Opposite: Dennis Conner steers the 1977 S&S 12 Metre Enterprise during testing against his eventual 1980 Cup Defender Freedom with a young Mike Toppa trimming genoa. Enterprise was a disappointment for Olin Stephens, beaten in the 1977 Defender trials by Ted Turner’s older Courageous. Originally skippered by Lowell North, the great man had a tiller extension clamped to the top of Enterprise’s wheel so he could steer from the rail small-boat style. Soon after, Toppa moved south to Florida – an obvious choice for an ambitious sailmaker with south Florida now the world capital of winter big-boat racing. The Petersen-designed Scarlett O’Hara is seen racing the ‘frantic’ 1983 SORC in the hands of sailmakers Chris Corlett and Dee Smith of Horizon; previously in 1982 Scarlett had made a strong SORC debut in the hands of Mike Toppa’s North Sails boss Tom Blackaller, but in 1983 she really lit up with a new rig, winning the SORC overall then quickly selected for the US Admiral’s Cup team for Cowes… where she finished the 1983 series as top inshore yacht. But by 1983 Blackaller, Toppa et al had a new SORC mount (overleaf) plus big plans for a Cup summer in Newport
what he now knows were the running backstays. ‘He said, “OK, when we tack” – and I didn’t know what tack meant – ‘when we tack, you let go of this line. And I’m going to pull the other one on, and you come and help me.’ That ‘guy’ was Olin Stephens, he marvels.
‘So, yeah, 11 years old and Stephens is telling me how to do it. And sailing that big boat! To me it was just incredible.’ It became even more incredible when
Intrepid won the America’s Cup that September. It was the beginning, he says, of his childhood dream: to win the America’s Cup one day, as a sailor.
Pathway to the Cup The next summer Mike joined Ida Lewis Yacht Club as a junior member and learned how to sail, in a type of boat called a Bath- tub. More auspiciously, he also met Jerry Kirby. Jerry was only one year older, but he already ‘had the same goal: to win the Amer- ica’s Cup. Today we still joke about it.’ Over the next few summers the two
friends transitioned to 420s. ‘There’s a trophy for the Ida Lewis junior sailing sea- son championship called the Vanderbilt Cup,’ Mike explains. ‘It was given to the
club by Harold Vanderbilt, to inspire kids to learn to sail… and to help defend the America’s Cup. So Jerry won it one year, then I won it the next summer.’ Looking back, he says that was the real start of his path. ‘I was so hooked, I couldn’t get enough of it.’ In the winter, when Jerry went off to
play hockey, Mike went frostbiting. ‘Sail- ing in the summer, sailing in the winter… I did that all through high school. It was all I wanted to do so I found any outlet I could.’
School, or sailing? Mike skipped his high school graduation to do his first bluewater race, Newport to Bermuda on a C&C 61. Then in Sept - ember he joined a group of up-and-coming sailors at the University of Rhode Island. ‘All my peers were doing 100 per cent dinghy sailing,’ but he was more excited by ‘the ocean racing thing; I mean, that was an adventure. I loved ocean racing!’ So when a friend’s father invited him to
do the Cape to Rio Race during what should have been his second year of college – and to deliver the boat from Newport to Cape Town, with five other young guys – ‘I thought it’d be the coolest thing in the
world.’ He remembers calling his parents before he left: ‘You’re going where?? We don’t even know these people…’ They knew nothing about it, but they were always so supportive. And off we went; we left Newport in October, sailed non-stop to Dakar, Senegal and then Liberia. Biggest waves I’ve ever seen, by far…’ A broken headstay delayed them in
St Helena for two weeks, but they made it to Cape Town for the start and raced back across the Atlantic to Rio. Mike then helped sail the boat north as far as the Panama Canal before heading back to Newport. That summer a supportive yacht club
member loaned Mike and Jerry Kirby his Shields. ‘We raced every weekend. That’s when the story about Jerry jumping off the bridge happened…’ I’d assumed that famous tale was New-
port urban legend; Mike shakes his head. ‘There was a Saturday race that started at one. We were on the boat waiting for Jerry, but it got too late.’ They left the mooring and headed north to the start via the locals’ shortcut, which took them under a relatively low part of the Newport Bridge – though still tall enough for a
SEAHORSE 41
SHARON GREEN/ULTIMATE SAILING
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