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Windward Passage: A Maxi Yacht in Her Sixth Decade Hardcover – June 1, 2023

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 334 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Wooden Boat
• Publication date June 1, 2023
• Dimensions 12.7 x 2.1 x 12.2 inches
• ISBN-10 1934982261
• ISBN-13 978-1934982266
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wooden Boat (June 1, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 334 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1934982261
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1934982266
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.1 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.7 x 2.1 x 12.2 inches

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Yachting World

• Digital Edition

World’s coolest yachts: Windward Passage

• Toby Heppell
• May 10, 2023

We ask top sailors and marine industry gurus to choose the coolest and most innovative yachts of our times. Luca Bassani nominates Windward Passage

“A very modern boat for her times: very large stern (almost like today’s naval architecture) and semi-round bilge hull made her very fast in reaching – and with a flush deck!” says Luca Bassani. “For a long time she was the fastest boat in real time in the SORC regattas – ie the world’s fastest boat – and she can be considered the first modern maxi yacht.”

Windward Passage was designed by the late Alan Gurney as an ocean racing record breaker for lumber tycoon Robert Johnson and built in laminated wood in 1968. The semi-planing hull was radical for the time, particularly beamy with a shallow canoe body, a fin keel and an elegant run aft to a broad transom – a shape described on launching as a ‘73ft dinghy’. Windward Passage won and set a record for the Transpac Race in 1971. Originally designed as a ketch she was later refitted to a sloop rig designed by Doug Peterson.

Photo: Windward Passage/D Ramey Logan/Wikimedia Commons

“A true yet forgotten myth,” concludes Bassani.

Make sure you check out our full list of  Coolest Yachts .

Windward Passage stats rating

Top speed: 25 knots LOA: 73ft/22m Launched: 1968 Berths: 12 Price: €500,000 Adrenalin factor: 50%

Luca Bassani

The visionary founder of Wally Yachts, Luca Bassani created an iconic brand and can be credited with shaping the trend for clean Italian aesthetics in yachting. As well as being ahead of the curve with yacht design, he has won world championships in sailing and industrial design awards for his innovative style.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams. Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

May / June Issue No. 298  Preview Now

May / June 2021

Windward passage.

The maxi-yacht WINDWARD PASSAGE began her ocean-racing career soon after her launching in 1967. She was immediately successful, taking line honors in some of the world’s major events. “PASSAGE,” as she is affectionately called, is seen here soon after the start of the 1975 Sydney-Hobart Race.

"No maxi ever built can match WINDWARD PASSAGE I for pure glamour,” wrote the author Preben Nyeland is his book Maxi: The Ultimate Racing Experience. “Just the drop of her name at a sailor’s bar can focus attention and start a long conversation.”

There’s nothing ordinary about this 73' cold-molded racing rocket or her 53-year history. She gained nicknames such as the “Wooden Whale,” “Big Dinghy,” and “Passing Wind” from envious competitors such as the hard-charging Jim Kilroy in his maxi KIALOAs and Sumner “Huey” Long in his ONDINEs. But to her loyal crews and admirers, she has always been known simply as “PASSAGE.”

The legend of WINDWARD PASSAGE began in 1963 when Robert F. Johnson, a yachtsman and controlling shareholder of the Georgia Pacific lumber juggernaut, launched his quest to break ocean-racing records. Without regard to racing rules and handicap formulas, he sought line honors and jaw-dropping elapsed-time postings in major Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean, and Southern Ocean races. “It was all about being the first boat to finish,” says PASSAGE’s professional skipper for the past 30 years, David “Halfdeck” Johnson, who is not related to the yacht’s original owner.

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Windward Passage: A Maxi-yacht in Her Sixth Decade

Description.

by Randall Peffer. Photographs by Steve Jost. Design by Ronald Geisman

Conceived by a lumberman-sailor, drawn by a young and then-untested designer, and built of spruce on a Bahamian beach in 1968, the 73’ ocean-racing maxi-yacht WINDWARD PASSAGE had an improbable rise to stardom during her twenty-year racing career. When he first laid eyes on her soon after her completion, the legendary designer Olin Stephens called the yacht “a masterpiece.” In the ensuing years, WINDWARD PASSAGE and her crews roamed the planet, winning the world’s major ocean races and attracting legions of admirers and competitors. She continues today, stronger and swifter than built, as a world-cruiser.

