The 1971 Admiral’s Cup was the first to employ the IOR rule and two US yachts hint at where IOR design is already headed. The Gary Mull-designed Improbable (left, sailing for New Zealand) shows the future with a fuller hull, stubby overhangs, less displacement and a more aggressive fin keel configuration than the more traditional S&S 49 Bay Bea (above, and with a young Jim Pugh at his first AC)
Cape-Rio Race. He sailed this on Stormy, the iconic Van de Stadt ketch owned by Cornelius Bruynzeel (of plywood fame – Google anyone?). This was the era of the world’s great
ocean races, timed to allow for long- distance deliveries between venues for the boats and core crews. These long deliveries were where nippers got their miles and learned seamanship; it was also how many crews got from one race to another – only owners and their friends took planes. This was still the custom in the 1970s when big boat racing was evolving from mainly an offshore exercise to mixed formats with increasing numbers of crew drawn in from the America’s Cup for their inshore skills. But Pugh had not reached this level yet,
so when he spied Huey Long’s Maxi Ondine in Rio after the 1970 Buenos Aires-Rio Race, what he really saw was a ticket north to the States for the winter circuit and the SORC. ‘So I got to spend my 21st birthday in Miami… and obvi- ously I had a great time!’ (As you do.) Once in Florida Pugh quickly hitched
on to the Bay Bea programme of Texas Instruments’ founder Pat Haggerty, and spent the next months racing on this 49ft S&S design built in aluminium at Palmer Johnson. ‘Bay Bea was a great boat and Pat a great owner,’ says Pugh. ‘We did the 1971 Annapolis-Newport Race, then headed to England for the Admiral’s Cup. ‘We were on the US team and had a
good series, finishing fifth boat overall out of 44 and second team behind the UK. Pat then built another boat at PJ that nearly put them under, in fact he was forced to invest in the yard to keep it going. Pat’s son-in-law Mike Kelsey was put in to man- age the operation – he was not much of a sailor but he ran it well for many years.’ Pugh went back to Bay Bea through
another tour of the Caribbean and then the SORC before ending up deep in the midwest for an interview at Palmer John- son in Green Bay, Wisconsin. At the time PJ was the US importer for
Nautor’s Swan and Pugh was posted to their brokerage operation in the Maryland Eastern Shore hamlet of Oxford, travelling to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston to unload and commission newly imported Swans for buyers. ‘That was a good period for me,’ he says. ‘I was pretty young and fresh so making it all work with the stevedores and customs agents was pretty educational…’ Then he was called to get back to
Wisconsin to pick up Dora, the new S&S 61 commissioned by Lynn Williams from Chicago, who had a tight schedule to get his yacht finished and in Newport for that year’s Bermuda Race in mid-June. So Pugh set off on a complex 1,000-mile delivery from Green Bay to Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, the Detroit River (where ‘we watched as the sky lit up at night with smoke and fire from the steel mills’), then
drop the mast on deck to take her through the Erie Canal to the Hudson River, through New York City then out Long Island Sound to Newport. Pugh raced with the Dora team in the
infamous 1972 Bermuda Race in which the 178-boat fleet started in nice condi- tions but finished in the dying embers of Hurricane Agnes. This was a treacherous situation for many, since only celestial navigation was available (or permitted) in those days, and finding the break in the reef and the finish line at St David’s Light was a challenge. After this race the organ- isers allowed greater use of electronics… ‘Dora was a great boat,’ says Pugh, ‘but
in the rough weather approaching the fin- ish we already had a rigging problem and were clearly struggling to find the way in so spent the last night of the race hove-to.’ Back to England in 1973 where Pugh
joined Arthur Slater’s Admiral’s Cup programme on his new Huisman-built S&S design Prospect of Whitby, which showed promise but did not make the English team. (Yes, teams were vying to compete, not being begged to come.) ‘But not making the Cup team may have
been fortunate,’ said Pugh, ‘because we were selected instead for the Southern Cross team to race in Sydney and do the Hobart Race.’ So off Pugh went to Oz for his first antipodal adventure, where after racing what appeared to be a perfect Hobart the premature celebrations were
SEAHORSE 47
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