World Cup Soccer 2010 - Las Vegas style.

A hardy group of soccer (aka "football") fans filled up the best locations in Las Vegas for the 2010 World Cup finals. This picture was shot at the sports book in The Mirage. Although not exactly a standing-room only crowd, the fans were loud and boisterous. Unfortunately, the Dutch loss although both teams played an exciting game.

KIVA is "on the hard" for hurricane season.

After stripping everything off the boat to prevent hurricane damage during the summer, we pulled her out of the water at then end of May in Jolly Harbour, Antigua. She will stay there in her cradle until the end of October when we return for another season of cruising in the eastern Caribbean. In the meantime, we flew to St. Kitts to spend the month of June in our home there.

The last race of our Caribbean racing season.

"Saphaedra", a 1965 Nielsen ketch rounding the upwind mark.

After the Bucket Regatta in St. Barts, we sailed down to our favorite regatta - Antigua Classic Race Week. Unlike Heineken (where anyone can race) or the Bucket Regatta (where only a few boats can race since owners need huge wallets and huge yachts) the Classic is a bit different. All the racing boats must have traditional appearance and rigs. There are many older, beautiful designs such as the huge J Class boats from the 30's down to the the smaller, recently island-built Carriacou sloops. As with the other regattas there where lots of opportunities to meet old and new friends during the social events. Next: over to Barbuda for a week or so and then getting the boat ready for the summer.

Racing Season is Upon Us!

Mega yachts moored at night at quay in St. Barts

March this year was very busy with two well known regattas in the Caribbean. In early March, the 30th year Heineken Regatta kicked off in Simpson Bay Lagoon in St. Maarten (the Dutch side). We enjoyed the parties and the races, especially the morning we spent on a "chase boat" to see the racers close-up and round the marks. At the end of March, we sailed over to St. Barts (Sainte-Barthelemy, in French) to watch the Bucket Regatta. As opposed to the Heineken, the Bucket Regatta is specifically for mega-yacht sailboats. There were 39 sailboats, 35 of them over 100 feet and most of them were on the quay in the harbor of Gustavia. Every morning it would take several hours to carefully unwrap all the anchor chains of all the boats before they could get to the starting line (it required the help of several divers to manage the underwater ballet of anchors). It was a beautiful sight to see these enormous sailboats under full sail racing around the island. This time we did not have a chase boat, so Terri and I went out to the start and finishing lines in our dinghy to take pictures. It really gives you a sense of the size of these over-100 foot boats sailing past you at over 13 knots.