The day I nearly met a king

The TP52 class has a high percentage of owner drivers and the Worlds was an owner-driver regatta (Coutts might have been on the winning Artemis, but his owner was driving).

Another owner in the fleet was the King of Norway, Harald V. Or Harry to the boys.
(Above - the King's boat in Porto Cervo).

A small side story. Doug, the owner of the Windquest, told us a story of when he met the King at an earlier regatta. Not knowing who he was at the time, Doug went up to him and introduced himself as "Doug deVos, from Michigan"....the King replied "Harry, from Norway"...as you would.

Anyway, one day in Sardinia, the Windquest got into a little incident with the Fram (Harry's boat) during which a small amount of damage was incurred to both boats - a little more to the Fram. In the interests of good sportsmanship the Windquest team helped work all night to fix both boats, and the next day after the race, a few of us aboard the tender traveled across the marina with Doug to deliver some rum, beers and to check that all was ok.

Pulling alongside the Indy to collect the beverages.

So we headed over to the Norge - the King's boat - pulled alongside. One of the lackies appeared and Doug headed onboard with the bag of goodies. One minute later he pops his head out the door and waves us all up to meet the King.

Now this is where the antipodean, colony-minded, class-structured Kiwi's internal voice goes "King, King...I grew up in Weedons and the closest I got to royalty was watching the Queen's message on tele each Christmas...I'm not worthy to meet Kings". So I begged..."no, no I'm fine" - while the 2-3 other Americans on the tender (other than my husband) bounded off the boat, quick as look at your, beer in hand "off to meet the King".

So Robbie and I sat on the tender going "that was sooooo dumb, why did we do that"....

The reports were he was very cool and very funny.

It was the last day of racing, so we headed back to the Indy for copious quantities of rum and coke and lots more stories...

The next morning it was up early and off to the airport for the "trip" home. The lack of security line was pretty fab - and I got to sit up front for take off...