Billionaire lifestyle
The sailors, globe-trotting guns for hire, exude an air of surf chic combined with preppy pro jock. The younger the sailor, the more disheveled the look. Much like life.
Hands are strong and coarse. Handshakes firm to crippling. Eyes crinkle into smiles, the effect of years sailing in sun and wind.
While the scene is glitzy, at least in the marina, the sailors' office can be a dangerous salt-lashed bucking bronco with high stakes.
Chatting to the crews, the number one trade-off is not the risk but the time spent away from home and families.
"You're part performance athlete and part hobo," says Andy Green, a Newport, RI-based British sailor and America's Cup commentator.
"You're living out of a bag but living the life of a billionaire. When it's all over you go back to your apartment or whatever and live a normal life."
The big yacht circuit generally begins in the Caribbean with races such as the Caribbean 600 from Antigua in February and Les Voiles de Saint Barth in April before moving to the Mediterranean for the summer and regattas in oh-so chic spots like Majorca, Corfu, St Tropez, Porto Cervo and Palermo in Sicily.
Among the traveling tribe there is a distinct hierarchy at work.
At the top, at least on shore, are the owners. High-achieving businessmen with big bucks to lavish on their chosen sport. A new mainsail costs north of $160,000 and just the running costs for a summer campaign can be anything between about $1.5 million and $5.4 million.
"It's highly competitive. All the owners are very friendly, we have drinks and invite each other to parties but on the water nobody gives you any quarter -- on the water you want to kill them," Sir Peter Ogden, owner of Maxi 72 Jethou, told CNN.
Britain's Ogden, who built up UK company Computacenter and owns the Channel Island Jethou, adds: "The hardest part is signing the cheques. That, and steering the boat.
"But this is what I do to relax. Angst is when I go home and see the pile of envelopes."
The Wally 107 Open Season in action during the 2016 Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup in Porto Cervo.
'Testosterone-fueled'
To deliver the boat to these sun-drenched corners of the world and get it to the start line in one piece, the owners employ a full-time boat captain and a handful of permanent crew.
"We're partly sailors, partly worker bees," laughs England's Mike Atkinson, boat captain on the Wally 107 Open Season, owned by former Bugatti boss Thomas Bscher of Germany.
His role involves logistics, crew transfers, accommodation, food, safety, maintenance and budgeting. Running costs "virtually doubled" from the previous 94ft Open Season to the current 107ft version -- a "big learning curve", says Atkinson.
"It's a good lifestyle, you have to work hard and it's definitely not 9-5 but it beats working in an office. I couldn't work in an office," adds Atkinson, who is based in Palma, Majorca, with his Spanish wife and two young kids.
He is backed up by first mate Tom Bayliss, who is responsible for all the rigging and fittings, and engineer Sally Weatherstone, an exception not just for being a woman but for being a female engineer.
"I started just crewing on boats, then I got a mate's job, and we needed an engineer," says Weatherstone. "I learned on the job, and when I did my exams they said I was the third girl that had been through in 10 years.
"It is a bit blokesy, it's a testosterone-fueled week."
