News Around the World
Jimmy Buffet, who passed away on 1 September, sailing with his friend Dennis Conner and Stars&Stripes off Fremantle during the 1987 America’s Cup. His hit Take it Back was inevitably the theme song for Stars&Stripes that year as much as Men at Work did the job for John Bertrand’s crew four years earlier in Newport. Buffet held a particular place among racing and cruising sailors alike, felt most strongly in the southern and western US states and of course across the Caribbean. That imagery, a Caribbean sunset, a glass of Mount Gay and tonic, and a Jimmy Buffet ballad playing in the background, was a significant driver in the explosion in bareboat chartering that started during the 1980s. And, in passing, a last message for us… Buffet died after a four-year battle with skin cancer
USA Sail on, Jimmy The recent passing of Jimmy Buffet has tugged the heart strings of many of us sailors here in the US. More than just a successful pop culture icon to his legions of followers (‘Parrotheads’), his musical allegories of life as a casual sailor resonate with many of us looking back at how the hell we got entangled in this sport, often in the warm palm-fronded embrace of environs like Florida, California, Mexico or the Caribbean. Jimmy’s tunes were perfect at expressing our desire to eschew the ‘real life’ career pathways expected of us to instead pursue our passions… and pleasures. Besides the Margaritaville imagery of escapism and the laidback
lifestyle, sailing was more than just attractive imagery for Jimmy. Indeed, he was the real deal, having a sailing ship captain as a grand- father and a sailing father who was also a marine engineer (truly the ‘son of a son of a sailor’). Jimmy Buffet learned celestial navigation from his grandpa and
said as a kid growing up on the Gulf coast in Pascagoula, Mississippi, that he read everything he could about the ocean. He did not come from a patrician background of ‘yachting’: his job after college was in a shipyard as a welder and electrician. No doubt this contributed to his ability to relate to the hard work and dreams of the working class and express this so memorably through his art. So from the commercial success of his second studio album,
released in 1973, he reportedly horrified his accountant by buying his first boat, a Cheoy Lee 33 named Euphoria. ‘Look, I don’t know if this music thing is going to last,’ he said ‘but, no matter what, I can sail, I can cook and I can sing, and I know that I can live on my boat and go wherever I want.’ And he did just that, with his taste in boat ownership evolving from
18 SEAHORSE
cruisers towards classic Herreshoff and Sparkman & Stephens designs to his latest custom 50ft motorsailer appropriately called Drifter. While he never seriously entered the racing scene, perhaps reserv-
ing that energy for building a billion-dollar empire leveraging his fame through merchandise and endorsements, he nonetheless stayed in touch. For the last few editions of the Storm Trysail Club’s Block Island Race Week his company, Margaritaville, was the presenting sponsor. Jimmy even took the stage and played a few tunes for the regatta crowd, a privilege that usually fills stadiums. Thanks, Jimmy, for your inspiration and cheerful support for the
sailing life. We hope you have fair winds and following seas. Dobbs Davis
FRANCE It all looked so good… After four stressful days in tricky, shifty conditions, Benoît Tuduri (Capso en Cavale) was the first of the 32 competitors who left Caen to cross the finish line of the first stage of the 54th Solitaire du Figaro Paprec in Kinsale in Ireland. A superb performance for the 29-year- old Vendéan, taking part for the first time in the pinnacle race of the elite French offshore championship on the VPLP-designed Figaro 3. The foundations for the champion rookie’s victory were laid at the
exit of the Channel when he decided, as did Irishman Tom Dolan and the young Julie Simon, to pass north of the Scilly DSS zone while the rest of the fleet continued west. Rounding the Fastnet after crossing the Celtic Sea, the order was Tuduri, Simon and Swiss skipper Nils Palmieri. Then on the final miles to Kinsale, Nils and Julie went inshore while local sailor Tom Dolan stayed offshore and moved up to second. Tuduri: ‘I knew turning directly north at the Seven Stones DSS was a promising option – but I also knew it was risky splitting with the fleet
PHIL UHL
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