The Virgin Islands Housing Authority Youth Steel Orchestra will be playing at Havensite Mall today to celebrate the first big cruise ship day. Check out the band as they "Celebrate All That's Good in Public Housing."

Another good week of training and preparation here in New Zealand as we get ready to start racing in the Challenger Series for the America's Cup on October 18. In another classic example of the variable weather in this country, we started the week with a little rain, hail and temperatures between 35 and 50 degrees, and then ended the week with some beautiful sunny days in the 70's. Really amazing! If you could have seen me riding to the gym on my bicycle at 5:15 a.m. when it was 38 degrees, you would have been convinced this island boy had lost his mind! To go along with this wild weather, we had winds of 35 knots for the first half of the week, then 0-5 midweek, and a nice 10-15 at the end of the week. They say here that if you don't like the weather, wait a minute, because it will change!
One major accomplishment for us this week was completing the measurement process. The measurement period started on September 18 and each team must go through an elaborate process of weighing, measuring, floating on its lines, etc. all before the racing starts. This is a tricky time where your custom designed and built machine must all fall within the precise rule limits and minimums. If something doesn't measure as calculated, many days can be lost to first modify and then get another appointment for the measurer's to re-check. We were the first team to sign up and in another great sign of our team of designers, builders, and project managers, it went incredibly smooth. So this was a great hurdle for us to cross and now we can focus on just sailing, testing, and the race ahead.
We took advantage of these measurement days to do some match race training. Since we only have a one-boat Cup program, we need to sharpen our match racing skills by some other means, so we borrowed two 30 foot Etchels and spent two days match racing. We assembled two teams using the primary trimmers and afterguard and had two great days of focusing on the rules and maneuvers particular to match racing.
Once the big boat, USA 55, was reassembled, we spent the next several days testing and tuning. All went well, nothing broke, and we gathered valuable new information on getting the boat to perform at its peak potential.
As for the competition, everything is cranking up. All the teams and their boats have now arrived. The two Japanese boats are being assembled and should be sailing by next week. They have covered the corners, going with one wide boat and one narrow. The French boat is extremely narrow and should be sailing next week. Both of these teams have decided to follow our lead and not cover their underbody. The Swiss boat appears the most radical, having a canard rudder in the front of the boat as well as the rudder in the back. This theory has been proven to work in airplanes but has had limited success on boats. The Italian boats have arrived but are hidden inside their sheds. New York's second boat arrived, as did AmericaOne from San Francisco. The two Hawaiian boats are still in their shed with lots of work being done to get them sailing in time. Spain was the newest arrival on the race course this week, so we had seven Cup boats all tuning up one day which was pretty exciting.
I have attached a special photo. In-house we have titled it "The First Crossing"; our USA 55 crossing 5 feet in front of Team New Zealand's new boat one day when we were both out testing. We can now take credit as being the first team to cross ahead of the Defenders new boat!!
Peter Holmberg

It's probable that months of practice under a blazing sun won't be in vain for the Charlotte Amalie High School tackle football team.
Although there is no official green light yet, CAHS tackle football coach Robert Massey is confident that the boys will play their opening game against the St Thomas private school team as planned on Oct. 1 at Lionel Robert's Stadium.
The coming tackle football season has been in jeopardy due to lack of insurance for contact sports.
Massey said he's confident the funds for the insurance will come from the private sector.
Practice came to a halt Tuesday when CAHS principal Jeanette Smith was informed by the Interscholastic Athletic Association that the players were not insured.
IAA, the governing entity for school sports, must pay up to $25,000 to add tackle football on the insurance policy that normally is $2500, according to a Daily News article.
Sen. Donald "Ducks" Cole, a former football player of Massey's and a supporter of tackle football's comeback, has since found several options for insurance.
According to Cole, Banker's Life School Insurance already covers the players up to $10,000 and a policy for up to $50,000 can be written for $100 per person.
The Police Athletic Association has offered to insure the players, but teams would have to be renamed as PAL teams.
Massey is confident of the boys' ability to play well in the coming season. They began football drills combined with weight training last spring.
In addition to being faithful to football practice the 29 players may not have any grades under 70, according to Massey, a former college ball player himself. He coached tackle football in St Thomas from 1972 until 1987 when the sport was discontinued.

