Moving with the times… 75 years after starting out building flat-bottom rowboats, then race-winning scows (inset), Melges Boatworks (now Melges Performance Sailing) builds or markets some 20 sailing and power boats out of their original Zenda, Wisconsin location. And that range continues to grow, the company still quick to respond to changes in the sailing environment. The latest addition is the brilliant Skeeta (for mature hooligans) and Nikki (above, for their kids) scow foilers, both designed and built in Melbourne by Jim and David French with the close involvement of Seahorse contributor Dr Ian Ward, inventor of the first Moth centreline foiler in 1999, and Quant Boats’ Swiss founder Michael Aeppli. If there are better boats for getting newbies into foiling then we have yet to see them
Throughout the stories one thing that
struck me is how excited Buddy would get, his eyes twinkling as he physically relived the sheer joy of that moment when he realised that they could really go fast! It happened to be the first race of the
Star World Championships in San Fran- cisco in 1978. Buddy had pretty much not sailed Stars since the early days with Gloria. This time he was sailing with Andreas Josenhans of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia who would also end up as the main- sail trimmer on the 1992 Cup team. Buddy and Andreas had raced a warm-
up regatta and had struggled. They also showed up in California with a fair amount of boat work and tweaking left to do, so on paper they should not have been a contender. Buddy writes in his Sailing Smart book that he knew they should have been much more prepared but, as they walked away from the boat the night before the regatta started, he told himself and Andreas ‘we are ready!’ They started the first race with complete
determination. Buddy didn’t look left or right, he just steered the boat with Andreas feeding information. They went hard right and, when they got close to the lay-line, tacked. Buddy couldn’t see any boats in his view. Andreas kept him focused. They rounded the first mark and were halfway to the reach mark when Buddy asked, ‘Can I look back now?’ Andreas smiled and agreed. The next boat was a quarter of a mile behind. They were launched! They attribute their success to a few
48 SEAHORSE
things, including flatter and faster sails and Andreas’s size. At an intimidating 238lb of muscle (he once waterskied behind a plane), Andreas was able to stare down the competition at the start and out-hike them around the course. I would argue that it was also the complete mental strength and the joy of doing well that propelled them to win in the 100-boat fleet. Before the regatta started Dennis
Conner proclaimed that whoever won the regatta would be the best sailor in the world. Who am I to argue with Dennis Conner? Winning that world championship sold
a few sails. The Melges success on the water and in business has always been a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. They win races and sell boats and sails; they make good sails and develop boats to win races. The Star, for instance, used to have sail controls in a centre console. Buddy and Andreas rigged them to the side so no one had to lean in. Simple – but no one had thought of that before. So while Buddy lists a combination of
things they did differently, the other sailors were pretty convinced it was the sails. In the next 12 months they sold 258 suits of Melges Star boat sails. In the same timeframe they also concep-
tualised and installed a circular vang track nicknamed the Zenda Express. Knowing the marketing acumen of Buddy, I would guess that he is the one who started the nickname. In the 1972 Olympics Buddy, William Allen and Bill Bentsen raced in the Soling.
They were leading the racing when on the second-to-last day there was absolutely no wind. These were in the days with only one race scheduled per day. Mathemati- cally, if there was no racing on this day they were going to win the regatta. As the time wore on another competitor had found a Frisbee and the fleet entertained themselves. I found an old news clip wherein, with era-typical music playing, an announcer states, ‘Buddy Melges today became the first sailor to win an Olympic medal while playing Frisbee.’ And, yes, it was a gold medal. At that same Olympics King Olaf of
Sweden asked Buddy for a suit of Yngling sails for his daughter, Sonja, ‘the princess’. When they called to enquire what colour draft stripes she would like, they were informed she preferred green but there was no rush as she was about to produce an heir. The sails arrived anyway and were loaned to a friend who was an SAS pilot and a decent but not brilliant sailor. He ran away with the regatta besting 90 other boats. Suits of Melges Yngling sails were sold all over the world. I tried to dig down to how it was
possible that their sails were that fast. It wasn’t just a lucky coincidence. A few things became clear: one, they are always looking for an edge, a creative use of tech- nology (or, as Buddy would say, take an idea and ‘put a little more sugar on it’). They were one of the first to use ‘special
new tempered yarn’ for race sails. At the time everyone else was talking about
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