Well, we are supposed to be racing now--everyone else is, but our boat is still stuck in customs in France. Another US team, Steve Hunt and Mike Miller, were picking the boats up in France and driving them to the regatta here in Italy. They flew over last Tuesday, March 16, and have spent a week trying to get the boats (see* note at end of message).
I'm sailing the next three regattas with Jonathan Farrar. Bob had to go back to school, but he will come over to France for the April 17 regatta in Hyeres. He gets out of school in May and then will be sailing full time. Jonathan Farrar is the same guy that took Bob's place in Sydney for the Pre-Olympic regatta last September. He has been sailing 470s for a long time.
It's sunny and about 65 degrees, with the wind blowing 10-20 knots out of the north. All of the Olympic class sailboats are racing here, and there are 40 men's 470 teams.
We will keep our fingers crossed that our boat shows up for tomorrow's racing.
Paul
Wednesday 24 March 1999 10:41 p.m.
Hello from Ansio, Italy.
We are still sitting on the dock; no racing again for us today. The boats are still in customs in France. Hopefully, we will get them tomorrow.
Another bright and sunny day here in Italy. All we can do is wait.
*** HELP *** We need some computer expertise. We have been trying to get our computer to connect to the Internet here in Italy, but our computer keeps saying, "NO DIAL TONE DETECTED." So it will not dial the AOL phone number. Do we have any suggestions out there?
This report is coming to you via fax, then is being retyped in e-mail for broadcast.
Paul
*Note from Team 2000 Campaign Manager: Steve Hunt is the US Sailing team member who is working with Paul on driving their 470s around Europe during the next four weeks. He also is supposed to be sailing in the "Roma Sail Week" regatta in Ansio, Italy. He has spoken with French port authorities more than he probably ever wanted to during the last eight days. He told me yesterday (March 22) in a phone call from France that the reason the USA container was not in the correct city two weeks ago (March 3 is when it arrived) was because there was no identifying paperwork attached to the container when it arrived in France.
The USA container was shipped from Australia with several other European teams' containers that all had the appropriate paperwork. The port authorities called a company named "Galax" regarding the European containers, but no one in France called US Sailing to report its arrival because they didn't know who to call.
When Steve and Mike showed up on March 17 and asked to get their boats out of the USA container, the port authorities said, "Oh, that's who this container belongs to!" Nothing was done with the container until Steve and Mike arrived, then 5-7 days worth of paperwork had to be completed--running into the start of a major regatta.
Meanwhile, Paul and Jonathan Farrar arrived in Italy, and now they are waiting for US Sailing to help clear their boat through customs so Steve and Mike can bring it to them.