Growing up in the Midwest and spending most of my adult life in arid areas of the country, my knowledge of sailboats and sailing amounts to just about nil.

However, on the first day of the 2009 ‘Ohana Harbor Coffee Whidbey Island Race Week, I had the opportunity to be aboard the VIP boat captained by Chris Cowman from Seattle, who is an experienced sailor, and my knowledge of wind-propelled boating is now vastly improved.

Cowman said his boat, Christopher, is a Ponderosa 40 built in Taiwan and he has owned the vessel for 23 years. Powered by a single 200 horsepower Perkins diesel engine, the boat is stable and is ideal for cruising with a GPS system, depth finder, several radios and all the other equipment necessary for navigating on the ocean.

Cowman said he lives on the boat when he is not entered in sailing races, and the veteran skipper has raced all over the world.

Little or no wind was blowing on the first day of Race Week, so Cowman had Christopher moored in Coupeville after motoring down Penn Cove from Oak Harbor while race officials waited to see if the wind would come up so the race could commence.

Being moored for three hours gave the skipper plenty of time to spin tales of his adventures at sea, display photographs of boats he and his friends had designed and built by hand, and souvenirs he has collected from around the world.

Also aboard the VIP boat were Monica O’Connell and Joelle Hume, both from Calgary, Alberta, who described themselves as being “try hard wanna be sailors.”

Last year, the pair were members of the crew that sailed Tigger to victory during race week.

“That was the first time I’ve ever been on a sailboat,” Hume said.

O’Connell was a little more experienced, having sailed once before.

“I’m dating a sailor and the first time he had me out on a boat, it was a 10 hour race from Vancouver,” she said. “The waves were like eight-feet high and it was freezing.”

“We really didn’t know what we were doing last year, so we were just part of the rail crew. We were both bumped and bruised after every race,” Hume added.

This year the two friends opted not to be crew members on one of the racers.

“We had the opportunity to go out on the VIP boat and what could be better than that,” Hume said.

Cowman, the owner of Akli Beach Boats in Seattle where they sell Walker Bay boats, said he doesn’t sail in the Race Week competition as he is a “semi-professional” sailor.

In October he is headed for France to race and said he and a friend recently sailed from California to Panama where they spent a period of time on some of the smaller islands.

“The islands are actually an independent country, independent from Panama, and life there is very primitive,” he said.

Cowman said they do have schools, but they are very basic with things like atlases, crayola crayons and pencils, and toys for the children are almost non existent.

“The only thing I saw was a basketball,” he said.

Cowman said he did contribute to the childrens’ toy collection and Coupeville had a hand in it.

“We had four of those flying monkeys with rubber bands on them that scream when you shoot them that we bought from a novelty store in Coupeville, and the kids thought they were the greatest thing they’d ever seen,” he said. “The king ended up taking two of them so we called up to Coupeville and had them send another box down.”

Cowman said they sailed back through the Sea of Cortez and got caught up in the tail end of Hurricane Norman which got a little exciting for a time.

He has also sailed in races in the South Pacific and in many races around the east coast of the United States.

“I already retired once, so now I just take off and sail wherever and whenever I want and I have a good time skippering the VIP boat at Race Week,” he said.

The weather is predicted to dramatically improve as the week progresses, so look for the fleet to be in motion with their colorful sails furled in the next couple of days.