"Publisher Rand Randall Peffer, who profiled WINDWARD PASSAGE for WoodenBoat magazine in 2021, now presents a book-length biography of the storied ocean racer. Randall Peffer, who profiled WINDWARD PASSAGE for WoodenBoat magazine in 2021, now presents a book-length biography of the storied ocean racer."

Published in association with WoodenBoat and printed in Italy on 100-lb stock, Windward Passage: A Maxi-yacht in Her Sixth Decade, is a lavish hardcover presentation, equal to the quality of the yacht itself.

Customer Reviews

The book is so very well done. It's obvious so much love and attention to detail went into making this beautiful account of Passage's story. I remember reading of her and her successes as a young man. This book tells so much more! The words and photos truly pay homage to a one of a kind and iconic vessel. Should be in every sailors library. M.S.Allen s/y Sonata

Windward passage was one of the last big boat constructive wood. It’s a beautiful boat when I was in college I used to sailed my Star by-when it was in Newport Beach California. The book is full of short stories, beautiful pictures and we brought me back 50 years in the past it’s a heavy book so your coffee table better be substantial I also remember the graciousness of the crew and the owners, allowing other sailors, and people to at least go on her decks and look around, especially during fundraisers for events

What an amazing boat, this should be made into a movie. The story about how it was build is fantastic.

Killer book about a legendary yacht.

A wonderful book with great stories

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Published on May 10th, 2023 | by Editor

Windward Passage: World’s coolest yachts

Published on May 10th, 2023 by Editor -->

Yachting World has been asking top sailors and marine industry gurus to choose the coolest and most innovative yachts of our times, and Wally Yachts founder Luca Bassani nominated the 73-foot Windward Passage. Here’s the report :

“A very modern boat for her times: very large stern (almost like today’s naval architecture) and semi-round bilge hull made her very fast in reaching – and with a flush deck!” says Luca Bassani. “For a long time she was the fastest boat in real time in the SORC regattas – ie the world’s fastest boat – and she can be considered the first modern maxi yacht.”

Windward Passage was designed by the late Alan Gurney as an ocean racing record breaker for lumber tycoon Robert Johnson and built in laminated wood in 1968. The semi-planing hull was radical for the time, particularly beamy with a shallow canoe body, a fin keel and an elegant run aft to a broad transom – a shape described on launching as a ‘73ft dinghy’.

Windward Passage won and set a record for the Transpac Race in 1971. Originally designed as a ketch she was later refitted to a sloop rig designed by Doug Peterson.

“A true yet forgotten myth,” concludes Bassani.

Windward Passage stats rating Top speed: 25 knots LOA: 73ft/22m Launched: 1968 Berths: 12 Price: €500,000 Adrenalin factor: 50%

For Yachting World’s list of cool boats, click here .

Tags: coolest yachts , Luca Bassani , Windward Passage , Yachting World

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Professional BoatBuilder Magazine

Windward passage in print.

By Chris Caswell , Dec 12, 2023

M y wife dropped the 7-lb package on my desk, asking, “What the heck is this?” It turned out to be a book from WoodenBoat Publications called  Windward Passage : A Maxi Yacht in Her Sixth Decade . I dove in.

As someone who has raced aboard  Passage , raced against her, and admired her graceful aging for more than half a century, I can say that calling this coffee-table tome spectacular is like calling Niagara a waterfall.

Written by longtime waterman and talented wordmonger Randy Peffer, with a host of superb photos by Steve Jost, my old California friend, this is truly a tribute and something to be treasured by anyone who has ever heard the name  Windward Passage .

Engrossed in the words and images spread across the 335 12 ”  x 12 “  pages, my memory bell clanged at seeing old crewmates from old races, all aboard the legendary  Passage . Intended to finish first and set course records for every race she entered, she was designed by Alan Gurney with nary a look at meeting any handicap rules. (For more on Gurney’s design career, see “Passage Maker”  Professional BoatBuilde r No. 151, page 24.)

The 73′ (22.2m) ketch Windward Passage, built for lumberman Robert Johnson, was a defining early step in the evolution of modern maxi yachts and the most renowned of the designs of naval architect Alan Gurney.

