The Sailing Museum and National Sailing Hall of Fame has revealed the names of 12

individuals who will be inducted into its Hall of Fame fellowship this year. This diverse list features Jan C. O’Malley, a three-time US Sailing Yachtswoman of the Year, two-time Adams Cup winner, and the first ever winner of the IYRU Women’s World Sailing Championship; Peter Melvin, a multiple-class world and national champion, as well as an innovative yacht designer; and Charles Ulmer, a national champion and race winner throughout the 1970s and 80s and proponent of the sport of sailing through the many organizations through which he has been affiliated.

The National Sailing Hall of Fame induction committee met numerous times since the nomination process to whittle down the original list to the slate of finalists. According to the committee, while the future inductees’ biographies differ, they are all accomplished and dedicated to the sport and its community. Ten fall into its modern category, while another two represent historic classification. 

Honored for technical accomplishment and contribution are brothers Eric Hall and Ben Hall, the late Gary Mull, one of the most prolific and successful U.S. sailboat designers working in the latter half of the 20th century, and the late Carl Alberg, whose 56 designs resulted in more than 10,000 boats. 

Others to be inducted in the modern classification in the sailing category are Kevin Burnham, an Olympic and Goodwill Games medalist in sailing; Conn Findlay, a consummate crew member for America’s Cup competitor Courageous and Maxi Ocean Racer Windward Passage, and one of the few competitors to medal in two distinct sports (Rowing and Sailing); and Richard Tillman, the 1965 Sailor of the Year who held National, North American and World titles in the Snipe, Finn, Laser, Sunfish and Windsurfing classes.

Franklin Wood, who founded the Annapolis Sailing School and established the Annapolis Sailboat Show, rounds out the modern classification in the contributor category. Allegra Mertz, one of the two women to be inducted with O’Malley, was elected through the historic classification, along with Alberg.

“The Class of 2024 has left an indelible mark on sailing,” co-chair Gary Jobson said. Their achievements inspire us to explore, innovate and honor the sport. From Olympic champions to boat designers, they remind us that sailing is more than a pastime; it’s a legacy of courage and possibility. Trailblazers like Allegra Mertz, whose skill, determination and love of racing continues to inspire fellow sailors and set a high standard for excellence. Innovators such as Ben and Eric Hall, whose cutting-edge materials and championship-winning rigs have pushed innovation. These inductees are a formidable group. We look forward to celebrating their accomplishments on October 5 at the 2024 Hall of Fame Induction ceremony, hosted by the Chicago Yacht Club.”

“What an honor to welcome these remarkable individuals into The Sailing Museum and National Sailing Hall of Fame,” said Executive Director Ashley Householder. “We take seriously the responsibility of preserving the legacy of our inductees for the countless ways in which each has contributed to the sport of sailing. Please join us as we embark on telling their exceptional stories.”

Each year, the induction committee of the National Sailing Hall of Fame reviews nominations and compiles a slate of those to be inducted into its hallowed fellowship of extraordinary achievement and service. Inductions have been taking place since 2011, when the Hall was in Annapolis. The Sailing Museum and National Sailing Hall of Fame has since moved to Newport, the sailing capital of the country. The number of legends in the Hall will be 135 total with this year’s class.

This year, the Induction will be held at the Chicago Yacht Club Oct. 4-5. For ticket information, follow the Hall of Fame website.

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Newport, R.I. – The National Sailing Hall of Fame announced Thursday 10 sailors comprising its 13th class of inductees. The Class of 2023 includes:

• Elwood Widmer “Skip” Etchells – Known as a superb athlete, Etchells’ long career has left an enduring legacy. After building destroyers and icebreakers for the U.S. Navy in World War II, he founded his own boatbuilding company, the Old Greenwich Boat Company, and became a noted builder of hundreds of extremely competitive boats. His philosophy was to deliver high-quality workmanship, with his company’s tagline “Built Like a Yacht.”
• Peter Holmberg – One of the most famous sailors in the Caribbean, Holmberg is known for his skills at all levels of racing, from the Finn Class to Maxis to J Class yachts. He won a Silver Medal in the International Finn Class in the 1988 Olympic Games, the first medal for the U.S. Virgin Islands by an athlete in any sport. Since then, he has been crew on three America’s Cup teams, four Heineken Regattas, eight International Rolex Regattas, eight BVI Spring Regattas and overall winner in three Antigua Race Weeks.
• Sally Honey – A champion sailor, Honey has spent her career contributing to the sport in every capacity from sailmaking to educating on safety at sea. She was twice named Rolex’s Yachtswoman of the Year in 1973 and 1974. One of her groundbreaking achievements was leading an all-women’s crew in the Transpacific Race in 2005. Her most recent inspiring victory was winning the 2022 Newport to Bermuda Race with her husband Stan Honey (HOF Class of 2012) aboard their 56-year old Cal 40.

