The Adventure Begins

July 4, 2011

National Race Officer Jeff Zarwell, founder of RegattaPRO, is on the race committee for the America's Cup World Series. He files this report, which we hope will be the first of many.

I got into Cascais, Portugal, at about 1800 on Sunday, and had been up since 0600 Saturday morning your time (an eight-hour difference). The plane was sold out and my seat was broken and wouldn't recline, so trying to get any sleep was difficult. After 10 hours flying time from SFO to London, a two-hour layover, then a two+ hour flight to Cascais, I was tired.

Of course my clock was off, and at 2030 I was hungry so went to look for a place to eat. There's a square here, very Euro looking (gee, go figure), with at least 18-20 restaurants open and serving that late (I'm not in Southern Marin anymore). I perused menus and all looked pretty good, but I selected John Bull because of the crowd, and it turned out to be a great choice. I had squid tubes sautéed in olive oil with garlic and it was awesome. I ordered a glass of wine (I thought) and before I noticed what he was doing, the waiter had opened a bottle, so what was I to do? I drank it of course.

All the restaurants were quite busy up until about 0000, when it just started slowing down. Almost everyone speaks english, including the tourists, so no problems there. The only problem I had was that EVERYONE smokes. I looked around and saw at least one smoker at every table, not only at the restaurant where I was having dinner, but the two restaurants next to me as well. Guess I have to get used to that.

Some bad news: no ship is scheduled to come in today, so we've been given our first day off. My Droid isn't working here and neither is anyone's iPhone, so we're going to check on that today.

And the adventure continues…

- Jeff Zarwell