Plodding along dropping white plastic balls –Part II


In which Peter Harken explains to Carol Cronin how Olympic visibility and an unasked-for and unexpected marketing push propelled those prototype blocks to lasting stardom


40 SEAHORSE


Olympic gold and a winning handshake After winning the 1968 US Olympic Trials Peter Barrett – another University of Wis- consin alumnus – asked if he and Lowell North could add these special new blocks to their Star boat. Barrett was ‘a wonderful guy – I got to know him really well,’ Peter says. ‘We went skiing together, the whole thing. So I made a set for him and Lowell. And then Buddy Friedrichs in the Dragon wanted some. And those guys got two gold medals! That kind of started it all.’ As it might! European competitors began asking the


Americans: where could you get those black blocks with the white balls? ‘And then Bruce Kirby wrote some articles in One Design Yachtsman [now Sailing World] that were kind of a spoof. He said, “Look out for these blocks, they’re dangerous… If you’re in a Star boat, you’d better duck really fast because the boom’s gonna knock your head off.”’ This prompts another chuckle. ‘He was kidding entirely of course! And


it kind of backfired on the poor guy because he started getting letters from some people who had the blocks by then, saying “You’re being unfair.”’ Next came the call from Gary Comer.


‘You remember the Land’s End cata- logue?’ Peter asks; I nod. ‘It was the Bible of the industry! Gary was a great copy- writer, and he wrote what was behind every product. So he called my brother and me… and at first we didn’t think anything of it. We used to go down to Chicago, have lunch with Kirby and Comer. Those were


the old days of martini lunches, driving home half in the bag… ‘Gary said he was gonna give us a half


page in the catalogue,’ he continues. ‘And we said, “Gary, we don’t have any produc- tion, we’re just making this stuff for friends! We gotta get tooling, and we don’t really have the money for that now. It’ll take us at least a year at least… this isn’t going to happen in time for the catalogue.”’ Plus the two Harken brothers were


already quite busy building boats at Van- guard, as he reminds me. ‘But Gary just grinned and said, “I think you can do it, and I’m going to give you a half page. So you’d better do something about it.” Holy Christ.’ Even half a century later Peter shakes his head over the pressure Comer had so optimistically placed on two young brothers. ‘So on the way home Olaf and I are looking at each other; what the hell are we gonna do?’


Tool up or die Vanguard Boats had set up shop in a former tool and die building, and the landlords were also brothers who’d also built a small company into something quite impressive. ‘We’d become friends,’ Peter explains. ‘So they said, “We were in your position some time ago, and we want to help out. How about if we do all the tooling and manufac- turing, and you guys design the blocks?” So we said OK. ‘That was all done on a handshake; there


was no contract. And we were with those guys for almost 40 years.’ The arrangement wasn’t always as


PASCAL HUIT


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