• John Kolius – A natural, gifted sailor from a young age, he has been a professional sailmaker, sailor and coach. He and his team won a silver medal for the USA in the 1976 Summer Olympics. He continued racing at a high level, winning the J24 World Championships in 1979 and 1981. In 1983, he was named skipper of the two-time America’s Cup defender Courageous and in 1987 America II. Kolius worked with Paul Cayard on the Il Moro di Venezia challenge in 1992 and was a coach for the all-women’s team on Mighty Mary in 1995. He tried to win the Cup one more time as head of Aloha Racing in 2000. In 2002, he returned to racing a Sunfish and finished second in the World Championship at the age of 51.
• William “Bill” Lapworth – Lapworth was one of the first naval architects to successfully embrace the boat building industry’s change from wood to fiberglass. His long career in marine engineering and naval architecture resulted in a line of keelboat one designs built for downwind speed. Teaming up with Jack Jensen, Jensen Marine started building the veritable Cal 20s in 1961. Cal Yachts are still a popular design to this day. A Cal 40 won the Southern Ocean Racing Circuit in February 1964; a fleet of Cal 40s raced the Congressional Cup for many years off Long Beach, California; a Cal 40 won the 2006 Newport to Bermuda Race and in 2022 the Honeys won the Newport to Bermuda Race in their Cal 40.

• John Knox Marshall – A lifelong racer, Marshall earned a bronze medal in the 1972 Olympic Games. He was the mainsail trimmer aboard Intrepid for the America’s Cup Defender Trials in 1974, Enterprise in 1977, Freedom in 1980 and was part of the crew aboard Liberty in 1983 that lost to Australia II. The loss inspired Dennis Conner, Malin Burnham and Marshall to mount a challenge to bring the Cup to San Diego in 1988 and Marshall was the design coordinator for Stars & Stripes. He served as president of North Sails for many years, and upon his retirement there, became president of Hinckley Yachts.
• Charles “Charley” Morgan – Enthusiastic, inquisitive and industrious, Morgan spent his long career making sails, flying airplanes, designing and building boats with his Morgan Yacht Corporation. Many of the over 1,000 Morgan Out Island series cruising yachts are still on the water today. He designed, built, made the sails for, managed and skippered Heritage for the 1970 America’s Cup Defense Trials, losing to Intrepid. In addition, Morgan built several of the water-based exhibits for Disney World.
• Robert “Bob” Perry – As someone who notes that his hobby became his occupation, Perry has focused for decades on designing comfortable, attractive and easy-to-sail yachts. Perry has designed yachts for Tayana, Cheoy Lee, Valiant, Baba, Ta Shing, Hans Christian Yachts, Islander, Passport, Pacific Seacraft and Saga. His expertise is apparent by his courses in yacht design at Evergreen State College in Washington and his boat reviews published in sailing magazines for more than 40-years.

• Richard “Dick” Stearns, III – A highly skilled racing sailor and innovator, Stearns was part of the team that won the International Star Class World Championship in 1962 and in 1964 earned a Silver Medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games. In 1963, Stearns and crew won a Gold Medal in the Pan American Games. Adding to his accomplishments, Stearns won two Tartan 10 North American Championships and competed in 53 Chicago to Mackinac Island Races, winning in 2000 aboard his 35-year-old Cal 40. He served on the U.S. Olympic Yachting Committee in 1968,1972 and 1976 and coached for American teams those years. As an innovator, he pioneered the use of “crosscut” sails using Dacron and Orlon fabrics after purchasing Murphy & Nye Sailmakers and with two of his past crew, Gary Comer and Buck Halperin, founded the Lands’ End company, originally to sell equipment for sailboats. 
• The 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient is Tim Hogan, who has been the president of the Interscholastic Sailing Association since 2005 and has championed their causes for almost two decades. He and his team virtually doubled the roster of high school teams over the past 20 years, allowing more young sailors to take their skills into their adult lives. A three-time All American Sailor and successful offshore yacht-racer, he says that his greatest accomplishment is instilling a love for sailing in his four children.

 
“We’re immensely proud of our inductees this year, as they represent everything we love most about the sport,” said Gary Jobson, co-president of the National Sailing Hall of Fame and Cruising World editor-at-large. “Their contributions to the world of sailing have deeply impacted and touched all of our lives, and each of them have created a hefty legacy for the rest of us to live up to. We are delighted to honor their accomplishments and welcome them into the Hall of Fame.”

The members of the Class of 2023 join 114 current National Sailing Hall of Famers, all of whom are featured in the Legends of Sailing exhibition at The Sailing Museum, which opened last year in Newport, Rhode Island. The interactive experience shares their photos, career highlights and quotes from the legends themselves. This year marks the 13th year of annual induction to the National Sailing Hall of Fame. For more on the inductees, please visit: nshof.org/hall-of-fame.
 
The Class of 2023 will be formally celebrated November 3-4 in Newport Beach, California. The Induction Weekend has become notable as a reunion of sailing’s Who’s Who as previous inductees join the celebrations to welcome their peers into the Hall of Fame.
 
The inductees were nominated by sailors from across the United States. Nominations were reviewed by a selection committee comprised of representatives from the NSHOF Board, previous inductees, the sailing media, the sailing industry, community sailing, maritime museums, the cruising community and US Sailing. Nominations are accepted year-round at nshof.org/nominations. The deadline for Class of 2024 nominees is January 31.

Nominees must be American citizens, 55 years of age or older, who have made a sustained and significant impact on the growth and development of the sport in the United States at a national or international level in the following categories:
 Sailing – Recognizing achievements made on the water as a sailboat racer, cruiser or offshore sailor.Technical – Recognizing those who have significantly contributed to the technical aspects of sailing. Examples include designers, boat builders and sailmakers.Contributor – Recognizing those who have made other significant contributions to the American sailing experience. Examples include teachers, coaches, administrators, media, artists, musicians, promoters and organizers. 
Nominees for the Lifetime Achievement Award must be American citizens, 55 years of age or older, who have achieved success in sailing and outside of sailing and have given back to the sport in some significant manner. Lifetime Achievement Award recipients are selected by the NSHOF Board of Directors.

