Paul Elvstrøm’s Bes – winner of the 1972 Half Ton Cup. Designed by Elvstrøm with input from Jan Kjaerulff, Bes featured these hiking wings – which were banned before the event so had to be ‘roped off’. In 1972 Half Tonners were still little yachts rather than big dinghies, Bes’s navigator talking to his skipper through an aft hatch. Elvstrøm and Philippe Poullain (right) won back-to-back 505 world titles with Elvstrøm often helming from the trapeze, the second in 1958, the same year Elvstrøm won his first Finn Gold Cup


focus more on boatbuilding and then on a design business that he ran with his friend Jan Kjaerulff. Even so, Paul remained a consultant to the sail brand and used to call in to the HQ at Aabenraa regularly until 2010 when the onset of illness curtailed so much of what he could do. The spar business was run by another Flying Dutchman racer, Eric Duchemin, in France for a while, but was then split off and sold on, becoming Nordic Masts in 1979. Today it is Southern Spars Europe.


Innovation


Still going strong today is the Elvstrøm bailer, the famous flush-fitting wedge with a non-return flap and over-centre lever which means it is fast and positive to lock up or down. More than 50 years after Paul developed it the bailer is found in a range of sizes suitable from Oppi to keelboats. Elvstrøm engaged Frederik Andersen to develop the tooling and manufacture the bailers; as a manufacturer of stainless steel winches, Andersen had the expertise needed. Andersen Winches, still based in Vejle but now part of Ronstan, continue to make the bailer today.


Before Elvstrøm invented a better bailer dinghies used to be fitted with a Venturi tube with a forward-facing hole inside the hull and an aft one outside the skin. The push/pull raising and lowering wasn’t fool- proof but this wasn’t their weakness. ‘I was competing at the inaugural Finn Gold Cup at Burnham-on-Crouch (1956) when I forgot to pull it up,’ recalled Paul. ‘When the boat was pulled onto the trolley I bent it and it broke.’


Holt Allen had tried a wedge-style bailer in plastic, but Elvstrøm hit on the stainless steel design which was so right that it is the same today as when it was launched over 40 years ago – the only tweak the addition of a plastic grid to prevent lines from getting into the bailer. It was so successful that some 650,000 Elvstrøm bailers have been sold to date.


Dan Ibsen remembers that his time at 48 SEAHORSE


Elvstrøm Sails largely involved engaging lawyers around the world trying to enforce design copyrights. ‘In the end it became obvious that we didn’t need to spend the money or the time doing this. None of the copies were as good, so sailors and boat- builders simply stopped using them.’


THE STORIES Luca Devoti (ITA)


After the Sydney Olympics I spoke to Paul on the phone and his congratulations were really something special, with a sort of affection that was moving and delicate at the same time. He gave Devoti Sailing a series of glass slides, some of his Finn on the roof of a van while being taken down from a ferry, and one of him installing the first self-bailer at the first Finn Gold Cup that was staged in Burnham-on-Crouch. His comment about the bailer was that he installed it just before the regatta so nobody could copy. More than anything I remember the tone of his voice – he won, he fought, he lost at times, he went through very difficult times as all ultra- sensitive


men go through. The Kiel


Olympics was not easy for him to digest. He inspired generations of sailors all


over the world and in Denmark especially, a country that gave birth to fabulous sailors after him, but none like him.


Ralph Roberts (NZL)


By mid-afternoon most of the 80-plus sailors had arrived at Zeebrugge for the Gold Cup and were sizing up their opposi- tion. I could hear the banter of voices but I only spoke English – everyone else seemed to be speaking anything but English. I kept my head down working away replacing equipment and getting the Finn ready for its measurement the next morning. Late in the afternoon I had a tap on my


shoulder from a big man who spoke to me in broken English: ‘Do you need a hand, I can help you make this Finn go faster.’ To my surprise it was Paul Elvstrøm, whom I had only seen before in a photo.


Paul said to me, ‘I help you on one condition today, that we must train together before racing each day. I sail hard when I am practising, as hard as I do when I am racing.’ I was like a kid in a candy store, having the Olympic champion offering to help me with my boat and then helping me tune up as well! Paul Elvstrøm is sailing’s true champion.


Paul Henderson (CAN)


The final meeting of my tenure as presi- dent of ISAF was held in Denmark, in Copenhagen, in 2004. Instead of going to dinner with the new executive board after retiring, Ralph Roberts and myself and our wives, Penny and Mary, went to Hellerup and had a wonderful evening with Anna and Paul Elvstrøm.


When Paul was one of the very first recipients of the Beppe Croce Award he gave a wonderful fun-filled speech and made his usual accurate observations of sailing… one in particular that should be acknowledged by all today: ‘It is much harder to build a strong and vibrant inter- national class association than it is to design a new boat.’


I also remember when we were sailing the Finn in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and I was on the shore rigging my boat when we noticed this Finn roaring in to the beach; then the skipper jumped out of his boat, a wave picked it up and smashed it down onto Paul Elvstrøm’s leg.


We picked him out of the surf, loaded him onto an ambulance and then went sailing. About 4pm I went to the hospital to see how Paul was doing.


As I walked in I noticed two wives of USA Finn sailors had compassionately been there all day with him. Paul put on the wonderful toothy smile and said: ‘This morning my mast was too limber and tonight my leg is too stiff.’


With that the two women said: ‘Mr Elvstrøm, you speak English?’


Paul replied: ‘Yes, I speak English but sometimes I do not listen.’


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