But I also had to be realistic -- and setting a goal like 'win the race' just isn't credible, ... So I said to the all-or-nothing guy, 'To finish first, first we have to finish. We have to sail smart. If we go for broke, sooner or later we'll blow up.'

In the last race, we discovered that each boat's performance had very little to do with sailing, ... It had much more to do with the leadership that we as skippers were exhibiting, and with our ability to develop the full potential of our teams. All of the skippers were extremely good yachtsmen. All of them excelled at managing the boat. But ultimately, the race is all about managing people.

Somerset is the only club that I ever wanted to ride for this year. Being left out of the team last season made me even more determined to get my team place back, and that was the motivating factor throughout last year.

No one was getting the whole picture, thank God, ... But confiding in each of them was the only way for me to handle the loneliness of command, which is very, very real.

But then I noticed two of the guys standing on the foredeck,

Mike and I barely talked during the race,

I won't do it. I've got a bad back.

Some of the other boats did everything exactly the same way, from start to finish. On our boat, there wasn't a single operation at the end of the race that we did the same way as in the beginning. You were learning, changing, and evolving all the time. If you weren't, you were dead.