2023 National Sailing Hall of Fame Inductees (alphabetical, with city of birth):

Elwood “Skip” Etchells* – Philadelphia, PA
Tim Hogan – Los Angeles, CA (Lifetime Achievement)
Peter Holmberg – St. Thomas, USVI
Sally Honey – Urbana, IL
John Kolius – Houston, TX
William “Bill” Lapworth* – Detroit, MI
John Knox Marshall – Santiago, Chile
Charles “Charley” Morgan* – Chicago, IL
Robert “Bob” Perry – Toledo, OH
Richard “Dick” Stearns, III* – Evanston, IL
 
*Posthumous

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After 45 years of running into each other at boat shows but ­uttering no more than a brief hello, Doris Colgate and Lin Pardey sit side by side in Newport, Rhode Island. They’re talking, laughing, giggling, smiling. And ­reminiscing about sailing and their lives.

They’re about to join an exclusive club of nautical notables that’s 114 members strong, all inductees into the National Sailing Hall of Fame, an honor that Doris’ husband, Steve, received in 2015. The Colgates are responsible for teaching 160,000 people how to sail and explore the world. Doris also founded an organization dedicated to furthering women’s participation in the sport and lifestyle: the National Women’s Sailing Association.

Lin and her husband, Larry, who died in 2020, are known for two leisurely circumnavigations aboard engineless, self-built wooden boats. They published extensively about their experiences, encouraging countless others to set off on their own cruising adventures.

Here’s what Doris and Lin had to say on the eve of receiving sailing’s highest honor this past November.

[Full transcript]  

CW: You’ve made a significant and sustained impact on sailing domestically and abroad. What stories stick with you?

DC: For me, it is really all the people we taught and whose lives we changed. At the recent US Sailboat Show, there must have been at least 50 people who came up to us, and these are the words they use: “You’ve changed my life.” Some of them say, “You cost me a lot of money,” but that’s because they’re buying boats. That’s the good part, but it’s really the gratification we get from the graduates of our courses that makes us feel good every day.

LP: It’s amazing how many people say, “I read your book when I was a youngster, and it just helped me.” It wasn’t always that it got them out sailing; it was that it got them out trying something new.

After a tsunami in Thailand, there was a boat at anchor, just outside the breaking waves that had destroyed a lot of boats. There was a doctor on one of the boats, who, after finding his wife and son, spent the next three weeks helping with medical care and ended up getting an award from the government. They then sailed to New Zealand for boat repairs. I ran into him in a boatyard, and he said: “You’re the reason I went sailing. I never realized the adventure it would give me and my family.” Before that, I’d never realized how far it keeps spreading. When people get away from their own comfort zone and get out and do things, they end up doing something as big as we did. It was terribly gratifying.

CW: Themes that are integral to this award include longevity and volunteerism. How are these qualities related to your careers?

DC: I do believe that working in the sailing industry has kept me and my husband, Steve, young. We’re in our 80s. I don’t know where all the years have gone, but they’ve all been good, with a few little hitches. 

Regarding volunteerism: When I started the NWSA, there was no way that I or anyone else was going to make a living off it. But it was so important to get more women into sailing, to get women to enjoy sailing the way I have enjoyed it. There were no ifs, ands or buts—it was going to happen. 

LP: Longevity is the unbelievable magic. I met Larry when I was 20, and he was building a little boat. He took me to see his etchings on our first date: his loft floor and his keel timber. By the end of the evening, I thanked him for such an amazing date. He said, “Stick with me baby, and you’ll go a long way.” It’s been 55 years, and I’m still sailing and voyaging, and the longevity was that there always seemed to be something new and interesting added to our lives because we were sailing.  

And of course, the writing. It kept life so interesting. It gave us a really important thing—real stress—but not the constant stress of a normal life. I think that kept me healthy. Stress is good for you if you can let go of it completely. To have a stressful time on shore, then go to sea and relax for ten days, away from it all—I think that’s contributed tremendously to having very fortunate health.

Voyaging and the voyaging schedule is stressful but in a different way. You learn so much and you want to share it with people. You say, OK, I’m going to go to a boat show. Then, I remember Larry and I ended up doing 30 different cities in 3 months going to seminars and presenting lectures. It was exciting to meet people we could enthuse. It was wonderful that we were giving something back to people who had been reading what we wrote. We did raise funds for junior sailing programs, along with our writing. We ended up with pneumonia, both of us! But it was so exciting and wonderful. One of the things Larry told me early on after our first book came out and people started coming up to us asking us questions was to “take every question really seriously. You can break their dream if you don’t give them good, encouraging answers.”

CW: Bob Dylan is in his 80s… How do you keep it new, as was written in a recent New Yorker profile of him?

DC: Oh my gosh. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of a new idea that we need to be doing. It sometimes becomes a big bone of contention with our staff. Have you ever read Who Moved My Cheese? It’s about change. It’s a teeny little book (96 pages) but it’s “Oh, no, not something else?!” Not another thing. We’ve just gone through Hurricane Ian. We lost our offices, we lost all our memorabilia. Over 59 years of slides. Everything. I had the original Yachting magazines with an article I wrote in 1967. It’s gone—though I scanned it.

But, it’s an opportunity. An opportunity for us to start and do something new. We’re opening new locations, we’re coming up with new programs, specifically, some for women, some for men. Every day presents an opportunity.

CW: Let’s talk about women and sailing. 

