Above: Tom Blackaller’s previous SORC mount Scarlett O’Hara was one of nine Doug Peterson-designed Serendipity 43s built by Tom Dreyfus in New Orleans. But this was the era of elastic measuring tapes when it came to IOR measurement time and Dreyfus’s 43s were at the heart of the action (as, pious Anglo Saxons, was Great Britain’s Victory of Burnham with the biggest rating ‘error’ of all). Neither Dreyfus nor two-time Star World Champion Tom Blackaller was ever found at fault in the rating traumas that took place at every big IOR regatta at the time, but the ‘colourful’ pair could not resist milking a situation that had blue blazers self-combusting in every direction. So Dreyfus named his new 43 Your Cheatin’ Heart and Blackaller turned up as skipper of Mea Culpa. And the late Tom Dreyfus… a man who attended briefings – and went offshore racing – with a pair of loaded silver-plated Colt 45s on his hip is worth a Google. Old school, but for those lucky enough to have been at some of those events a modern regatta can feel awfully ‘safe’
Shields mast. ‘And there he is… Jerry jumped off!’ They picked him out of the water and continued on to the starting area. ‘Just about every story you’ve heard about Jerry is 95 per cent true,’ Mike says, as his smile wattage increases once again. The Shields Nationals were in Newport
at the end of that summer, and Mike says they were winning the regatta on the last run of the last race… but it was windy, and the boat had filled up with water on the upwind leg. ‘We started bailing, with two buckets. First we lost one bucket over the side, and then we lost the other bucket over the side. And then the boat behind us surfed by and won the race – and they won [the regatta] by a point.’ Shaking his head, the smile disappears for the first time. But it returns when he moves on to
what happened next – going back to school. Dinghy racing was ‘something I wanted to do’, he says. Even so, he only lasted one semester before ocean racing beckoned again – this time an invite to the SORC. He always planned to go back, but that would be his last stab at a formal education: ‘I guess I just got sidetracked!’
Stitching it together At the 1978 SORC Mike met Jim Marshall who owned North Sails Chesapeake. Jim invited him to come and learn the art of
42 SEAHORSE
sailmaking in Annapolis, ‘and maybe run the [new] spinnaker department if it works out. I said sure.’ Marshall also gave him the name of a
woman who supposedly had a spare room. When Mike called she said she didn’t know anything about it. ‘But she became a really good friend,’ he quickly adds, and he found a great place to live. Even things that didn’t work out as planned get a positive spin. That first job at North Sails consisted of
stencilling on numbers, cutting out Dacron and making patterns. He also looked over more experienced shoulders, learning both how to design sails and how to stitch them together. After work he joined the most competitive local fleet – a trend that con- tinues to this day. ‘I’m like, 23, and I couldn’t afford anything, but Jim Allsopp helped me somehow secure a J/24.’ Allsopp was the loft manager. In those
days, Mike says, ‘European grand prix sailing looked to America as the pinnacle. Sardinia Cup and Admiral’s Cup were going on, so national teams were hiring Americans to come over and teach them. Jim Allsopp would go sail with the Italians and come back with sail orders. And then Jim Marshall would design the mains and jibs, and I would design the spinnakers.’ Sail design was quite different then, he reminds me. ‘We didn’t have anything like
the software that we have today, where you can build a 3D model of the flying shape and rotate it, pressurise it, put it through the virtual wind tunnel.’ What they did have was a mast outside the loft: ‘We’d design a spinnaker, hoist it and kind of hold onto the corners. Walk around, see what it looked like – then send it off to Italy.’
America’s Cup dream, continued By the summer of 1979 Mike had devel- oped enough confidence as a sailor to ask for a tryout with Dennis Conner’s team – plus ‘by then I thought I knew something about spinnaker design…’ So once he made the team as a back-up trimmer he started pushing to design the downwind sails. Two well-respected sailmakers were
already on the team: ‘John Marshall [North Sails] was making the mains and jibs, and Tom Whidden [Sobstad] was doing the kites. That’s the way Dennis liked it; it kept everybody happy, and he had the best trimmers. But I kept bugging John: let me design a spinnaker.’ The answer was always no. Until one
evening, when ‘John came up after dinner and said, “OK, I talked to Dennis, and you’re on.” So I go to Dennis.’ Mike chuckles. ‘And I said, “Hey, John said you’d let me design a spinnaker,” and
PHIL UHL
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