Robert Johnson, of  Ticonderoga  fame, wanted a no-holds-barred ocean racer, had admired Gurney’s  Guinevere , and understood that the new Cal-40 was tearing up the offshore circuit with its shallow body, fin keel, and spade rudder. Gurney—an Englishman who apprenticed with Bill Tripp but was then on his own at just 30—and Johnson had agreed on lines Gurney sketched on a cocktail napkin. Alan then singlehandedly churned out the plans from his basement studio on New York’s East 54th Street. Johnson, a lumberman, sailor, and pilot, built her (out of wood, of course) on a Bahamas beach, and the rest is history.

Windward Passage  set the stage for the newest of maxi yachts, but there’s that twist in the tale: she was wooden. No one had built a really powerful maxi racing yacht from wood in years: the  Kialoa s  and  Ondine s  were aluminum. Gurney’s big surfboard design was as much a surprise as her construction material—layers of cold-molded spruce veneers and aerospace epoxies, and way off the charts in every way. One look told you she was designed to be a surfin’ fool on long Pacific swells.

Windward Passage is a Bluewater Boat

I was a regular aboard  Ragtime , also built of wood, which was sometimes a speed bump in the  Passage  road. We ( Ragtime ) beat  Passage  in the California Cup, where it was clear that  Passage  was designed for races where the finish line was thousands of miles, not three or four marks, away. She was a Peterbilt truck in the Indy 500.

Windward Passage’s cold-molded Sitka spruce hull was built on the beach near Freeport, Grand Bahama, in 1968.

I drove my wife crazy with each page turn, calling out, “Hey, here’s Don Vaughan, who I got ripped with at St. Francis Yacht Club on Ramos Fizzes. Look, that’s powerful Arnie Schmelling, who practically tore my arms off when I was opposite him on a  Passage  coffee-grinder winch in the Big Boat Series. Hey, there’s John Rumsey, who Vaughan towed on water skis as  Passage  reached past longtime rival  Kialoa  just to show who ‘owned’ the Big Boat Series.”

The entire book was a most delightful walk down memory lane. But this lavish hardcover is distinguished by more than just photos of old sailing buddies. It is a fine tribute to a fabled yacht, and Steve Jost photographed it as though he were shooting a Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry catalog. Genoa blocks sparkle like diamonds, the coffee-grinder winches (oh, my aching shoulders!) are like ubercool appliances in Williams-Sonoma, and even the lowly pulpit gleams as though sterling silver and not just steel. A teak table literally glows like the finest Scandinavian furniture.

The book includes photographs and detailed drawings of the yacht’s evolving keel designs.

The layout of the book, by Ronald Geisman, is impeccable, and each turned page brings another delight, another prize, another intake of breath. Carefully curated to match Peffer’s perfectly crafted text, the entire  Windward Passage  saga is laid out, heavy on anecdotes, people, and places from Bahamas beaches to victories in TransPac, from SORC to Sydney-Hobart.  Windward Passage  dominated every race with power, speed, grace, and, most of all, just sheer beauty. The pictures show her majesty, rolling down seas with main, huge spinnaker, mizzen, and oversized mizzen spinnaker—proud and unconquerable.

And this book is a fitting tribute to that beauty, with never-before-seen images and a level of resolution that make you want to cut them out to frame, if only the book itself wasn’t so gorgeous.

It has a lovely dust jacket, but if you remove it, you’ll find embossed the whale that was on the  Windward Passage  transom, now a sad memento of Lahaina Yacht Club, which is still smoldering from the Maui fires as I write.

Unlike Lahaina YC,  Windward Passage  soldiers on, perfectly maintained by new owners with grand adventures in mind. Modern rating rules do not take kindly to wide, shallow yachts designed to surf the Pacific swells, but ratings never mattered to Gurney or Johnson or any of the throngs who sailed aboard her in a relentless quest for first-to-finish and course records. The “Barn Door” trophy for first-to-finish TransPac is, of course, inscribed with the name  Windward Passage .

About the Author:  A former editor of  Sea Magazine  and  Yachting , Chris Caswell has written nine books on boating and has owned many power, sail, and rowboats.

Editor’s Note:   Windward Passage :   A  Maxi Yacht in Her Sixth Decade  is  published by  Professional BoatBuilder ’s parent company, WoodenBoat Publi cations Inc. Copies are available  from The WoodenBoat Store .

