Opposite: Benjamin’s TP52 Spookie being chased by a drone in Key West and (above) winding the clock back with a few members of the extraordinary class of 1976 Yale Sailing Team. Left to right: America’s Cup winner Peter Isler, Susan Daly, Dave Perry, Nell Taylor, Benj plus Norwegian sailor Katherine Store. Others active at Yale Corinthian YC that year included Finn sailor Stewart Neff, Jonathan McKee, Dave Kellog and Neal Fowler; plenty of Olympic medals and other silverware will rattle through this tribe in the years to come
When he returned to Yale in 1976 Benj
switched his field of study from engineering to business. He also improved his on-the- water game, winning collegiate sailor of the year with crew Jamie Brown in 1978. (This is something admirable about Benj – he always remembers and credits his crews… we wish more skippers had this trait.) In America Yale is a special place: not
just because of its history of academic excellence and as a breeding ground for US presidents (the Clintons and Bushes all went there), but for its excellence in sailing. The university is in the old New England
industrial port town of New Haven, Con- necticut, but the sailing facilities are at Yale Corinthian Yacht Club away from the main campus. Not only are there excellent training and racing facilities at YCYC, but housing as well, making it a total immer- sion experience for team members. And in the mid-1970s some of the students sailing at Yale took full advantage, with a team assembling an incredible coincidence of talent that have gone on to be prominent
figures in the sport. These include such dignitaries as Stan Honey, Volvo-winning navigator,
technologist and current
nominee for Sailor of the Month; Peter Isler, another world-class navigator and America’s Cup winner; rules expert and match racing champion Dave Perry; teaching-pro Bill Gladstone, head of the North U programme; and Flying Dutch- man gold medallist Jonathan McKee. It was a few years after Benj that Yale also produced yet another Olympian, Women’s 470 silver medallist JJ Isler (now Fetter) from San Diego. The Yale team’s traditional strength
continues, having won the Collegiate Nationals only two years ago, and Benj remains involved as a highly active alumnus on their Board of Directors, always on the hunt to recruit new young talent. Coming off success at Yale, Benj set his
sights once again on the Olympics, spend- ing the next two years training for a berth on the US team to sail the 470 in the 1980 Games. It was about this time he also
started his own business in performance dinghy sailing: International Sailing Prod- ucts. ISP was a mail-order operation based in his mum’s garage to meet a demand for high-end equipment that was just not sold in chandleries of that era. It would be laughable now in the era of Amazon, but at the time this was one of the few ways to get Harken blocks or trapeze gear if you did not live in Newport or San Diego. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in
December 1979 prompted the Western boy- cott of the 1980 Olympic sailing competi- tion in Tallinn so, even after winning the right to represent the US in the 470 for these Games, Benj and crew Neal Fowler would have to put this dream on hold until the next cycle for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. As consolation Benj and Fowler were
funded to go to Kiel Week that year, and he tells a good story about how on a super- breezy day when no one else dared put up spinnakers, these two did. ‘The kite filled, we took off flying off the tops of the waves having a great time, then the rig broke.’
SEAHORSE 37
w
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98
