SAN FRANCISCO—Anytime Paul Cayard gets homesick for sailing a Volvo 70 on the edge in the Southern Ocean he can step out for a similar rush on an 18-foot skiff on his hometown San Francisco Bay.

“I actually did sail one of these here back in ’79 or ’80,” Cayard said as he chatted with competitors on Crissy Field after Day 2 of the 18′ Skiff International Regatta. “It was wild.”

Cayard stopped by at the prodding of his son Danny, 16, currently a youth sailor who like most competitors his age is more attracted to the wild side of sailing than to the sedate Star keelboats his father has sailed most of his life.

That’s the direction a teenage peer, Samuel (Shark) Kahn, 17, has taken, not only with his Olympic aspirations in the 49er skiff but early success in the 18s, where he swapped first-place finishes with veteran Howard Hamlin Wednesday on another blustery day on the Bay.

Hamlin, from Long Beach, Calif., won the first race and followed Kahn in the second race for a 1-2 day that moved him past Australia’s John Winning (2-3) into first place overall with four races remaining. Hamlin has eight points, Winning nine, and Kahn is right there with 10 after discarding an earlier fifth place when the first of two discards kicked in Thursday.

Friday’s action includes the 6 o’clock Bridge to Bridge classic—five miles from the Golden Gate to the Bay Bridge, with a flock of windsurfers and kite boarders joining the fun. The 18s will tune up with one of their usual nine-mile buoy races at 4 p.m., three times around a 1 1/2-mile long windward-leeward course along the bay front.

Two boats will be sailing with their 10-foot-long bowsprits repaired or replaced. Grant Rollerson’s DeLonghi and Peter Barton’s West Marine both limped back to the beach during the second race after their extensions snapped.

If the brisk winds continue—during Thursday’s racing it peaked at 32 knots near Angel Island on the north side of the course and 24 at the leeward mark—the Bridge to Bridge should be a spectacle.

Kahn’s Pegasus Black craft had capsized three times in the first two days but Paul Allen, Kahn’s forward crew, figured they’ve now found the secret to success.

“Keeping this big black stick in the air,” he said, referring to the mast. “Once you get in the lead, if you stay upright you usually stay there.”

Kahn followed Hamlin and Winning in the first race but blew off the starting line in the second, soon tacked to cross the fleet on port tack and never looked back. Allen, who trims the spinnaker, played a key role.

“Downwind you really feel the pressure of the spinnaker,” he said. “You’re the throttle guy. If it gets scary I pull the kite in to stall it and that slows the boat down a little bit. It feels like your arms have been pulled off by the end of the day, but I like being up front. It’s a good view from up there.”

Hamlin had his own “18 moment.” After running away to finish 2 minutes 12 seconds ahead of Winning in the first race, he had to scramble for second place in the second race.

“We had a nuclear puff on the second [downwind] run and just blew by people,” he said. I was doing something I’d never done before: holding the tiller with two hands.”

Almost like the Southern Ocean.

This is one of the class’s three major events each year, along with the JJ Giltinan World Trophy Championship in Sydney and the European champion held last June on Lake Garda in Italy.

Position: 58,34.43N , 6,29.32W

Speed: 11 knots, Course: 39 deg.

We are finally moving again. We have been slating for the past six hours up here at a place called “The Butt of Lewis”. That says it all.

After so much high intensity sailing, 30000 miles around the world, this leg has been agonizingly slow for all the teams. The fleet has managed to sail 800 miles in 5 days. Not a good average for Volvo 70’s. We have not gotten one splash on the deck in 5 days.

In conditions like these, you have all kinds of situations where the wind magically evaporates, or shifts 90 degrees in the opposite direction it was trending for the previous hour, etc. Last night we also managed to snag two crab pots; we had to back down to free ourselves of one and the other eventually ripped off.

More disturbingly and importantly, we don’t seem to have good speed in light air. That is hard to believe because the Farr boats are supposed to be fast in light air but we haven’t been. I would say it is new to us also as we are usually good in light air. But this leg has been extraordinarily flat seas, and has been good for a true upwind Code 0 fractional sail and a masthead spinnaker that is very straight on the luff so it acts as a big genoa. Both of our sails in those categories are much more all around than the one’s of our competitors which are slanted more for the light conditions.

So it has been a long leg for us battling away in a position that we are not used to being in after the last few very successful legs. We just have to tough it out and do the best we can which is what we are doing.

Yesterday, ABN Amro One went through the fleet in 14 knots down wind like we were all on 60 footers. Sailed past us so fast we thought we had weed on the keel, (luckily we did not back down) and then she sailed right up to Brasil1, who was six miles ahead of us, and straight on past them. It must be nice to ride around on a rocket like that! It almost seems that the ABN boats are better in smooth seas than in rough and that is minimizing the fact that they are wide and should be slow in this light air.

By now you probably know that the Volvo Ocean Race Committee has shortened this leg. We are well overdue for our arrival in Rotterdam. At this point in time, even with the leg shortened by approximately 140 miles, we will still not arrive in Rotterdam until Saturday afternoon. The in port race is scheduled for Saturday 1300. We have not been informed of the “what if’s” on that one.

Brasil1 and Ericsson have maintained their lead on us and the “Second group” which includes ABN Amro Two and Brunel. We haven’t been able to catch the first group although we can see them every now and then which keeps us hopeful.

With the new course, we now have to pass through a narrow cannel at the top of Scotland that is about 2.5 miles wide. It is just to the north of 1000 meter mountains and the gradient wind direction is supposed to be South.

Further, there is a lot of current flowing through this cut so it will be important to be lucky here on the timing of our arrival. Our ETA as of now is 0400 Thursday.