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Randall Peffer

• Windward Passage

Conceived by a lumberman-sailor, drawn by a young and then-untested designer, and built of spruce on a Bahamian beach in 1968, the 73’ ocean-racing maxi-yacht WINDWARD PASSAGE had an improbable rise to stardom during her twenty-year racing career. When he first laid eyes on her soon after her completion, the legendary designer Olin Stephens called the yacht “a masterpiece.” In the ensuing years, WINDWARD PASSAGE and her crews roamed the planet, winning the world’s major ocean races and attracting legions of admirers and competitors. She continues today, stronger and swifter than built, as a world-cruiser.

Randall Peffer, who profiled WINDWARD PASSAGE for WoodenBoat magazine in 2021, has now written a book-length biography of the storied ocean racer. For that effort, he was joined by the southern California yachting photographer Steve Jost and book designer Ronald Geisman, to produce a lavish, high-quality, hard-cover volume published in association with WoodenBoat.

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Product Identifiers

• Publisher Woodenboat Publications
• ISBN-10 1934982261
• ISBN-13 9781934982266
• eBay Product ID (ePID) 13058798367

Product Key Features

• Book Title Windward Passage : a Maxi Yacht in Her Sixth Decade
• Author Randall Peffer
• Format Hardcover
• Language English
• Topic General
• Publication Year 2023
• Genre Biography & Autobiography, Sports & Recreation

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• Photographed by Jost, Steve
• Designed by Geisman, Ronald
• Target Audience Trade

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Hardcover textbooks, hardcover antiquarian & collectible books, stephen king hardcover books, hardcover signed books.

World’s coolest yachts: Windward Passage

We ask top sailors and marine industry gurus to choose the coolest and most innovative yachts of our times. Luca Bassani nominates Windward Passage

“A very modern boat for her times: very large stern (almost like today’s naval architecture) and semi-round bilge hull made her very fast in reaching – and with a flush deck!” says Luca Bassani. “For a long time she was the fastest boat in real time in the SORC regattas – ie the world’s fastest boat – and she can be considered the first modern maxi yacht.”

Windward Passage was designed by the late Alan Gurney as an ocean racing record breaker for lumber tycoon Robert Johnson and built in laminated wood in 1968. The semi-planing hull was radical for the time, particularly beamy with a shallow canoe body, a fin keel and an elegant run aft to a broad transom – a shape described on launching as a ‘73ft dinghy’. Windward Passage won and set a record for the Transpac Race in 1971. Originally designed as a ketch she was later refitted to a sloop rig designed by Doug Peterson.

Photo: Windward Passage/D Ramey Logan/Wikimedia Commons

“A true yet forgotten myth,” concludes Bassani.

Make sure you check out our full list of  Coolest Yachts .

Windward Passage stats rating

Top speed: 25 knots LOA: 73ft/22m Launched: 1968 Berths: 12 Price: €500,000 Adrenalin factor: 50%

Luca Bassani

The visionary founder of Wally Yachts, Luca Bassani created an iconic brand and can be credited with shaping the trend for clean Italian aesthetics in yachting. As well as being ahead of the curve with yacht design, he has won world championships in sailing and industrial design awards for his innovative style.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams. Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

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ISBN: 1934982261

ISBN13: 9781934982266

Windward Passage: A Maxi Yacht in Her Sixth Decade

Conceived by a lumberman-sailor drawn by a young and then-untested designer, and built of spruce on a Bahamian beach in 1968, the 73' ocean-racing maxi-yacht WINDWARD PASSAGE had an improbable rise to stardom during her twenty year racing career. When first laid eyes on her soon after her competition, the legendary designer Olin Stephens called the yacht "a masterpiece." In the ensuing years WINDWAR PASSAGE and her crews roamed the planet, winning... Read Full Overview

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Format: Hardcover

Condition: New

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Book Review: Windward Passage, A Maxi Yacht in Her Sixth Decade

Windward Passage A Maxi Yacht in Her Sixth Decade By Randall Peffer, Steve Jost, Ronald Geisman WoodenBoat, $75.00

Few world class racing boats have had such improbable beginnings as Windward Passage —conceived by a somewhat renegade logger-entrepreneur-sailor, drawn by an untested young designer, built by a scrum of footloose “sailorboys” out of cold-molded spruce on the edge of a Bahamian harbor under not much more than a tent.