LP: I came into the sailing world as an utter novice. I’m not a normal size: I’m 4-foot-10. When I met Larry, I looked like I was 14 years old, and I was the only woman 99 percent of the time on charter and delivery boats. Not one man put me down. Every single one was willing to give me a hand. It was only me who could stop me from doing things.

Larry said, “You’ve got to realize that in a sport like sailing, yelling is part of it.” Women immediately associate yelling with fear or they’ve done something wrong. Guys think it’s all part of the sport. They go out on the football field, they yell at each other to make sure they’re heard. They yell at each other because it’s getting exciting. They yell at each other because of frustration. And they walk back off the field, pat each other on the back and say, “What a great game.” 

DC: It’s like lawyers in court. They’re against each other, and then they go have lunch together. 

LP: Larry said you’ve got to realize that no matter how carefully we get our communication right on the boat there still will be times when it’s going to get loud. Don’t take it personally. Get on with the job. As I started sailing more, I started trying to encourage other ­women I saw to enjoy it more. Women are gradually finding out that it’s OK to get dirty, messy. Women have to get out and do it themselves and try it and learn. It’s wonderful to see how many women are getting out on their own and buying their own boats and introducing their partners to sailing.

DC: There’s a difference between the learning process for men and women. Women like to really learn why and how something works. Men will just go straight into it. When we started all the NWSA programs, we really wanted to give them that background information: the whys, the hows, not “just do it.”

There are tendencies for the man to grab the line because he feels that maybe it’s too much for the woman. That happened to me on one of our flotilla cruises, and that was the last straw. That poor guy took that line out of my hand. I’d had it. I am sorry now for what I said to him! 

LP: One of my favorite New Zealand sailors—a gal named Penny Whiting—I’ve sent many people to take her courses. One of the things she always says is: If it’s hard, you’re doing it wrong. In many ways it’s true. I now do a little shorty course called “Yelling, Lifting and Pulling.” I start off talking about the yelling aspect. Women are not being addressed as well as they should be in the equipment and positioning of equipment on boats. Some of the ergonomics of making it easier for women aboard comes down to the fact that they don’t address the fact that men have more shoulder strength, women have more hip strength. If you could get it so that women don’t have to extend their arm fully, they can use a winch better. The minute a woman’s hand is straight up a guy has seven times the strength to pull back than a woman does. On some boats, they don’t make it easy for a woman to position herself above a winch, the recommended position.

I went aboard six boats at the boat show. Of those over 35 feet, there wasn’t one where I could easily step from the cockpit sole out onto the cockpit seat and over the cockpit coaming. Not one of them. This is crazy. Even a little footstep in the corner would have made it easier for the smaller person on board and safer for the big person.

DC: Another thing about sailing is that it’s a lifetime adventure.  As you do get older, balance and strength become quite an issue. The newer boats don’t have handles where they should be.

LP: Tell me about it.

DC: The old racing boats; they did, because they knew what kind of condition you’d be in. For us, when we buy cruising boats for our courses, we look very carefully at the safety features because of our customers. They’re middle-aged, ranging between 40 and 85 years old, mostly. We’re getting younger people but that’s the bulk of it. When you get the mean, in the 55-60 range, they’re not all in super condition.

CW: When you were young, you were both sassy with volatile mother-daughter relationships. 

LP: My mother and I had a terrible falling out when I was 14, and I ran away from home at 17. I was a civil-rights a­ctivist, I thought. Later, my sister Bonnie told me that we were alike and that my mother wanted me to do what she’d dreamed of doing. We became very close friends after I’d been off sailing a few years. I wish I’d been more patient with my mother when I was younger. On the other hand, it forced me to grow up and realize that you’d better take care of yourself, or you can get into trouble very easily. 

DC: My father was a very well-known biochemist and microbiologist, and when I was 17, we went to Paris. That was the first thing that changed my life. I’d never traveled like that before. We walked in circles where everybody adored my father, so we got introduced to Nobel Prize winners. It was pretty cool. Those were the best years between my mother and me. 

It also gave me the feeling that I was better than my classmates when I came back, which was a huge mistake. That’s not something you want to express. I started going into acting and writing and ended up at Antioch College. I was a beatnik. I wore black all the time, had long blond hair, all the way down. I smoked for a while. At Antioch, men could be in the women’s dorms, and you didn’t have to go to class. That was my undoing.

CW: You two were ‘break the mold’ young women.

DC: I wanted to be a journalist because I loved writing. I investigated topics like you do. Somehow or other I got off that path. Early on in high school, I got into the high school newsletter. I wrote controversial stuff; things that the principal didn’t like. I was writing that what they were doing was wrong.

CW: You both got called into the principal’s office.

LP: My mother said to me one day: “Lin what do you want to do? You’re such a butterfly—interested in this one week, that another.” She said “What do you want to be?” I just looked at her and said, “Different.”

DC: Exactly.

LP: I knew I wanted something different. I never had any interest in writing, but I always loved storytelling. My mother was great; she was just very different from me in some ways. She was much more into security because she was a Depression child. When I was twelve, I got pulled into the principal’s office because [they thought] I was telling lies. They called my mother because I refused to back down about the stories I was telling. My mother came to the office and said “I’ll be back,” and walked out. My mother returns 20 minutes later, lays down a bunch of pictures on the principal’s desk and said, “there, that proves Lin’s story happened.” My parents did take us camping and to meet unusual people.

