The majority of the movie was filmed in St. Petersburg. Many local sailors, including myself, were actually in the movie to some degree. We were paid a sum of $75. plus meals(and beer receipts) to sail the boats that were in the race scenes. Ted Irwin's boat R2D2 was renamed Incisor for the movie, Richard Crennas boat. John Jenning's Irwin was reconfigured to look like a pirate boat, that John Candy "sailed". Chiquita, the boat I sailed, a Nelson Merick 45 was a succesfull IOR boat back then, in the movie it is the boat with the Yellow, Orange and Red Topsides. John Candy was a very funny and personable guy, we had lunch with him quite often. Our portion of the shooting was for about 10 days. Not bad for a young sailing bum back then. We actually had to have the boats in full reverse for John Candy's boat to actually pass the race boats. Come on down, St. Pete is a great place.