And few world class racing boats have had the equally improbable life that followed—sailing hundreds of thousands of ocean miles chasing regattas around the world, setting a multitude of records, furiously vexing younger, fancier competitors even after nearly 20 years of hard racing, and going on to gain a new lease on life as a luxurious, fast, world-traveling cruising yacht that still drops jaws wherever she goes.

Conceived by “Big” Bob Johnson and designed by Alan Gurney, this 73-footer seemed bound to become a legend from her launch in 1968, and it’s this destiny and history that makes Windward Passage A Maxi Yacht in Her Sixth Decade, much more than a typical coffee table tome . Randall Peffer, who wrote a story about the yacht in the May/June 2021 issue of WoodenBoat, joined forces with photographer Steve Jost and designer Ronald Geisman to produce this love song to a sailboat like no other. But while celebrating the boat, it’s also about the people who have sailed her, loved her, and cared for her through the decades and over the countless ocean miles.

The stories flow from interviews with former and current owners, captains, and crew, and the visuals are equally compelling, with many of the most stunning photos taken by yachting photographer Phil Uhl when Passage was at the height of her racing career in the 1970s and ’80s. The preposterous acreage of canvas carried by maxi yachts at that time made them impossibly photogenic, not to mention frequently wild to sail.

A terrific description of her came in a story from one of her first races, the 1969 SORC’s Miami-Nassau Race, when high winds and seas pummeled the fleet of more than 100 boats in what a Nassau newspaper called “a night of terror.” The book quotes sailor and author Robert Rubadeau, “who was on watch that evening aboard another racer surging through the dark toward Great Stirrup Cay. ‘This great white phantom blew by me like an express train, just a few yards to leeward,’ says Rubadeau. ‘It was Passage . She was there and gone before I even had time to be scared she might hit us.’ ’’

That night, Windward Passage set a record time of 15 hours, 54 minutes, 17 seconds, beating the previous record by nearly three hours. It was the first of many she would crush throughout her career.

One of the most wonderful aspects of her story is that it could happen at all. But she came to be in a time when yacht racing was still a Corinthian sport, before it became entirely professional, corporate, and prohibitively expensive, and the book is as much a paean to the boat as to that era and the sailors who rambled the planet living in it. During these years, boats still sailed oceans to make a starting line—by 1993, Passage had transited the Panama Canal 12 times already—rather than being packed up and moved on a ship. The bluewater miles these boats and crew traveled as a matter of course are inconceivable to most sailors today.

For instance, the racing schedule in 1972 had them starting in Long Beach, California, then to Acapulco, through the canal and up to Newport, Rhode Island, for the Bermuda Race, followed by a translatlantic from Bermuda to Spain. “Those events added up to 6,000 miles of racing and a 25,000-mile voyage for the yachts to make the round trip back to California.” That was just one season. The people who sailed Passage through these miles in all weather were not just racers; they were self-sufficient mariners capable of dealing with everything from jury-rigging a broken mast to dodging a hurricane.

Passage ’s storied history is part of what has enabled her survival into six decades. Designers like Doug Peterson were only too happy to draw her a new keel and rudder in the early 1980s to make her lighter and faster; owners through the years understood that they were curating a legend, not just upgrading a boat.

She was, says WoodenBoat ’s Matthew Murphy in the introduction, “one of the most influential wooden ocean racers ever to roam the planet.” You could drop the adjective wooden, and the statement would still be true. 

Author:  Kraken Sailing

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77 Years Later, Yacht Repeats Win in Trans-Pacific Race

By Chris Museler

• July 25, 2013

It took a thousand or so miles of sailing with the long, powerful waves of the Pacific Ocean for Hannah Jenner, a rising star in ocean racing, to get comfortable in this year’s Transpacific Yacht Race. Jenner, a 31-year-old from Britain, is used to racing ultralight 40-footers across oceans. But in the Transpac this month, Jenner was sailing Dorade, a 52-foot wooden sailboat from 1930 that is trimmed in varnished mahogany and adorned with polished bronze hardware.

“When I first was asked, I said: ‘Really? How old is this boat? Isn’t it going to break?’ ” Jenner said. “I’m used to boats that become more stable the faster they go. This boat rolls like crazy. It’s like learning all over again.”

