While it all kicks off around him Vince Brun keeps his eye on the job trimming main- sheet for helmsman Ken Read on Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes during the 2003 Louis Vuitton Cup in Auckland in a pre-start against Mascalzone Latino. Tom Whidden and Terry Hutchinson are helping manage the situation as part of an impressive concentration of sailing talent
Friendship plus talent
Carol Cronin joined fellow Olympian Vince Brun for an overdue coffee and Danish…
When I first met Vince Brun at the 1991 J/24 Midwinters he was already a legend and the top dog at North Sails One Design; I was a newbie, eyes wide to the fresh joys of Biscayne Bay sailing in January. We did have one thing in common, though – we were both early risers. Morning coffee, pastries and newspapers on the Coral Reef Yacht Club patio became a daily ritual. Sailing out to the racecourse one day, I
happened to drop his name to my team- mates. The response, I soon figured out, was typical: ‘Have you heard this Vince story?’ Since then I’ve heard many, many Vince
stories, but only one that’s polite enough to share here. Vince, sitting at a yacht club bar after a great day of racing, sees a mainsail creep back up a mast. WTF – someone going back out on the water, during cocktail hour? When he spots Greg Fisher, owner of the upstart Fisher Sails, sharing tips with a potential customer about sail shape and trim, Vince pounds a fist on the bar. ‘That %^&* Greg Fisher! He’s ruining it for the rest of us!’ (North Sails later bought Fisher
Sails, the ultimate compliment.) Thirty-odd years later I relate this tale to
the man himself while catching up on a perfect summer afternoon over a coffee in Newport, RI. Vince just shrugs, but admits it’s probably true – unlike most of what he hears about his own past words and deeds. ‘I was on the dock the other day and this guy said, “Let me tell you a Vince Brun story.” I never did any of this stuff, you know; it’s like, what are you talking about?’ To date, Vince has won nine world titles
in five different one-design classes (Soling, Star, J/24, Melges 24, Etchells). Dennis Conner calls him one of the best sailors in the world, complimenting his great eye for fast sail shapes. Four decades of impressive results, combined with a singleminded thirst for more boat speed and more victories, has earned him the respect of sailors around the world. If that respect comes packaged inside a not so respectful story about something he supposedly said… well, perhaps that’s the price of strong opinions expressed in Portuguese-accented SoCal slang.
Where it started When I ask what first brought Vince to the States from his native Brazil, the answer is sailing – though he starts off with a
surprising admission. ‘My father was a farmer,’ he says, before amending that to ‘son of a farmer’. After the Brazilian coffee crop failed his father worked for a steel company that sent the family to the US for several years; Vince was born in New York, in 1947. In 1950 the Brun family moved back to Rio (by ship, he reminds me; ‘No planes. Yeah, that’s kind of old’) and settled in Niterói, ‘where Torben [Grael] lives,’ a block from the beach. ‘My dad, I don’t think he ever raced in his life, but he got involved in the yacht club and we cruised around Guanabara Bay. ‘You saw the Olympics, a disaster, right?
The water is polluted so bad.’ Growing up, he says, ‘It was crystal clean. I remember going to those islands at the end of the bay, and it was pristine. Everybody anchored out, then tied to a tree. We had a ball, we’d swim all day, go sailing with some guys. It was pretty cool.’ One Christmas Vince’s father built a
rowing dinghy for him and his brother Gastão. The two boys were very excited… at first. ‘We row around, row around, row around, to the point that we’re like, “What are we gonna do now?” ‘So we got a, I’m not kidding you, this is almost like a bit of a story… but my brother
SEAHORSE 51
DANIEL FORSTER/DPPI
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