THE Bermuda-registered 121-foot sloop sailed from Newport to Bermuda last Friday, and along with the full-time six-man crew was Bermudian Mark Goodwin, a young marine engineer who had taken part in its extensive and expensive refit.

The $15 million cruising yacht, designed by Dubois Naval Architects and owned by a prominent New York investment manager, arrived in Bermuda early on Friday morning, and stopped only long enough at Ordnance Island in St. George's to drop Mark off and take care of new registration papers before leaving for St. Maarten in the afternoon.

Twenty-two-year-old Mr. Goodwin, a recent graduate of the New England Institute of Technology (NEIT), has not had much experience of sailing, but said he enjoyed the "shakedown" cruise from Newport, in spite of inclement weather and heavy seas.

"The is a beautiful yacht," said Mr. Goodwin, "built in 1996 by Alloy Yachts in Auckland, New Zealand. She has an aluminium hull, and is very strongly built, so I wasn't worried much about rough weather. We did take a good shake, and a few things came up that had to be addressed and were addressed once we got here, and one or two things came loose, but that's normal."

Mr. Goodwin first caught sight of the when he worked at Hinckley Yachts in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the sloop was being refitted.

"I had worked at Hinckley as an intern back in 2001," he explained, "while I was working towards my marine technology degree at NEIT, and I decided to get more experience there after doing a business degree, so I went back to the yard last year.

"We got the bid to refit the , and my boss put me on the job. I was responsible for most of the mechanical side of the job. The boat was, generally, in pretty good shape, but the electrical system was obsolete, which was a big reason for the refit, and cosmetically, it needed quite a bit of work."

The $4 million refit was originally intended to take six months, and Mr. Goodwin and his co-workers were pleased that, despite the scope of the work having doubled, it was completed in just over that time.

The refit was extensive: a new teak deck, the mast removed, painted, rewired and a re-rigged new mainsail, a new main engine, two new generators, the latest electronics, new electrics, completely renovated interiors and painting.

"The other yards that had bid against us had estimated about a year on the basis of the original refit plan, so we were happy to get the considerably expanded job completed in seven months."

Mr. Goodwin, who has come home to pursue a career in the marine world, is sure that Hinckley would have sent an engineer from the yard along on the trip to Bermuda, but it was a perfectly-timed coincidence that he was able to sail away from his job at Hinckley and work his way home by ensuring that the electrical and mechanical systems on the were in perfect working order.

"I had been there for nearly three years and had been looking to come home to Bermuda for some time," said Mr. Goodwin. "But when I told my mechanical boss, he said that we had this big project, the , coming along and I should stay on a bit longer, so I looked at the job as an opportunity to gain the sort of experience that wouldn't come along that often.

"When I talked to the captain, he said that he would be sailing to Bermuda first, to get the licence and re-register, so that worked out perfectly for me. He said that he would want one person from every 'shop' in the yard to come along for the test cruise, so I was able to finish the job and sail home in it!

"There were one or two things that were 'shaken loose' on the trip, but the yacht has a full-time engineer, so I didn't have to go on to St. Maarten. It wasn't so much that they absolutely needed me, it was more of a 'comfort zone' because I had been involved in everything on the mechanical and electrical side of things."

The full-time crew of six is the usual cosmopolitan mix of characters and nationalities, with a French captain, a New Zealand engineer, and an American first mate and chief and two stewardesses. The yacht has seven cabins and sleeps 14 people "extremely comfortably", according to Mr. Goodwin.

"We left early on Tuesday morning and we arrived here at two in the morning on Friday, just over three days' sail.

"In those rough seas, we averaged 11? knots, and got up to 13?. This is not a maxi racing machine, it's purely luxury cruising. I am not really a sailor, I am more of a mechanic."

Saltus-educated Mr. Goodwin knew that he didn't want to pursue a classic college education; he had loved messing about on boats since he was twelve years old and at 14 he began to work summers at Salt Whistle Marine in St. David's.

"John Trimingham gave me a job, and it was a matter of cleaning boats and painting bottoms and stuff, and I just enjoyed it so much.

"I loved hanging around with the mechanics, and knew that this was what I wanted to get into when I was only in my third year of high school. I knew when I was fifteen I didn't want to do the SGY (senior graduate year) thing, and that I wasn't bound for the typical college degree, or sit behind a desk with paperwork!"