Dorade , considered the forebear of modern ocean racing yachts, won the 2,225-nautical-mile Transpac race from Los Angeles to Honolulu in 1936. And 77 years later, the slender white hull with tall spruce masts rolled to victory again, beating the most modern carbon-fiber ocean racers to win its division and the overall King Kalakaua Trophy.

Racing classic wooden yachts is not unusual, but the sailing is often restricted to coastal day racing around buoys. Dorade’s owner, Matt Brooks, has a more ambitious goal of racing his yacht in all the great ocean races the boat won in the 1930s and ’40s. He said he was told that the Dorade was a “piece of antique furniture” and that “it couldn’t be done,” but Brooks and his crew received the overall winner’s trophy for the Transpac on Thursday, which should silence skeptics.

“What we found was that the boat loves the ocean,” said Brooks, who bought the boat in 2010 for $880,000. “You can tell she’s doing what she loves to do.”

Dorade was designed in 1929 by Olin Stephens, one of sailing’s most successful designers. The yawl was design No. 7 for the fledgling firm Sparkman and Stephens in Manhattan. Stephens, then 21, and his brother Rod were at the helm when the mahogany-planked, engineless boat made its first mark in the history books, winning the 1931 Transatlantic Race. Small and powerful, Dorade beat the traditional schooners of the time. The designer and his crew received a ticker-tape parade upon their return to New York, and the win set the stage for Stephens’s long career .

Dorade’s finishing time in the Transpac race this year was 12 days 5 hours 23 minutes 18 seconds, knocking more than a day off the boat’s 1936 run. The greatest distance covered in a day, or best 24-hour run, was 224 miles in 1936, but 203 miles this year.

Handicap rules used for offshore racing allow boats of different sizes and types to compete in the same race with time allowances and staggered starts. Figuring in those allowances, Dorade’s adjusted time of 5 days 12 hours 20 minutes 55 seconds beat Roy P. Disney’s modern 70-footer Pyewacket, which had an adjusted time of 5 days 14 hours 51 minutes 21 seconds. Dorade started a week earlier than Pyewacket, which finished the course in 8 days 15 hours 41 minutes 3 seconds.

“The whole idea of a boat like Dorade pulling this off has great benefits,” Disney said, referring to the publicity the win has attracted.

He added that he hoped more classic boats would race in the next Transpac. Disney said he had considered racing the wooden maxi yacht Windward Passage, which broke the course record in 1971, a result often called the Transpac’s greatest performance.

Brooks’s schedule for Dorade is primarily an attempt to recreate history. The list of races includes the Newport Bermuda Race, the Transatlantic Race and the Fastnet Race. Dorade raced in the 2012 Newport Bermuda Race, finishing sixth in its class. Brooks has his sights set on another Newport Bermuda Race in 2014, followed by the 2015 Transatlantic and Fastnet Races.

For this year’s Transpac race, Brooks and his crew spent last winter in San Francisco and Los Angeles testing different sails, navigation equipment and sailing techniques while racking up more than a thousand miles of ocean sailing. Dorade is the oldest boat to race and win the Transpac, but Brooks treated the yacht like any other top racing program in the fleet.

Brooks had new masts designed and built, in spruce, to handle the additional stresses of new laminated, aramid fiber sails. The hull, which was slightly asymmetrical as a result of its age, was faired and re-scanned. Some of the best sailors in the world were brought in to round out the seven-person crew, including an America’s Cup navigator and an around-the-world race skipper.

“The boat was extremely well sailed,” said Robbie Haines, an Olympic gold medalist who was a helmsman aboard Pyewacket. “Though it’s disappointing to us, part of me kind of likes seeing Dorade win.”

What Jenner and the rest of Dorade’s crew learned on their two-week sojourn was that the genius of the boat’s design and how the sailors in the 1930s skillfully sailed her never go out of style.

“It was definitely a new style of steering,” Jenner said. “Everything all of us know we had to forget and go to the old school type of sailing.”

The crew watched old films of Olin Stephens steering a rocking and rolling Dorade in the 1931 Transatlantic and holding the tiller steady in the center of the boat. By the end of this Transpac, Jenner said, they were all steering the same way as Stephens.

Brooks and the navigator Matt Wachowicz added to the historical realism by practicing celestial navigation all the way to Hawaii.

“We wanted to complete the historic circle,” said Brooks, who is a member of the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco, the same club that had James Flood, the boat’s 1936 owner, as a member. “We were within a mile or so of the GPS course.”