We have just concluded another successful week of training here in Auckland. The weather has given us a little bit of everything, from absolutely beautiful clear days to cold and rain. It is truly a beautiful place, on the good days!The wind has been averaging 15-20 each day, with only an occasional light air day. This has given us the ability to do good testing in breeze, but not much in the light air range. Everything continues to go well for us, with very few setbacks and much valuable sailing time to test.
At this stage of the campaign our focus is on testing, physical fitness, and gathering weather information. Practice and crew training will happen naturally during the course of testing. The testing is necessary for two reasons – to learn some of the unknown systems, which we are testing for the first time, and to squeeze that final 10% in performance from the known systems by making fine adjustments.
Examples of some testing would be mast rake, rudder angle, trim tab angle, and sail crossover points. The rake testing has us adjusting the forestay length to test moving the sail plan forward or backwards over the boat at various degrees, then analyzing the rudder angle and speed to learn how the boat is best balanced. The trim tab is a flap attached to the back of the keel, like the flap on an airplane wing. It is only allowed in America's Cup boats so there is a great deal to learn about this tool which allows you to add more lift to the keel and minimize the sideways sliding which all boats do. And finally the sail testing requires us to tune the mast differently to get different mainsail shapes, and then change genoas and spinnakers in different wind ranges to see where each one begins to be outperformed by the next bigger or smaller one as the wind builds or drops, known as the cross-over points. Although much of this is still learned through feel and sight, we now have precise instruments and computers onboard which measure everything and allow us to review the data to help confirm those times when the boat performed it's best.
During this whole process several of us are dialed in to the wind and weather so that we can become more and more accustomed to the patterns in this region. The Hauraki gulf where we are sailing is a big bay surround by a few islands, making it one large sound with very changing wind and weather patterns. This will make it a very tricky place to sail and predict the wind shifts.
In terms of the other syndicates, the team who has been out almost as much as we have is Team New Zealand, testing their new boat against their '95 boat with a large wing mast. The next most active team is America True who test their new yellow boat against the '95 TAG. New York has only managed two days on the water this past week, spending the rest of the time in their shed fixing some apparent problems. Spain is about one day from launching their boat, which looks very different with a rocked up bow and pretty wide hull.
Hawaii is still a few days away from sailing, their two boats only visible through their shed door. The French and Japanese teams have been seen around but their boats have not arrived as yet. The Swiss boat was flown in on Monday aboard a massive Russian aircraft but is being worked on at a boatyard out of town.
The Viaduct Village is one of the nice things about this cup. The New Zealand Government created this new harbor right in the center of town and each team has leased a site where they construct a boat shed, offices, sail loft, and entertainment area for sponsors. It has created a great atmosphere where the teams are all located in one central place where the public can come, walk around and see all the teams and their boats. It is now only 29 days until the first race of the challenger Series when all these years and millions of dollars in research and testing will be tested against each other.

In a combination concert and fund-raiser the V.I. Housing Authority Youth Steel Orchestra gave a midday concert in front of Emancipation Garden Post Office Saturday.
This was the first concert for some of the band members who joined up over the summer and at the beginning of the school year. The band played a wide variety of tunes from carnival favorites to classical and pop radio hits. The concert was a magnet for tourist cameras on Saturday, and almost every passing islander gave words or waves of encouragement.
According to Laverne Issacc, the band coordinator, membership is limited to young people ages 10 to 18, who are residents of public housing. The band is based at the Oswald Harris Court Community Center.
When band members were asked why they joined the group, the primary response was, "For the fun of it!"; although young Avinel Woodstock said he was drafted for his playing skills, an opinion disputed by several of his nearby peers.
Issacc said, "We are offering tutorials to help the kids with school work from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., then band practice runs from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m."
At practice time Nyere Francis and Donald Herbert divide instruction and musical director duties.
The band, whose motto is ‘Celebrating All that's Good in Public Housing', is part of V.I. Housing Authority's anti-drug initiative. Although primarily sponsored by the Housing Authority, Issacc also credited the V.I. Community Foundation and Chase Manhattan Bank with contributing much needed funds.
The next concert by the V.I.H.A. Youth Steel Orchestra is at Havensite Mall on October 30, followed by a concert at Tutu Park Mall on November 26, the day after Thanksgiving.