DC: We went to the lab every Sunday with my dad. He was clearly a driven man. So we did “supposements.” We called them supposements. He would give us indicators, little trays where you could put a different solution in each one. You dip something in each one and this one turns pink and this one turns yellow, this one turns blue and this one turns green. He did all that kind of stuff. He was always introducing my two younger sisters and me to something new.

LP: My father was a tool and dye maker, a specialist in tool measurement. He used to take me out to the garage and show me what he was making. He kept showing us things. I remember one of the adventures he took us on, when he was working for Hughes aircraft. He took us round to climb all over the Spruce Goose [Hughes’ H-4 Hercules commonly known as the Spruce Goose]. My dad showed me this other world…

CW: Both of your fathers.

LP: Both of our fathers.

DC: All the travels, the science, the art, music. He was a piano player. Classical music, he had walls of 78s.

CW: You have each enjoyed unique partnerships with the men in your lives. What’s the secret to this success?

DC: Compromise. And doing things you like together.

LP: I would say having overlapping skills—overlapping skills where we very comfortably divided up our lives. I made all the financial decisions. I would ­discuss them with Larry, but in the end, he’d say, “It’s your call.” He made all the mechanical, physical decisions on boats, strength and design. Other qualities that made it work were having a sense of ­humor and taking a break. I’d say, “Larry, I’m taking a nonresponsibility break.” I’d go off with a girlfriend for four or five days. Larry raced around Britain; he was six weeks off racing. I took the boat, for the first time ever, I singlehanded Seraffyn around England.

DC: I made a promise to Steve that I’d never interfere with his racing. And I’m glad I did that. And I think the longest he was gone was three weeks, then of course he was in the America’s Cup, so he was away all summer, and I’d go back and forth during the trials. Those breaks allowed me to do what I wanted to do as well, and it gave me the full responsibility of the company. Steve’s the creative person in terms of our courses and how to do everything. That’s the difference between us: I run the company and he supports me. But when something needs to be decided on, or there’s a new course, how are we going to do this, that’s Steve.

LP: We had different spheres in decision making.

DC: My experience is some racing on our own boat and lots of cruising, but not the type of cruising that you’ve done. We’d get on a plane, go with 30 people, be with them, be in charge of them. (laughs) Poor Steve. “Steve would you get me a Coke?” —when he’s trying to navigate. You become their servants.

CW: Neither of you felt overshadowed by your spouses.

LP: It takes a special man. I remember when my writing was becoming popular. It was always Lin Pardey. I started putting Lin and Larry Pardey in the bylines and he said, “but I didn’t write it.” I said, “Yes, but I’ve discussed every bit of this with you, and I changed this area because you said, “Lin, you didn’t really tell them the details that might help them.”

Larry was wonderful on the technical details, so I put it in both our names. One day I said, “You know, Larry, you should try to do a bit of writing.” People would say, “Oh I’ve read about you in the magazine.” He was a terrible editor but very willing to be edited. So we worked together and he ended up writing some popular and useful articles. I found that was the only time there was an imbalance. I was starting to overshadow him and I didn’t want that. I wanted it to be equal. It worked out wonderfully in the end. It was very much a cooperative writing career. I wrote Bull Canyon. This was my memoir, and I told him, “If something really hurts you that I write then we’ll talk about it.” There was one section that he said, “Do you have to tell them that? I sound terrible. It sounds like I lost my cool.” I said, “Larry you lost your cool!” (laughter) But he came to love it.

I came into the game knowing that he was the professional sailor and he got paid to teach people to race their boats. One of our first weeks together, he was going racing with someone who said my boat is just not up to the fleet. It was a Kettenburg. It was very popular in California. This guy was going to sell the boat and get another one because he wasn’t doing well. He paid Larry to go out sailing with him. I was standing on the dock as they were getting ready to leave and he said, “Bring her along.” Larry said, “She’s never sailed before and we’re out here to win this regatta, the California state championships.” Guy says, “I’ve never won a race with this boat so what’s it matter?” So they dragged me along. I was wearing slippery tennis shoes. Halfway up to the windward mark, I’m sitting quietly as I’m supposed to, Larry turns to the skipper and says, “Do me a favor: Shut up and steer and trust your crew.” And we won the whole series. I said, “You just got paid several hundred dollars to tell a guy who owns the boat who was paying you to shut up!” He says, “That’s all he needed.” The guy went on to do wonderfully. He wrote Larry a Christmas card every year and says “I’ve shut up.”

DC: Steve overshadowed me for a long time because he’s the expert. He wrote all the textbooks. I’m a different kind of writer.

CW: It gradually evened out…

DC: But in the early days, he was the person out racing and very well-known and asked to be on winning boats. One day I said, “We need to get our own boat.” He said, “We can’t afford that.” I said, “It doesn’t cost anything to look.” And we bought the boat. (laughter)

LP: Right from the beginning, Larry was amazed at my mathematical ability. One time somebody came by and said, “Larry, you laid out the topsides on your boat so beautifully. How did you line them up?” “Oh, it was Lin’s idea, she did it.” By giving me the credit—Larry was a special man in that he was so willing to share the credit on everything, sometimes more than he should have, but it built me up. He never made me feel put down.

DC: I had the same experience.

LP: Yeah, it takes a good man.

DC: You have to understand each other. When I say compromise, you really do … have to give in when you need to give in. That’s how you stay together.

LP: You give in, and then you change them.

(All laughing)

LP: Gently, gently.

CW: What other advice would you give to women who aspire to a career around sailing and the water? 

