Mary,

I talked to Mike a few weeks ago (he was very easy to contact). The main sponsor he had lined up to support the 2003 event pulled out very late in the game - I'd guess sometime in late February or early March. I say this because he hired me to write about the event for his Web site and help produce a book/marketing piece for future events. At first he was eager to have me put this project together and expenses were not a big deal for him. I was charging him a premium fee and he was covering my travel and meals. By March he would not return my calls and would not return a signed copy of the contract. Though I canceled several stories to take on the 2003 Worrel and ultimately realized a loss in terms of foregone income, I never saw a penny from Mike. There's no way of knowing how the entry fees were spent, but it's naive to think there was much left by the time he pulled the plug. I think probably some of it went to pay old debt because he was counting on the new sponsor to cover a big chunk of the 2003 expenses. When it didn't come through, Mike was screwed and so were all the sailors. Most businessmen plan for the worst possible scenario. Either Mike didn't see this as a possibility or he just chose not to look. Either way he is a fool and as I said in an earlier post is suffering far worse than any of the sailors who lost time and money preparing for the event.

Look at it from his point of view: He was the race, the race was him. It was his entire ego wrapped up in one annual event. When he sees a chance to make this one of the greatest sailboat races on Earth, it's easy to understand how is already inflated ego would blind him to the downside of putting all his faith in one sponsor. To believe that he would throw away his entire life for the entry fees just makes no sense.

Let me pose a question to sailors signed up for the 2003 event. If Mike had come to you before canceling the race and honestly laid out what had happened (sponsor pulled out jepardizing the race, etc.) and asked everyone to pay their way with hotels and rental cars in addition to the original fee, would you have done it to save the event?