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Dinner with Jimmy at the Bitter End

A smile can’t get much broader. Spithill gives a thumbs-up after winning AC 34.

© 2014 ACEA / Gilles Martin-Raget

After the seven-days-a-week effort put out by Oracle Team USA team members to win AC 34, we’re not surprised to hear that helmsman Jimmy Spithill is taking a littlle well-earned R&R in the British Virgin Islands this week. He and Antigua-based OTUSA trimmer Shannon Falcone will be honored guests at Virgin Gorda’s famous Bitter End Yacht Club Thursday for a special America’s Cup celebration and dinner. Our intrepid Caribbean reporter Lynn Ringseis will be on site with her ears open for clues about the prospective dates, venue and format for AC 35 — and to get her picture taken while cozying up two her idols, of course.

If you’re lucky enough to be in the part of the Caribbean this week, we suggest you join the fun too — but book a table ASAP, as seating is extremely limited. (For reservations call: 284-494-2746, or e-mail here.)

The boys will also be ‘tag-team’ SUP racing next Saturday in the Soggy Dollar Painkiller Cup, from Trellis Bay, Beef Island to the Soggy Dollar Bar at White Bay, Jost Van Dyke (roughly 14 miles). Each team will be made up of three paddlers, one of whom must be female, with a fresh paddler rotating in on the same board every 30 minutes. Yup, sounds like fun! And cash prizes are offered, with the winner taking home $5,000. If you can’t make it this year, put it on your calendar for 2015, as organizers plan to make this an annual event. 

The biggest guy gets to hold the champagne. That would be Antiguan Shannon Falcone, who’ll do a different sort of racing this week in the BVI.

© 2014 ACEA / Gilles Martin-Raget

Our money is on Shannon, by the way, as he is an impressive paddler who’s more or less in his home waters. He’s the son of Carlo Falcone, who developed Antigua’s swank Falmouth Harbour Marina. A million years ago, this writer had the pleasure of racing with Carlo a few times aboard his hard-chined plywood sloop Caccia alla Volpe — which was a very tough boat to beat thanks to Carlo’s skills and the boat’s favorable rating.

Carlo is Italian and he typically raced with a very international coed crew back then: Brits, Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards and occasionally an American. It still makes us smile when we think of tense moments like spinnaker take-downs when everyone would start screaming in their own native language. What a hoot! Anyway, we’d bet Shannon got his start in sailing aboard that legendary boat — and it proved to be his launchpad to the highest echelons of the sport!

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