, now "retired" took up their new life in the Caribbean in 1990. Later True North IV  joined the fleet, and in 1994 Dennis Conner agreed to Percy acquiring the 1987 America's Cup winner Stars & Stripes '87.  It wasn't all easy.  Hurricane Luis with 235 mile per hour winds in 1995 sunk Canada 2, True North and True North IV,  and put Stars & Stripes on the beach with a hole in her hull. But the damage was repaired, and all four boats were back in action by February 1996. They are now joined by a fifth 12, Dennis Conner's alternate boat in Fremantle,  Stars & Stripes '86, making the five the largest fleet of modern 12s in the world.

Typical races are with up to 30 guests racing in two teams on a shortened America's Cup course. A skipper and two professional crew members command each boat with guests timing, grinding, handling lines, and doing other tasks as the two boats maneuver around the course. And it's not just playing around. We
jockeyed for best position at the red flag start, worked at stealing wind, studied the wind and the rights of way, and at one point sliced within 2 feet of each other at top speed maneuvering around a course marker. Oh, by the way, she says modestly, we beat Stars & Stripes.
  Notes: The America's Cup, one of the oldest sporting trophies in the world,  has been the premier challenge of yachtsmen since 1851.  The 12 metre boats were specifically designed at the cost of millions of dollars for  the last of the 12 metre America's Cup races hotly contested in 1987 in Australia. The 12 metre designation, by the way, refers not to the length, but to a formula involving length, freeboard, and sail area. The 12 metre racers are actually about 70 feet long. The masts are 86 feet high, and they weigh about 35 tons. The St. Maarten mini-races are a shortened America's Cup course, taking about three hours.
-- by Shirley Linde, a best-selling author with 37 books to her credit and one
of the writers for our website. You can order her books on our Travel
Bookstore.