Finding my Affinity

Murphy was a Meteorologist Spielberg and a cast of notables comb...

Finding my Affinity

My Rolex Ride

by Christine Kling

Last week I wrote about my first couple of days down in the US Virgin Islands as part of the press corps at the 39th Annual International Rolex Regatta, and how pleased I was to have found my boat. Little did I know just how much I was jumping the gun. Actually finding the boat turned out to be the greatest challenge of the entire trip.

The first day of racing, I was already committed to going out on the press boat, so I wandered down the dock with the rest of the crew and climbed aboard our sweet ride – a lovely little Hinkley picnic boat. The St. Thomas Yacht Club really knows how to treat the press right. Captain Benji was our skipper. That first day as we were racing to keep pace with the lead boats on the spinnaker run down the south coast of St. Thomas, I asked Benji what our speed was. We were doing 16 knots and the lead boats were running away from us! My heart was racing from the excitement of watching the awesome display of talent and power, and I couldn't wait until I could get on a boat and sail.

That night our hosts took us out to dinner at the Old Stone Farmhouse where they invited our entire party back into the kitchen to meet the chef and check out the many fresh and unusual items the menu. I ordered a combination of bison and Italian sea bass in a Thai curry sauce. Honestly, I think it was the best meal I've ever had in my life. After a fantastic meal and good company, I went back to the hotel determined that I would sail the next day.

My contact at the yacht club had told me that the Swan 48 Affinity docked at Red Hook, so early the next morning, I got dropped off outside American Yacht Harbor and began combing the docks looking for a black hulled Swan. No luck. Finally, I asked at the fuel dock and they told me that she had never returned to her slip the night before. They pointed to the empty slip and the dock lines and power cords. Clearly, the notorious party boat had decided to anchor out for the night. I called our driver and got a ride back to the yacht club and though I asked every launch driver, none of them were willing to drive me out to Christmas Cove where Affinity was anchored. Finally, I joined Benji and the rest of the press crew back on the Hinkley and we took off for another fabulous afternoon of shooting photos of the race off the south coast of St. John. But I really wanted to sail.

Sunday was the last day of racing, so I got to the yacht club early and managed to convince a nice young man with a fast dinghy to run me out to Christmas Cove. I saw a dark hulled boat, but as we approached the stern, the name was not Affinity. We checked all the boats in the crowded anchorage, but she wasn't there. Clearly, she had returned to her dock for the night. I apologized profusely for making him run me all the way out there for nothing, and when he dropped me back at the yacht club pier, I raced through the clubhouse. I found a taxi dropping off some crew members at the front door.

The Affinity crew

Breathless, I opened the passenger door and asked if he could take me to American Yacht Harbor. He got me up the hill and over the ridge and dropped me off outside the marina. This time, I knew where her slip was, and as I trotted down the dock, I saw a young man untying her lines.

"Affinity!" I called. "I'm Christine, the reporter who is supposed to sail with you!" And that was how I found Jack Drummond, the owner, and was invited aboard the "party boat." We motored out over to the yacht club and picked up the rest of the crew – almost a dozen of whom were gorgeous young women. While I might have thought I would get blender duty, in fact, as Jack assembled his crew for a pre-race pep talk, he said, "On Affinity, we like to have fun, but we take our racing seriously because the most fun of all is to win." I was assigned to join the all female "rail meat" crew, and I spent the next several hours sitting on the rail and scrambling over lines and winches to the other side every time the skipper called for a tack.