>From there we have 450 miles to Rotterdam. The forecast is for light southerly breezes which means sailing upwind, tacking back and forth down the west side of the same high pressure system that plagued the fleet on the way out to Ireland.

Hopefully my in-laws, who live near Gothenburg Sweden, are getting some nice weather out of these poor sailing conditions.

We have been rationing our food for a few days now. We have just one meal a day. Ww have a few snacks and hot drinks to augment the one meal. We are not getting overly grumpy yet, but it is not the normal happy crowd.

I just came back to the nav station after helping change the spinnaker. The wind has died to 4 knots again.

Looks like another slow time coming up.

Paul Cayard

Pirates of the Caribbean

This series did not end the way we had planned. The score told the story of an unbelievably tough regatta; the most competitive series of match racing ever staged in the America’s Cup. Our comeback from 3-1 and the broken mast, were answered by Prada’s comeback from facing a double match point. Each team bore its heart and soul several times throughout the twelve-day ordeal. But in the ninth and final race, Prada had the upper hand. We are very disappointed. We don’t accept defeat easily…in fact we take it on the chin. It is personal and the sting won’t be forgotten soon with the AmericaOne Team.

However, there is a lot to be proud of and much of this has been pointed out by people like you in the past few days. AmericaOne was the best team in the USA and came very close to beating the best that the world had to offer. It is a fact that Prada spent twice the money and time that we did toward the same goal. So how did we get so close? People, organization, determination, and passion. We had the best group that I have ever worked with in a Cup and it was an honor to have them commit to our campaign. No one came to work at AmericaOne for the money. They came out of respect for the group we had assembled and the belief in those people and their determination. This is the most satisfying compliment I have ever had and I want to once again thank every member of AmericaOne for their effort and commitment.

Also, we would never have gotten where we were without our corporate partners, many of whom are world leaders in their industry. What and honor to have the support and confidence of Ford Motor Company, Global Integrity, Hewlett-Packard, Intessa, SAIC, Telcordia Technologies, United Technologies, Visteon, Network Solutions, Lycos and Charles Schwab! Most of these companies had a very direct involvement in the technical program of AmericaOne and truly made a difference in our boat speed at the end of the day. AmericaOne was the only US team to gather over $20M of corporate support.

Our private donors are also very near and dear to us. Many come from the St. Francis Yacht Club, where I grew up in the junior program in the 70’s. Thanks to the leadership of Larry and Jan Finch, Fritz and Lucy Jewett and Tom and Alexa Seip, the Founders’ Club generated $8M. Much of this money came early and allowed us to make commitments to key people in 1996 and begin technical work that requires long lead time. The “seed” money concept of a start-up company was the model we used and it too was a critical piece of our puzzle.

What went right? Too much to list but I want to mention a few highlights:

* Bruce Nelson and his technical team did an awesome job of coordinating the efforts of 40 plus people, many of them representatives of our sponsors, and produced two excellent boats in USA 49 and USA 61. Prada was designed by the man who designed the Kiwi boat in 1995, so they had a strong starting point and an open checkbook for the past three years. We were basically equal to their performance…that was a big wall we scaled technically!

* The corporate sponsors made a selection from a field of six candidates in the USA and chose AmericaOne. We delivered on our prediction that we would be the best team from America. This is important to me because talk was cheap in 1997 but the proof is in the results.

* AmericaOne also set the standard for corporate fulfillment in the sport of sailing. It was an important goal of mine that we provide a valuable commercial experience for our corporate partners and I believe we have succeeded in this.

* I know that our private donors, who made the trip down to New Zealand, really enjoyed the America’s Cup experience and I am happy they could see first hand how the team operates. We had all our private supporters with us in name on the inside of the boat, another personal touch that I am proud of.

* Bob Billingham and his staff set up outstanding operational facilities both in Long Beach, CA and Auckland, NZ and did it very cost effectively.

* Everyone on the team, from the crew to the shore team, from accounting to food and housing approached their jobs as a competition with the individuals who held similar jobs on other teams.

* Time and again, after mistakes were made, we looked ourselves in the mirror honestly, made adjustments and came out the next day hitting on all cylinders. This is a critical trait for any successful team; and AmericaOne has it!

What went wrong? We did not win.

* Time was probably our biggest enemy. Construction of USA 61 was delayed when a sponsor withdrew. Our team operated for just over one year. Our competition operated for three years and was sailing their race boats for six months.

* A bit too much on the key peoples plates. Trying to stay lean at the outset meant a management structure that was small and probably overloaded.

Where do we go from here?

I have been overwhelmed by the e-mails and faxes of encouragement during the past 48 hours. Even though life for us these days is disappointing it seems that there is a large amount of respect for what we have achieved and an equally large amount of support for the continuation of AmericaOne. This is helping us recover.

I believe that after the appropriate digestive period, AmericaOne may challenge for the Cup again. We don’t give up easily and what we have built should be added to, not left to flounder. The assets we have are top quality and completely unencumbered. We have run a program that is flush…no debt. We have a very experienced team that should stay together. We must start very soon as all this talent can quickly disperse. I would like to think of the next few months as a well-deserved break between chapters rather than the end of a book.

I believe that we always handled ourselves professionally with class and dignity. These are traits, which are larger than any one of these events and are very important to me. It has been an honor and pleasure to represent all of you, our corporate partners, the St. Francis Yacht Club, and America. I thank you for this opportunity.

Race Seven Postponed For a Day – No Wind on the Hauraki Gulf

After two consecutive days of thrilling racing in the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals, the weather conspired to put Race Seven on hold. The Hauraki Gulf was flat, and no wind disturbed the calm seas through the afternoon. Race Director Vince Cooke had the boats wait on the race course for one hour before abandoning the race until tomorrow (Friday).

The best of nine Louis Vuitton Cup Final series is tied