Clockwise from left: Terry Wade and Bob Fisher, Hornet World Champions in 1966, the same year Fisher won the Fireball Worlds as helm (a tad of mast bend); four of the men behind the modern multihull drag the C-Class Hellcat II down to the water at Brightlingsea – Reg White, Rod Macalpine-Downie, John Fisk and Bob; winning the 1970 Hornet worlds in Perth with Colin McKenzie – the sliding seat allowing the crew’s feet to extend well beyond the gunwale; first love, talking America’s Cup with Gary Jobson next to Jobson’s 1977 Cup-winning 12 Metre Courageous; the liferaft pit on Bob’s sled Barracuda as handy punch bowl; with Colin McKenzie toasting their world title; at home – red pocket square tidily in place
time Bob could afford his own (his Lotus Europa and Jensen Interceptor were partic- ular favourites) the foot-down, no-prisoners driving style was ingrained for life. McKenzie was first to see another well-
known Fisher trait: the ability to bend others to his force of nature. At an open meeting in Llangower (Lake Bala, Wales) he and Fish arrived after a slow journey taken at great speed, just 12 minutes before the start of the first race. ‘You go and get your sail- ing clothing on!’ Fisher barked. By the time McKenzie emerged from the changing rooms Fish had roped in his mates to rig and launch the boat. ‘They were all just action people,’ remembers McKenzie. Such mobilisation powers knew no
boundaries, either then or since. In western Australia for the 1970 Worlds at Royal Freshwater YC Fisher befriended local cult- hero retailer Thomas Wardle, famous for his Tom The Cheap supermarkets and attend- ing as the local mayor. ‘You can’t expect us to travel all this way without seeing Sydney!’ he bellowed as he and McKenzie received their crown. ‘Tell you what,’ replied Wardle, ‘I’ve got to go to Adelaide tomorrow in my HS125. Come with me and I’ll tell the pilot to take you on to Sydney for the day.’ It wasn’t the only time Bob would fly private, needless to say. ‘Bob just got people round his finger so easily,’ remembers McKenzie.
Double trouble Though Fish later schooled in Suffolk one of his very first schoolfriends was Reg
White. The pair grew up together and, inevitably, sailed together. By the time they were teenagers Paul
Antrobus remembers them as icons at the club. ‘Bob mentored us in all things sailing and really encouraged us to go away and sail in open meetings.’ And, boy, did this raucous crowd of
Horneteers live life. Rob White, Reg’s son and Bob’s grandson, was brought up on their tales. ‘They used to be little buggers,’ remembers Rob. Fish had form anyway. As a schoolboy prank he’d used his newly acquired chemistry lesson knowledge to blow off the manhole cover in front of a bus in Brightlingsea. Among many post-open meeting pranks
there was the time a Hornet was strung under the Medway Bridge and when another was manhandled onto the roof of a house under the cover of darkness and left there, fully rigged. Success in the Hornet and Fireball was
interleaved with catamaran sailing. Reg White had become increasingly involved and started the Sail Craft and Sail Spars businesses, the latter with his brother-in- law John Osborn. Reg, with Bob on the wire, won seven of the nine races in the IYRU’s (World Sailing
Bob left an indelible mark in my mind that life was too short to have bad wine – Gary Jobson
as was) catamaran trials with the Rodney March-designed Tornado. Nine years later the Tornado made its debut in the 1976 Olympics. Also in 1967, with White and Osborn
unavailable, Fish teamed up with Peter Schneidau for the Little America’s Cup, with Rod Macalpine-Downie and Austin Farrar involved in the creation of the legendary wing-masted Lady Helmsman. The pair triumphed in a memorable and
drama-filled event including a centreboard split during one race and Fish having to steer in another after Schneidau was concussed by the boom.
A dash of red, a splash of pink Bob had a definite peacock trait. Peter Cook was a Fireball builder who later hired Fish when he edited Yachts & Yachting, and remembers one of the earliest recorded sights of Fish’s colour-splash dress sense at a 1965 open meeting in Hunstanton. Cook was racing with Peter Milne. ‘Racing didn’t start until the afternoon and Bob always used to appear on the seafront late morning in pink pyjamas and a red dressing gown.’ Fish’s own Fireballs were called Pink
Plymouth. A nod towards the novel hue of the new-fangled Graphspeed hull finish or the gin bottle? For the rest of his life Fish’s shore rig
invariably involved scarlet socks, his jackets with a matching pocket handkerchief. And pink shirts were a definite favourite. Part II… that absorbing interest
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