Despite the unruly motion of the narrow hull, Jenner said Dorade offered benefits over boats like Pyewacket.

“On this boat there are actually bunks with cushions as opposed to sleeping on sails,” she said. “It’s also bizarrely silent down below a wooden boat, but you can hear creaking and cracking noises, which was a little unsettling.”

Few boats have as grand a history as Dorade’s, but Brooks hopes to prove a point with the boat.

“I hope this win will make people sit up and take notice that these boats can still do what they were designed to do,” he said. “They shouldn’t be restricted to dockside museum pieces.”

A picture caption last Friday with an article about Dorade’s victory in the Transpacific Yacht Race 77 years after winning it the first time carried an erroneous credit. The photograph, provided by Ultimate Sailing, was taken by Sharon Green, not by Betsy Crowfoot.

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WHAT IS A MATADOR SQUARED?

• Author: Duncan Brantley

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ORIGINAL LAYOUT

Paul Cayard, the mustachioed 31-year-old American helmsman of the Italian maxi boat Passage to Venice, screamed to be heard by his crew above howling 25-knot winds and crashing eight-foot seas: "Ammainare lo spi!" Jumping to action, Passage's 23-member team executed a perfect spinnaker drop while Cayard glanced over his shoulder to get a fix on his nearest threats, Matador² of the U.S. and Longobarda of Italy. Both were a comfortable four boat lengths behind Passage. With only two races to go in the 21-race 1990 Maxi World Championship series, Passage and Matador² were deadlocked in the point standings. A win on this December day would put Passage in the catbird seat.

As Cayard's 80-foot, 40-ton maxi gracefully rounded the inflatable orange marker and headed to windward off St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, disaster struck. An experimental carbon-fiber-headboard car—a device that secures the mainsail to the top of the mast—shattered. The light brown Kevlar main fluttered to the deck. Passage had lost her engine.

Stefano Maida scrambled up the mast to repair the damage. As he swayed violently atop the 120-foot metronome, Matador² and Longobarda passed the limping Passage. By the time the mainsail was fixed, Matador² had won. The next day, Matador² squeezed past Passage again to win a 75-mile distance race and clinch the world championship.

"To break down, especially when you're winning," said Cayard, "is like Ayrton Senna being 10 laps up and blowing out a tire. You might be the best driver out there, but there's nothing you can do about it." Passage's mishap was worth a possible swing of five points: She ended up losing the world title to Matador² by a mere 4.25 points.

Maxis are the largest, fastest and most powerful offshore racing sailboats. The class consistently attracts elite sailors from around the globe. Behind every wheel, or within spitting distance of the cockpit, was an America's Cup veteran: Dennis Conner and Rives Potts led the French yacht Emeraude; John Bertrand, Tom Whidden, John Marshall and Jon Wright sailed Longobarda; John Kolius and Peter Stalkus piloted Vanitas, another Italian entry; Dave Vietor was aboard the U.S. maxi Congere; and Cayard and Adam Ostenfeld sailed Passage.

Sadly absent was Kialoa V and her owner, Jim Kilroy. Friends said Kilroy had exchanged his racing sails for cruising rags. "Jim started this whole maxi game over a decade ago," said a sailor who has crewed for Kilroy nearly as long. "When it began to accelerate and change, he decided to sit back and watch."

The world championship was sailed in three separate regattas, each consisting of seven races. The series started in Newport last September, moved to Miami in late October and, as noted, concluded in St. Thomas. The regatta was the last chance for America's Cup skippers, crews, designers and syndicate heavies to butt heads before dedicating the next 17 months exclusively to preparations for the 1992 Cup races in San Diego.

The consensus after St. Thomas was that Bill Koch's Matador¬¨¬®‚Äö√¢¬ß is, as FBI agent Dale Cooper might say, one damn fine maxi. She showed blazing speed both upwind and down, whether it was blowing eight knots or 28. Koch's whopping $7 million investment—the boat itself cost approximately $2 million, the rest went into research and development, which will be amortized over Koch's upcoming America's Cup campaign—has apparently paid off.

Koch, sailing an earlier Matador, had been a bridesmaid in the last four world championships. The 1990 world championship was the newest version's maiden regatta, and she won impressively. "The boat is major league fast," said Vanitas navigator Stalkus, a two-time America's Cup veteran. In Newport, Matador² placed lower than first only once. It wasn't long, however, before the other six maxis realized that to have a chance at winning, they would have to gang up on Matador².

