About two weeks before the start of the this week's Newport to Bermuda race, Nicholas Dill took full use of what he views as the most significant advantage Bermuda's sailors have in the build-up to the 39th challenge.

That was when Dill sailed the 635-mile course from Bermuda to Newport, primarily to get Dillightful to the race's starting blocks, but also to make sure there were no hidden quirks in the 16-year-old boat that might later come back to haunt him and his crew.

"There are two reasons why this is an advantage the Bermuda sailors have,'' said Dill. "One is you get back into the feel of the sea again and you can put into practice some of the sail changes, sail combinations that you think might work. You can test things. When we got up to Newport there were a number of things that were wrong. But we got up there early enough so that things could be corrected while the town is not bursting with people.'' The voyage to Newport also enabled Dill and some of the other Bermuda skippers a valuable opportunity to tackle the Gulf Stream -- the race's "big guessing game'' -- a week or two before everyone else does. And, at least in Dill's case, he was fully prepared to be a lot more bolder in the tune-up than he would normally be in the heat of battle.

"I tend not to (take chances) during the actual race,'' said Dill, who was spending a quiet holiday in Vermont over the weekend before heading to Newport again yesterday.

"I mean, I've seen boats in the last few races who have gone 60 or 70 miles to the west when they shouldn't have and ended up winning the race. I don't think I'd ever do that sort of thing, take those sorts of chances. I don't know, it's a question of feel for me I guess.'' Dill, however, was completely willing to shed his conservative demeanour when he sailed Dillightful to Newport.

"We found that if we get the boat leaning over too far that she tends to slow down,'' he said. "We took in 20-odd knots of wind when we took a reef and it didn't look as though it was really necessary, but the speed went out. That's the sort of thing that you can play around with, find out what is the best angle and performance of the sail.'' In turn, Dillightful , which he said has a personality all of its own, had a few surprises in store for her 61-year-old owner.

"Going up to the States this time, the winds were forward of the beam and she was doing eight, eight-and-a-half knots, sometimes nine and very occasionally doing 10,'' said Dill. "I've never seen the boat go that fast in my life.'' All of which was certainly a good sign as Dill, a partner in the Bermuda law firm of Conyers, Dill and Pearman, gets ready to compete in his 15th ocean race. The first time he sailed Newport to Bermuda was in 1960 when he came achingly close to winning.

"We lost our mast 150 miles off Bermuda so that was the end of that,'' he said from his fifth floor office last week, where three magnificent pictures of the world's most famous sailing vessels, Amerigo Vespucci , Eagle and Danmark dominated one of the walls, dwarfing a small eight-by-ten picture of Dillightful on the bookcase to the left of his desk.

"But this is the way it goes. I mean I've got to the stage where I do my best and if I luck out that's fine.'' The 1994 race also marks his fourth major race aboard Dillightful , two of them Newport to Bermuda events and last year's Marion to Bermuda.

He hopes to make up for a disastrous effort during last year's Marion when Dillightful was forced to retire because of problems. He finished 11th in the cruising class during the 1992 Newport to Bermuda.

He'll be joined on this week's challenge by Bill Adcock, Bob Duffy, Tony Jones, Paul Watson, Russell Peters and his son Patrick among others.

"I just hope with a little luck and going in the right direction we'll do well,'' said Dill. "The other factor in the whole equation is wind direction and wind strength.'' Later he said: "You know this race is never the same, absolutely never. And the challenge is to try and get better than your last performance and better than everyone else, obviously. But it's not an easy thing to do. I mean you're competing with 160 other boats.'' Most of all Dill is hoping to have a little better luck taming the Gulf Stream this week than he did when he took Dillightful to Newport a week and a half ago.

"We were impatient to get to Newport so we turned off about 20 miles early and as a result went smack into a warm eddy on the other side of the Gulf Stream, which was an adverse current.

"The current was sort of this way,'' he said while making an imaginary circle on top of a table with his stubby finger. "And it was on bound and so even though we had the engine going we only did 60 miles in the next 24 hours. So that gives you an idea of the strength of the stream.

"When I really got down to sort of studying this and looking at it I decided that perhaps the best thing to do was to run out of this eddy as fast as I could. So I went almost due east for 20 miles and headed north again. But this slowed our progress quite considerably. This is where the race can be won or lost.'' Dill has already won the battle of the paperwork since there are almost as many miles of forms to complete, which takes even longer than the race itself.

"You've got a number of hurdles,'' he said. "There's an awful lot of documentation involved in getting ready, you have the race programme, entry forms, crew lists and just to get the boat inspected, that's quite a list in itself.'' But the behind-the-scenes details will be long forgotten if Dill can add another race to his long list of accomplishments.

Results of the first two events in the Onion Patch series in Newport over the weekend were still unavailable last night. Organisers said a number of protests had been lodged and results wouldn't be posted until later today.

DILLIGHTFUL -- put through her paces on the run up to Newport.