Above: Buddy Melges has never stopped being passionate about just going out sailing and it was his enormous experience racing the scows on the lakes that informed this old school racer’s legendary devotion to heel-angle as his principal input for sailing fast. Melges has taken time over the years to instill the same ethos in dozens of other sailors but, as he demonstrated when surrounded by a dazzling array of electronics on Bill Koch’s space-age Cup winner America3
, it is only the sort of deeply rooted instinct that is engrained over the course of a lifetime that allows you to genuinely ignore every distraction and stick rigorously to first principles
can’t quite describe what she saw in Buddy but she remembers with absolute clarity that it was an obvious and immediate choice. And this was before she had ever seen him sail. He makes a big first impression. I personally can’t remember the first
time I heard of Buddy, I just ‘knew’ of him. It is possible it was from growing up in the Midwest and seeing the iconic poster of the 12 Metre, Heart of America, sailing through wheat fields, a poster made to promote his 1987 America’s Cup cam- paign in Australia and one of a small handful of legendary advertising cam- paigns in the sport of sailing. It was only a few years after that that I
had the pleasure of sailing with him as part of America3
in our bid for the 1992
America’s Cup in San Diego, California. It is from Buddy that I really learned
how to sail through waves. I’d just finished racing around the world, and yet had never thought of it quite as elegantly as Buddy instructed: ‘Present the boat to the waves. She comes up the back side and down the front, she likes to roll in there. Watch the bow.’ Why he was explaining that to one of
the youngest on the team (and a measly pit person at that) I’m not sure, but I’ve never looked at a wave the same way since. I now try to figure out how to ‘talk to it’. Buddy has a lot to share and is happy to
share his knowledge with anyone who will listen. Most often he doesn’t understand how powerful he is. At America3
in 1992
the ‘grinders’ union’ included some very strong, very confident and very large foot- ball players who were new to sailing. The team decided that we should take a page out of J-World and have a ‘Buddy-World’ on Etchells that we borrowed from San Diego Yacht Club. I am pretty sure in their whole football
career they were never as nervous as they were with Buddy standing over them bellowing ‘Do you think you are God? As far as I know he is the only one who can sail directly into the wind. You are pinch- ing, son!’ Meaty hands gripped the tiller and sweat
beaded on their brow but they did learn. Later in the campaign we did send them off to J-World. Their confidence came back and at one point while they were there Art Price (of the Atlanta Falcons) was steering a race and as the story goes he hailed ‘Star- board!’ while Chad Vande Zande (Univer- sity of Wisconsin), a grinder on the con- verging boat, yelled over ‘But you are not on starboard!’ The strong reply came back from Art: ‘But I will be soon!’ Mike Toppa, America3
’s spinnaker
trimmer and North salesman extra - ordinaire (America’s Cup CV: sailed in seven, coached in one, victory in two),
remembers this well. ‘It blew me away,’ he laughed. ‘Buddy was out there with those knuckleheads – the greatest sailor in the world out there teaching football players how to sail.’ Mike’s first impression of Buddy back
in 1992 was a bit different from mine. He had flown to San Diego to sail with us and see what this team was all about. We were heading out but paused to hoist the main in the harbour behind the headlands because it was a bit windy and a lot rougher outside. In the transition from bow-tow to sailing the bow got away from us. We had a designer driving the chase boat… and in a moment of panic he tried to nudge the bow and ended up punching a hole in the side instead. Boat captain and upwind trimmer Stu
Argo, having sailed the previous Cup with Buddy, calmly walked forward and stated the obvious. ‘Well, that will be all for today.’ Stu’s calm was in stark contrast to the smoke coming out of Buddy’s ears. Perhaps part of the reason that the two worked so well together. I began to wonder, have I ever seen
Buddy angry? Besides that particular day, there was only one other time. It was early in the 1992 campaign and we were supposed to have a day off. At dinner the night before Buddy asked a group of us if we wanted to go sailing. We were young
SEAHORSE 45
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