Delegate Donna Christian-Christensen joined U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) in meeting with heads of Caribbean and Central American nations in Washington Friday to discuss the strategy for passage of the Caribbean Basin Initiative enhancement bill and the proposed Africa Growth and Opportunity Act now before Congress.
Present were Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Basdeo Panday; Presidents Miguel Angel Rodriguez of Costa Rica, Roberto Flores of El Salvador, Francisco Flores of Honduras, Alvaro Arzu of Guatemala and Leonel Fernandes of the Dominican Republic; and Vice President Enrique Bolanos of Nicaragua. Other nations were represented by their ambassadors and/or foreign ministers.
Christian-Christensen said the regional leaders lamented the fact that, as the heads of stable democracies that have long been partners with the United States, they had in essence to come "begging to the U.S. for this small concession."
Passage of the CBI bill is important to the Virgin Islands, too, the delegate stated in a release, as it includes a provision to lift the cap on the rum cover-over for the last quarter of this year. "I recognize that this is only for one quarter, and that it mean just $3 million to $4 million,"
she said, "but we need any funds that we can get, and the precedent is critical to our getting the cover-over lifted permanently."
She expressed hope that the U.S. Senate will take the bill up in the next two weeks and then go to conference with the House to resolve differences in the versions approved.
The Friday meeting and "the lobbying that is taking place by these leaders" is helpful to the passage of both bills, she said.

Thanks to quick thinking and "prudent action," Jeff Fangmann is alive, well and dry after his 27-foot sailboat sank 10 miles north of Buck Island Saturday morning.
"He was really sharp," said Lieut. Commander Robert Mokowsky, who flew the Coast Guard helicopter that located Fangmann.
If Fangmann hadn't had the good sense to bring his hand-held radio with him, he would have been a lot harder to find, Mokowsky said.
Fangmann also threw water, flares and his life jacket into a 9-foot fiberglass dinghy.
Fangmann was on his way to St. Thomas aboard his J-27 sailboat El Shaddai. He left St. Croix at about 2:30 a.m. under an almost full moon. The 43-year-old father of two was enjoying a quick trip and watching the sky get light when things changed for the worse.
"I was doing over eight knots, surfing down a wave, when I hit something and the boat just stopped dead, " Fangmann told the Source. "I was thrown forward so hard it took me a few seconds to get my thoughts together."
Fangmann then went below, where he found the keel supports on the J-27 broken, the keel shaking, and the boat taking on water. He said he could still see St. Croix so he turned the boat around and headed back home. But as the boat continued to take on water, he knew he was going to have to abandon it.
He got the dinghy untied from the deck and got it into the water with his supplies.
Fangmann, who has been sailing in Virgin Islands waters for 27 years, said he cried as he watched his boat go down minutes later. The sailor had owned the boat for eight years and is a familiar figure at regattas throughout the northern Caribbean.
After 45 minutes of rowing toward St. Croix and getting no closer, Fangmann put in a call for assistance to V.I. Marine Radio.
Lieut. Geoffrey Deas of the San Juan Coast Guard told St. Croix Source the call for help came into the Coast Guard air station at 7:55 a.m. via V.I. Radio and a helicopter was dispatched.
"We also diverted a U.S. Navy patrol craft that was in the area, to assist," Deas said.
"We launched out immediately," the helicopter commander said, "and when we got within 20 miles of him we could hear him on the radio. He guided us right to him."
"It's a lot easier to see a helicopter from the water than for us to see a small vessel in the water," explained Mokowsky, the pilot.
Fangmann saw the helicopter and told them where to find him. "He told us, 'Turn to your left, I'm right there' and then we saw him," Mokowsky said.
It was the 170-foot Navy vessel Squall that initially picked up the sailor and his dinghy. But Sgt. Joe Donohue of the V.I. Police Department, along with two members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary who had set out in a police vessel from St. Croix, picked Fangmann up from the Squall and brought him safely back to St. Croix, according to Deas.
Clarence Jones and Robert Evans of the St. Croix Coast Guard Auxiliary assisted Donohue.