DC: I want them to know that it’s one of the best things you could ever do in your whole life. Get on a boat, learn how to make it go where you want it to go with wind power alone. Sailing is challenging, and I do think that women need to be challenged and step up to the plate. If something’s a little bit hard, you can do it. Then the next thing is a little bit hard, and you can do that even better. For me, it all came from sailing. 

LP: I feel that getting in a smaller boat teaches you faster because you actually see what happens when you pull the jib or main in. You feel it immediately. But what’s my legacy? Don’t make sailing a man’s thing or a woman’s thing. It’s a wonderful, human thing, and the magic is the people it introduces you to. I have thousands of friends I still haven’t met. Sailing got me to foreign countries; it helped me make friends everywhere we went. It opens up a whole world to you. You can learn to accept discomfort.

DC: It doesn’t matter if you can’t shower every day. 

LP: It doesn’t matter if your muscles get sore. 

DC: Probably then you know you have some muscles.

LP: I do see more women getting out sailing. I’m loving that. I just wish we’d get more young people, keep them interested in sailing. And the way to do that is these small little foiling boats.

DC: Very young kids need to be stimulated by color and activity, and all we’ve had these years is little white boats.

LP: Little white boats!

DC: We start people off on the Colgate 26 because it is the way to really learn: You’re close to the water, you’re feeling the wind, you’ve got a tiller not a wheel…

LP: Good!

DC: The wheel—you turn it, the boat finally turns and then it keeps turning too far. It’s harder to really learn the feel of a boat at the wheel. But then we move them right into cruising boats because the women who were taking our courses are not necessarily racing people. They want comfort—too much comfort—everyone “has” to have a private head. We’re teaching them that isn’t always the case. Originally we would take six people on a Bermuda 40, where four of us slept in the main saloon and two got the forepeak. Try that now, with one head. Nobody would sign up for a flotilla cruise with us if that was the case.

LP: That’s true. I want to share a quote from a friend: “The capacity to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower,” Oliver Burkeman wrote. “It’s shocking to realize how readily we set aside even our greatest ambitions in life merely to avoid easily tolerable levels of unpleasantness. It is possible, instead, to make a game of gradually increasing your capacity for discomfort, like weight training at a gym. The rewards come so quickly that it soon becomes the more appealing way to live.”   

CW: Are there any second, third, fourth fifth acts to follow in your lives?

DC: I’m gonna keep going!

LP: I’ve had the wonderful fortune, after Larry was no longer with me, of meeting an Australian sailor who came in looking for me to autograph our book. He stopped at our Kawau Island in New Zealand.

He came for a drink and we’ve been voyaging together. We’ve sailed the Tasman Sea, heading out to New Caledonia very soon.

DC: I’m not sailing as much these days but we’re forever pressing forward with the company and getting people sailing and taking care of our employees. We’re no better than our instructors. We can boast all we want about what we do but that’s the person who’s going to make or break us when they’re with the customer on the boat. We can do all the marketing in the world but if we don’t have the right instructors we’re doomed.

CW: Is there anything over the course of your long and successful careers, outside of sailing, that has made an impression on you.

LP: We became involved helping sailors with disabilities such as CRAB (Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating). Don Backe wrote to Larry to ask him to come up with some rigging to help lift people off the boat. We sailed down and did a big fundraiser with him. So we had a paraplegic in our hotel room. And I watched how hard it was. If he left his glasses on the wrong side of the bed, to get out of the bed and into a wheelchair, roll around the bed, because he can’t roll over on the bed on his own, he made the most wonderful jokes about it. I’ve never laughed more than when I shared a room with Don Backe and learning what true heroism was. He had a long, good life. It made my own life easier. When I had to have major surgery on my legs, and there was a chance that one would never come right completely, I said “Don would be thrilled to get around as well as I can.” I’d say it was such a profound thing: Sailing led me to it, but looking at those people who are so brave compared to anything I’ve ever done in my life.

DC: For me it’s the arts. I’m very involved in the Florida Repertory Theater as board secretary. We go to the performances. When I came back from Paris, I immediately jumped on stage. Acting can take you away from whatever’s bothering you. You go into another role and you’re just out there doing something different. At home I’ve decorated in Southwestern art. It’s very appealing to me, I like the colors that come out of it. We have a couple of rooms that are nautical, but the whole house is definitely not nautical.

Being involved in theatre and seeing actors assume roles, they come out of themselves and become something else. It’s very stimulating to me. Same thing with ballet. We’re mildly involved with the Florida Gulfshore Ballet, which is training mostly girls, some of who are going on to New York, San Fran. It’s cool to see people go off on tangents that aren’t part of their bodies. They become something else. It’s a creative thing which I really enjoy.

CW: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

LP: It’s never too late to start.

DC: Absolutely.

LP: I’m 78, I’m going to get in as much sailing as I can over the next few years. I’ve never gotten tired of sailing. And I will say there’s now color in my life; I’m sailing on a bright-red boat with a big, bold main.

This is all surreal to me. Sitting here in the National Sailing Hall of Fame on the East Coast. I’m a West Coaster, we’re uncouth! Sitting in this lovely museum.

DC: The museum’s fantastic. While sailing can be challenging, life is incredibly challenging. Business is incredibly challenging.

CW: I remember little things you’ve both said to me over the years.

LP: Did we say interesting things? (laughter) We have things in common: We both love the numbers in business and that’s really helped our lives tremendously and being involved.

DC: I like running it. I like being in charge.