"The racing got harder for us after Newport," said Gary Jobson, tactician and part-time helmsman for Matador². "We didn't have too many friends out there. Before every start, two boats would circle us while a third waited nearby to come in for the kill."

Unfair? "Hey, it's yacht racing," said Stalkus. "The idea is to beat the other boat." Even with the gang-up tactics, though, Matador² had three wins in both Miami and St. Thomas.

Despite Matador²'s victory in the worlds, some were critical of the boat's handling and felt she could have performed even better. "If you put Dennis Conner or a crew like Passage's on Matador², she would be unstoppable," said one member of a rival afterguard. "The boat is not being sailed as well as she should be."

While Matador¬¨¬®‚Äö√¢¬ß and Passage were busy slam-dunking each other, John Bertrand, driving Longobarda, slipped by to win the St. Thomas regatta and spoil Matador¬¨¬®‚Äö√¢¬ß's chance to sweep the three events. Bertrand sailed a consistently brilliant series. Except for some bad luck during the Newport regatta—a ripped mainsail forced Longobarda out of one race, a dismasting finished her in another—the boat never finished worse than third. Bertrand won three races and placed second nine times.

Conversely, Conner was consistently lackluster aboard Emeraude, finishing ahead of only perpetual caboose Congere. Despite that minor embarrassment, Congere's owner, Beven Koeppel, had much to be thankful for. In 1990 in a race from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro, his previous maxi, also named Congere, had run aground during the night off the coast of Brazil. All 30 crew members were forced to swim ashore and the yacht broke up in the surf. The crew was picked up the next day.

If the world championship was a sneak preview of the '92 America's Cup, we can expect a knock-down, drag-out match in San Diego between Koch's America¬¨¬®‚Äö√¢• and Raul Gardini's Il Moro di Venezia (The Moor of Venice, i.e., Othello). Gardini, 57, also owns Passage.

Gardini's racing record and his business rèsumè make it clear that he's not a man to be trifled with. His industrial-chemical conglomerate, Montedison, had $13.5 billion in sales in 1989 and employs more than 50,000 people worldwide. In Italy last year, Montedison ranked second only to Fiat in sales. Gardini is also the head of the holding company Ferruzzi Finanziaria, which owns Montedison and had a gross income of $30 billion in 1989.

As a sailor, Gardini has spent a lifetime on the water, campaigning a succession of maxis, all named Il Moro di Venezia (Passage to Venice was originally an Australian boat named Windward Passage; Gardini bought it and changed the name to combine something old and something new). Il Moro III, now renamed Vanitas, won the 1988 world championship.

If Gardini had been counseling a young Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, his advice would have been "carbon fiber," not "plastics." Gardini is betting heavily that the miracle synthetic—stronger than steel and a fraction the weight—will soon be used in everything from commercial aircraft fuselages to picnic tables. He has commissioned an experimental 180-foot carbon-fiber cruising ketch, 48 feet longer than Michael Fay's America's Cup challenger New Zealand; when it's completed, in 1992, Gardini's will be the largest carbon-fiber boat ever built. Clearly maxi boats, and now the America's Cup, are only a small part of Gardini's much larger carbon-fiber business strategy.

"We were all very sad to lose the world championship," said Gabriele Rafanelli, Gardini's general for sailing affairs, "but this regatta was used by us as a training ground for the America's Cup. Now we've seen that we can compete with anybody. We are tough. We may not look it. We are Italians. We laugh, we joke. But we will be in San Diego to win the America's Cup. And Mr. Gardini is a very determined person."

So, too, is Matador²'s Mr. Koch.

Duncan Brantley's most recent sailing story for SI appeared in the Nov. 26, 1990, issue.

DANIEL FORSTER

Matador² led Italy's Longobarda around a Newport buoy.

Passage's shot at the championship fell along with her mainsail in St. Thomas.

CARLO BORLENGHI

Looking beyond the America's Cup, Gardini is also building a 180-foot, carbon-fiber ketch.

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2 November 2013

Midnight sun (peterson maxi).

Additionnal news about Peterson : http://www.demi-coques.fr/articlevoile/dpeterson Sry in French only :( Chorus