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Left: Lowell North and Enterprise. North was one of many Cup helms to find a multiple role impossible. The yellow stick on the wheel was used like a tiller-extension to allow the helm to hike. Star sailors, eh. Evergeen (right) was both fragile and rarely upright…
favourites and a revolving door of experts. His interest was not just in sails, but in everything that touched the sails, including boats and rigs. He and Tim Stearns came up with some amazing ideas together in the late 1970s.’ Stearns was famous for having developed innovative slender spar systems, as well as the first grooved headfoil. In collaboration with Lowell and a young boat captain he met in Lymington named Jim Pugh (the same), Stearns also pioneered the use of carbon fibre in masts. Lowell reckoned an alloy spar could be considerably lightened by using a smaller aluminium section and wrapping it in carbon fibre to supplement its strength. They tried this out on one of the first Williwaws in the IOR era… but with decidedly mixed results. Lowell and Stearns later collaborated on another IOR design full of new and experimental ideas – the 1978 Canada’s Cup winner Evergreen, built in carbon/honeycomb and fitted with a ¾-ton rig on a two-tonner platform… By 1984 North had attained tremen- dous success, in part due to Lowell’s historic insistence on technology combined with an aggressive marketing and growth strategy by another of Lowell’s Tigers, John Marshall. But the other Tigers had become at odds with Marshall as president of the company, and a new owner and company structure was sought. Terry Kohler, himself a sailor with a strong technical background (and ironically the US rival Lowell helped defeat in the 1978 Canada’s Cup), emerged as the best candi- date to take over North. As a successful manufacturer he would also bring more manufacturing efficiency and corporate discipline to the company.
For Lowell this meant the beginning of a new chapter in his life, where he could enjoy some of the rewards of what he had built by doing some racing of his own. He commissioned Jim Betts to build him the
Nelson-Marek 42-footer Sleeper which he campaigned in the 1985 SORC, followed by being selected to be on the US team in that year’s Admiral’s Cup. After the Cowes series Lowell hired a young Dane, Ken Madsen, to help him sail the boat back across the Atlantic to the US, where in 1986 we raced her in So Cal before going to Hawaii for the Kenwood Cup, finishing a close second overall, and then on to the Big Boat Series, where we won our class with another Star sailor, John Dane, as guest helmsman.
This was a strange time for us, sailing with Lowell as an ‘owner’ and not the onboard sails guru, especially since Lowell with free time and an endless ability to tinker was often the boat captain as well. Thus with absolutely no social pretence, there was never any tension onboard and everyone pulled equal weight towards the success of the team, inspired by Lowell’s example to do the same. This was some of the most enjoyable and successful sailing I ever did, a view shared by other alumni of our Sleeper team.
Lowell then turned to more ocean sailing, not ocean racing, in the late 1980s. This started with helping his friend Jim Hill get his Farr 55 Spellbound to the US via the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Aegean and the Med, and then by buying his own cruising boat, a Tayana 55 called Wanago, and embarking on a journey around the great cruising grounds of the world. It was in Polynesia on Wanago that yet another important chapter in Lowell’s life opened up when he met his second wife Bea, who with energy and enthusiasm has been the perfect complement to Lowell’s more quiet and relaxed manner, made more so in recent years after a mild stroke. The two are beached now in San Diego, but enjoy occasional visits to and from family… along of course with a long list of admiring and lifelong friends.
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