LP: I used to take care of all the books. I keep a profit and loss sheet I update every two weeks. One day, Larry walks into my office. “Lin, are we rich or poor?” We’re doing quite well at the moment. We’re rich. He says, “Prove it.” I said “What do you mean?” He said, “I haven’t seen anything more than 10 dollars in the last year.” So I went to the bank and got my banker to loan me $10,000 cash.

DC: Oh geez.

LP: In small bills. I picked up this bag full of money, 10K in cash, most of what we had saved up. I gave it to him. He sat there, laid it out in piles, and looked at all this money and said, “Is that really all ours?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Great.” I put it all back in the bag, I gave him ten dollars and took it back to the bank—and my banker charged me three dollars for the loan.

(laughter)

Elaine Lembo is editor-in-chief of Caribbean Compass as well as an independent journalist, a former ­longtime CW staff editor, and a CW ­editor-at-large. Based in Newport, Rhode Island, she also develops content for the Sailing Museum at the National Sailing Hall of Fame, collaborates on book projects with America’s Cup tactician Gary Jobson, and contributes to publications of the New York Yacht Club. 

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Bill Pinkney had a plan, and while it wasn’t exactly simple, it was pretty straightforward. The Chicago-based sailor, who spent his waterborne hours crewing on a Swan 44 race boat or pottering about Lake Michigan on his 28-foot Pearson Triton, was going to ramp up to a 35-footer and trick it out to sail alone around the world. The reason? He wanted to inspire his two grandchildren, to teach them by example what laid over the horizon, and what could be achieved if you put your mind to it.

He never set out to be a pioneer. Then he became one. 

This past fall, the 86-year-old ­mariner was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Sailing Hall of Fame in recognition of his two-year solo circumnavigation aboard his Valiant 47, Commitment, during which he became the first African American sailor to circle the globe via the five great southern capes. But that was only another chapter of his sailing odyssey. Next, he became the sailing master of Mystic Seaport’s replica cargo ship, Amistad—­inspired by the movie of the same name—and skippered her on voyages from Halifax to Key West, and on to Cuba in commemoration of a historic slave revolt in Havana on the ship’s predecessor in 1839.

Pinkney found sponsorship for his circumnavigation on Commitment, which enabled the trip to have an educational component with a special curriculum that was undertaken by school children in Chicago and Boston. Amazingly, his original idea to teach a couple of kids in his family some lessons ultimately reached thousands. 

At the outset, Pinkney’s plan was to circle the planet via the Panama and Suez canals (a voyage another Black sailor, Ted Seymour, had already accomplished). That changed after a trip to England prior to setting sail, and a chance meeting with the legendary Robin Knox-Johnston, the first man to sail around the world in the famous Golden Globe Race in 1968-1969.

“If you’re talking about solo sailing, I was meeting the lord!” Pinkney told me in an interview from his home in Puerto Rico. “And he said: ‘Look, you’re a Black guy. It’s not going to be a big thing if you cross the Atlantic and go through th­e canals, and the day after you finish, ­another Black guy does the same voyage but around Cape Horn. They’ll never know your name. If you’re going to do it, do it like a bloody man!’ So, the lord told me what to do. I had no choice. And it turned out, he was right.”

There were highlights all along the way. In South Africa, he sailed past Robben Island—the notorious prison island from which Nelson Mandela had just recently been released—flying a red, black and green spinnaker, the colors of the African liberation movement. There was the wicked knockdown in a microburst in the Southern Ocean, which doused the interior of Commitment in Vermont maple syrup and took weeks to mop up. 

But the very end of the voyage, when he came alongside the dock at Boston’s Constitution Wharf and was greeted by high school students “as far as the eye could see,” was unforgettable. So too was the reception aboard USS Constitution—“Old Ironsides”—soon after his arrival. “I come up the gangway and turn and salute the ensign and officer of the deck,” he recalled. “The loudspeaker goes, ‘Commitment. Arriving.’ I almost lost it. Here I am, an eight-year Navy vet, an enlisted man, getting piped aboard the oldest ship in the United States Navy. And my ship, that I’d just sailed around the world, is recognized as I come aboard. That was a mind-blower.”

More recently, Pinkney has been involved with getting more people of color on the water, and for more than two decades, he helped lead annual flotillas of 20 or 30 boatloads of Black sailors from all over the country on charter vacations through the British Virgin Islands. But Pinkney wants to make one thing clear.

“I want to give kudos to the National Sailing Hall of Fame,” he said. “At no time, in any place, have I ever been mentioned as a Black sailor. No place. Only as a sailor. And that’s the identity that all of us who sail want. We’re sailors. Religion, sexuality, color—none of that has anything to do with the fact that, first and foremost, we’re sailors.”

Herb McCormick is CW’s executive editor.  

