ALAN Paris, who recently became the first Bermudian to sail solo around the world, has now settled down to a quieter life as the new director of the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute.z$>

In May, Mr. Paris finished fifth in his class in the Around Alone Race which began in Newport, Rhode Island last September. It is one of the longest, most gruelling races in the world.

At every port, Mr. Paris' wife Becky and son Tucker were on hand to cheer him on. Three-year-old Tucker now has his own silver medallion Delta frequent flyer card thanks to all the miles he racked up.

Mr. Paris took up the position at the BUEI when he finished the race in May. Formerly, he was general manager of Ariel Sands and general manager at Horizons and Cottages.

Now he is learning the fine art of museum management.

His exploits on the world's high seas are finished, as he told reporter JESSIE MONIZ and photographer ARTHUR BEAN, but far from forgotten. His boat, the BTC Velocity, is now sitting in the car park of the BUEI, and is preparing for a new life in St. George's once funds are raised for its purchase.

Q: How did you get the boat into that spot?

A: We used a Career Construction barge. I put the boat on the barge. We brought the barge up to Moonray Manor, which is next door. Then we lifted it up with the big crane from BCM McAlpine. They put it on a flatbed container, drove it down the road and then put it in the parking lot. It was quite an operation. The boat is fitted into a very small space.

Q: Is it going to be left there?

A: No, it is not meant to be a monument to my ego. It is going to be here at the BUEI for six months to a year. We are raising funds to keep the boat on the island. We are trying to come up with $175,000. So far we have $25,000. We haven't really started the push yet. Then it will be donated to St. George's.

Both the Corporation of St. George's and the St. George's Foundation have said they want it. They are either going to put it across from the Deliverance or make it part of the redevelopment they are doing at the Queen's Warehouse.

Q: Why St. George's and not Dockyard?

A: I am a St. George's resident and I rather like it being there.

Q: Do you think you are going to do the race again?

A: No, once is enough. It took an awful lot of energy, effort, preparation, time away from my family, never mind the financial side of it. It is fiscally irresponsible. It is very expensive unless you have a multimillion-dollar sponsor.

Q: So who does the boat belong to?

A: Me.

Q: Why did you say you were raising the funds to keep in on the island, then?

A: Because I can't afford to give it to the island for a dollar. The campaign cost me $500,000. I was lucky enough to raise $300,000. I was unemployed for two years. So I am $200,000 in the hole for the race. I need to raise $175,000.

The boat was for sale in the United States for $225,000, but there were a number of people including members of the board of directors at the BUEI who said, 'You can't sell that boat. It has to come back to Bermuda.' We are taking a little bit of a risk in bringing it back here.

Q: What happens when the money is raised?

A: Once we raise that money it is no longer my boat. It will become its own little entity. I will be involved only in helping to support whatever someone wants to do with it and deciding where it will ultimately go. I think St. George's is great.

History isn't just what happened 300 years ago. History can be how well Shaun Goater is doing in the (English) Premier Division. History is ongoing. This is a little bit of Bermuda history because I was the first Bermudian to do it.

Q: I heard a snippet of your interview on television, yesterday. You said you were chased by whales?

A: It is true. I had a collision with two whales off the coast of Brazil on the second day of the final leg. Collision number one with the whale was a light impact. I was down below. When I stood up, it became a full impact and I was thrown up against the corner of the navigation station. I broke two ribs. I ran up on deck and saw that I had injured one whale. There was blood in the water. As I was sailing away another whale followed me.

Q: I didn't know whales did that.

A: They do actually. They have been known to sink boats. It certainly happened in whaling time periods.

Q: What type of whale was it?

A: It was a pilot whale that was approximately 25 feet long.

Q: When you broke your ribs, what did you do?

A: I took pain killers. I had 26 days at sea with two broken ribs. When you are on the high seas, alone in a fairly powerful boat that is hard work. I slowed down a little bit more and I was cautious about what I did and how I did it. I didn't fly a spinnaker because it would have been too much.

Q: If you had sought medical attention would you be violating the conditions of the race?

A: No, but I was 300 miles off the mouth of the Amazon River. Where is the nearest doctor's office? There wasn't anybody. I took Ibuprofen pain killers. I took just enough to reduce the swelling, but I could still feel the pain to a certain degree so I could know if it was getting better or worse.

It was a tough week and a tough leg of the journey. I knew I had broken ribs because I could feel the jagged break with my hands.

Q: Did you think you were on some type of extreme reality programme?

A: I had gone around Cape Horn three weeks earlier. That made it to the inside pages of the newspapers. I hit a whale and it made the front page. Everyone was like, 'The poor whale'. But to me, colliding with a whale doesn't measure up to sailing solo around Cape Horn. I remember telling our sponsors, 'If you really want to get value for sponsorship you either need me to sink or to do a really great rescue.'

Q: The BUEI has gone for quite a while without a director, hasn't it?

A: Wendy Tucker has been acting director. She began her involvement with the BUEI on January 1, 1992, years before we even opened. She is now in the position of consultant. She is part of the bricks and mortar of the BUEI. The Tucker family is very closely associated with this Institute.

So she filled in and it was wonderful that she would do it for that period of time. And it was lucky they kept the job for me. It is great to be back at work. Two years unemployed is fun, only for a little while. Now every two weeks someone puts money into my account and that is nice.

Q: Are there similarities between this job and your former positions at hotels?

A: The challenge of being director of the BUEI has many similarities to the hospitality industry. There is cleanliness. There is personnel management. There is sales and marketing. There is public relations. The only difference is that the BUEI is a not-for-profit and therefore fund-raising is a critical element to keep us afloat.

Q: What are your goals as director of the BUEI?

A: As in any position you need to learn the groundwork. I have never managed a museum before. Last week I was up in New England working with a consultant who works for us. I went to five museums looking at everything from signage, flow, how the exhibits were presented, to cleanliness. I was looking at museum management aspects which are new to me. They were similar in some ways, to those in a hotel.

Q: Which museums did you look at?

A: The Peabody Essex in Salem, Massachusetts who just had a $65 million renovation. It is fantastic. We also went to the New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts. We may start a special relationship with them, because they have an awful lot of information on the Portuguese side of things.

We will be working on getting some Portuguese artifacts lent to us from the New Bedford Whaling Museum. They have a half scale model that is 80 feet long of a Portuguese whaling ship. It is one of the largest in the world. They have artifacts that could come to us as a travelling exhibit. I would like to see travelling exhibits at the BUEI and this would be a good start.

Q: Where else did you go?

A: We also went to the Mystic Aquarium Exploration Institute and the Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut and the Boston Science Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. So we were looking at all sorts of different markets. It was a good education for me.

Q: What are the BUEI's aims?

A: Part of what the BUEI is trying to do is be more "beloved". One of the ways to do this is to get more of a community buy-in. To do that we have to come up with more things that bring people in. This is one of the ways we do it. The major way we do it now is through education.

We currently have nine summer camps. They were sold out within a week of announcing them. We have long wait lists. This year we doubled our capacity by putting in a new classroom. It is huge. Education is the way in which we do our mission. Our mission is to advance the understanding, appreciation and knowledge of the ocean so that we may encourage the preservation and protection of our natural environment.

Q: Are there any events coming up that you want to mention?

A: We have an open house coming up on Saturday. It is free to all. We will celebrate six years of being open. The exhibits are open for everyone to see. I will be talking about my boat in the parking lot. We will be having cooking demonstrations. There will be movies playing in the auditorium. We just received the Bermuda Gold award for being the best place to watch a movie.