Not sure what the specific questions is...

As far as the skipper goes (I'm assuming he is the owner) -- I'll tell you what my old crew boss impressed upon me: "Your job is to keep the boss happy and with all his fingers." - I was doing Nav and sharing runner duty with the owner at the time.

we are a 41 foot boat, and with only 7 people onboard the navigator is also taking the role of bowman. our skipper is naive and only wants 7 people. our skipper wants to float and so does our navigator. also, our skipper designed a Swedish watch system where crew get 2 one hour off watches every 5 hours. I think this is stupid, as the crew won't have time to eat or sleep. what are your thoughts? 

It looks like the starts are before noon, so at 186NM, 1.5 days (=5kts average BSP, pretty conservative), you've probably got one overnight to deal with.  If it were me, I'd go with 4hrs on/4hrs off, two watches of 3 and one floater with a the best and second-best helmsperson on each watch.   I suggest the watch schedule start at 2PM.  You'll be past the excitement of the start and had a chance to settle the boat down.  This will put the overnight watch from 2am to 6am, the time when energy and attention are at their lowest and often the time when the big gains or losses are made.  Make sure the Navigator and your strongest helmperson are on-watch from 2am - 6am and pushing the crew to hit the target speeds and monitoring yellowbrick to see who's in breeze. There's really not enough time to get into a regular watch-standing rhythm.  No one will be able to sleep the afternoon of the first day, so that's a great opportunity for the off-watch to heat up the evening meal and boil water so the overnight watches can make hot beverages.  In my experience, if the crew started the race well-rested and not severely hung over, they should be in pretty good shape through day 2 on 4 hours of solid rest.  Perhaps the floater can spell the Navigator when you don't need a person at the bow so the Navigator do his job.  By 10am day 2 both watches will be up so all hands will be available.