The wide disparity between fuel pump prices on St. Croix and those on St. Thomas and St. John has prompted one St. Thomas senator to urge the Justice Department to look into possible legal action against the two major suppliers, Esso Virgin Islands and Texaco Caribbean.
The current average price per gallon for gas is $1.75 on St. Thomas and $.99 on St. Croix, Sen. Allie-Allison Petrus said.
The two oil companies "have engaged in a contract with Hovensa," the Hess Oil Virgin Islands consortium with Venezuela that operates the huge oil refinery built by Hess on St. Croix in the 1960s, Petrus stated in a letter to Attorney General Iver Stridiron. The contract, he said, "requires them to use the price benchmark of the Gulf Coast Standards," and thus, "based on fluctuations of the Gulf Coast Standards, consumers of the St. Thomas-St. John District are left to bear the cost burden of unnecessarily elevated gasoline prices."
In his letter, dated Sept. 22, Petrus cited his findings regarding intervention by attorneys general in two states that he said could serve as precedents for similar action in the territory:
In Hawaii, Petrus said, suit was brought against 13 corporations including refiners and major gasoline wholesalers "for systematically overcharging service station operators and consumers." The suit contends that the state's refiners and fuel wholesalers "agreed to fix gasoline prices at an artificially high level and to allocate market shares among themselves," he said.
And in Florida, Petrus said, a civil suit was filed against a pharmacy chain accusing the company of billing customers different prices for the same prescription medicines and charging the firm with deceptive trade practices, civil theft and racketeering. Computer software was designed to permit price increases which were passed to uninsured customers without their knowledge, he said.
Petrus did not provide information on the status or outcome of either legal action.

The wide disparity between fuel pump prices on St. Croix and those on St. Thomas and St. John has prompted one St. Thomas senator to urge the Justice Department to look into possible legal action against the two major suppliers, Esso Virgin Islands and Texaco Caribbean.
The current average price per gallon for gas is $1.75 on St. Thomas and $.99 on St. Croix, Sen. Allie-Allison Petrus said.
The two oil companies "have engaged in a contract with Hovensa," the Hess Oil Virgin Islands consortium with Venezuela that operates the huge oil refinery built by Hess on St. Croix in the 1960s, Petrus stated in a letter to Attorney General Iver Stridiron. The contract, he said, "requires them to use the price benchmark of the Gulf Coast Standards," and thus, "based on fluctuations of the Gulf Coast Standards, consumers of the St. Thomas-St. John District are left to bear the cost burden of unnecessarily elevated gasoline prices."
In his letter, dated Sept. 22, Petrus cited his findings regarding intervention by attorneys general in two states that he said could serve as precedents for similar action in the territory:
In Hawaii, Petrus said, suit was brought against 13 corporations including refiners and major gasoline wholesalers "for systematically overcharging service station operators and consumers." The suit contends that the state's refiners and fuel wholesalers "agreed to fix gasoline prices at an artificially high level and to allocate market shares among themselves," he said.
And in Florida, Petrus said, a civil suit was filed against a pharmacy chain accusing the company of billing customers different prices for the same prescription medicines and charging the firm with deceptive trade practices, civil theft and racketeering. Computer software was designed to permit price increases which were passed to uninsured customers without their knowledge, he said.
Petrus did not provide information on the status or outcome of either legal action.

Two students from Antilles School have captured honors that only a few high school seniors across the United States and its territories ever achieve.
Elizabeth Streibich and Abraham Tarapani have been named semifinalists in the 45th Annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Streibich is the daughter of attorney Bruce Streibich and former Antilles School teacher Kathy Streibich, who died in February of this year. Tarapani is the son of Abe and Wendy Tarapani of Diamonds International.
The student's selection for top honors were the results of the 1998 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test which the two took as high school juniors. The test is sponsored by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.
Nearly 1.2 million students in more than 20,000 high schools took the exam, and from that group approximately 16,000 students qualified as semifinalists. Fewer than 1 percent of graduating students under the U.S. flag qualify for this honor.
Neither student is totally overwhelmed by the honors. Both are taking it in stride. Streibich said, "It's not such a big deal. I mean I am happy. It makes me feel more connected to the mainland." She plans to attend either Emerson College or Yale University, but hasn't made any final decisions yet. As to what her field of study will be, she simply hasn't decided — there's lots of time for that.
Tarapani plans to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, but that's as much as he is letting on right now. He allows that he is excited about the honor, but said "this school does have a history of high honor students."
"This is the highest honor these students can earn," said Mark Marin, Antilles headmaster, who definitely is excited, "it is a reflection of their talents and abilities. Also, it speaks well for the school and our faculty who encourage and teach students critical thinking. I'm very proud of everybody."
Streibich and Tarapani must now be named finalists in order to be eligible for scholarship awards for college undergraduate study.
Three types of merit scholarship awards will be offered: 2,400 sponsored by the Merit Scholarship Corporation; 1,200 by corporations and 4,000 by colleges. To qualify as finalists, the students must confirm their earlier performance with high SAT scores, outstanding high school academic records and a recommendation from their principals. This is a big order, but it doesn't appear to be anything the two talented students cannot achieve. The scholarship recipients will be announced in the spring of 2000.