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The National Sailing Hall of Fame (NSHOF) announced today eleven sailors comprising its 11th class of inductees. The Class of 2021 includes:

• Alexander “Red” Bryan and Cortlandt “Bud” Heyniger – founders of Alcort, Inc. and designers and producers of the iconic Sunfish.
• William “Carl” Buchan – championship sailor, Olympic gold medal winner and 1988 defender of the America’s Cup.
• Agustin “Augie” Diaz – Rolex Yachtsman of the Year; Star, Snipe and Laser World Champion; and 505 North American Champion.
• Gilbert T. Gray – Olympic gold medalist in the Star Class debut Olympiad, race official and chief measurer.
• Lynne Jewell Shore – one of the first women to win an Olympic gold medal in sailing, Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year and former Executive Director of Sail Newport.
• Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce – the founder of the U.S. Naval War College (1884) and leading educator on seamanship and training for the Navy.
• Jane Wiswell Pegel – a three-time Martini & Rossi (now Rolex) Yachtswoman of the Year and winner of several National and North American Championships in sailing and iceboating.
• Dawn Riley – the first woman ever to manage an America’s Cup syndicate and the first American to sail in three America’s Cups and two Whitbread Round the World (now The Ocean Race) races.
• Richard “Dick” Rose – a thirty-year member of World Sailing’s Racing Rules of Sailing Committee, he is considered “the” international authority on the Racing Rules of Sailing.
• The Lifetime Achievement Award recipient for 2021 is Captain William D. “Bill” Pinkney, the first African American to solo-circumnavigate the world via the Capes.

“The remarkable achievements of this year’s class exemplify excellence and an unwavering dedication to our sport,” said Gus Carlson, president of the National Sailing Hall of Fame. “We are proud to honor the accomplishments of these extraordinary people and confident they will inspire future generations of sailors, innovators and contributors.”

The members of the Class of 2021 join 90 current Hall of Famers, all of whom will be featured in the Legends of Sailing exhibition at The Sailing Museum, which is scheduled to open in May of 2022. 2021 marks the eleventh year of annual induction to the National Sailing Hall of Fame. For more on the inductees, please visit: nshof.org/hall-of-fame.

The Class of 2021 will be formally celebrated on Saturday, October 16, 2021 with an Induction Ceremony in Newport, RI. The event will be held in the newly renovated Armory Building, former site of the international press corps during the 12 Metre America’s Cup era in Newport and future home of The Sailing Museum. The traditional Induction Ceremony will also honor members of the Class of 2020 who were honored in a virtual ceremony in 2020. The Induction Weekend has become notable as a reunion of sailing’s Who’s Who as previous inductees join the celebrations to welcome their peers into the Hall of Fame. Those expected include; Malin Burnham, Robbie Haines, Peter Harken, Gary Jobson, Bob Johnstone, Dave Perry, Mark Reynolds, John Rousmaniere, Tom Whidden and others.

The inductees were nominated by sailors from across the United States. Nominations were reviewed by a selection committee comprised of representatives from the NSHOF Board, previous inductees, the sailing media, the sailing industry, community sailing, a maritime museum, the cruising community and US Sailing. Nominations are accepted year-round at nshof.org/nominations. The deadline for Class of 2022 nominees is January 31.

Nominees must be American citizens, 55 years of age or older, who have made a sustained and significant impact on the growth and development of the sport in the United States at a national or international level in the following categories:

• Sailing – Recognizing achievements made on the water as a sailboat racer, cruiser or offshore sailor.
• Technical – Recognizing those who have significantly contributed to the technical aspects of sailing. Examples include designers, boat builders, sailmakers, etc.
• Contributor – Recognizing those who have made other significant contributions to the American sailing experience. Examples include teachers, coaches, administrators, media (including authored works, TV, film, etc.), artists, musicians, promoters and organizers.

Nominees for the Lifetime Achievement Award must be American citizens, 55 years of age or older, who have achieved success in sailing and outside of sailing and have given back to the sport in some significant manner. Lifetime Achievement Award recipients are selected by the NSHOF Board of Directors.

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Sailing Hall of Fame, The America’s Cup Hall of Fame and a broad collection of sailing-related exhibits, which collectively will be called The Sailing Museum.

According to a release issued Friday: The Sailing Museum will feature more than 11,000 square feet of interactive exhibits, displays chronicling the history of the sport, and galleries honoring inductees into the National Sailing Hall of Fame and the America’s Cup Hall of Fame. The Sailing Museum experience has been developed by Healy Kohler Design, a recognized leader in interactive museum and sports hall of fame design. The museum is scheduled to open in Spring 2022.

“Our new home will be a feast for the senses, harnessing technology to bring the excitement of sailing to life and honoring our sport’s heroes in exciting and innovative ways,” said Gus Carlson, president of the National Sailing Hall of Fame. “Our goal is to create a special place that engages everyone, from our sport’s faithful to casual sailors to newcomers who are curious about what happens when wind and water meet. We are confident The Sailing Museum will be a unique venue to showcase our sport and the accomplishments of its heroes.”

The heart of The Sailing Museum will be galleries for the National Sailing Hall of Fame and the America’s Cup Hall of Fame, honoring the achievements and commitment to excellence of those men and women who have contributed to the sport of sailing at the highest levels. Like Hall of Famers from across the sports world, these sailing stars undergo a rigorous and competitive nomination and selection process to earn this honor.

“I am lucky indeed to be a member of both the National Sailing Hall of Fame and the America’s Cup Hall of Fame,” said Tom Whidden, CEO, North Technology Group. “What an honor it will be to sit alongside so many accomplished people, who have achieved so much in our sport, presented in this incredible new facility in Newport. For anyone, of any age, who loves to sail, The Sailing Museum will be a must visit.”

In addition to the Halls of Fame, The Sailing Museum will feature a mix of high- and low-tech interactive exhibits with built-in “stealth learning” components that share the principles of sailing and provide seasoned sailors with opportunities to test their skills and knowledge. The museum will include the only on-site Virtual Regatta experience in the country and connect visitors with an interest in trying sailing to providers locally and around the country. A corresponding educational program will be offered for visiting groups with school-aged children.

“Our goal is to create an educational experience for school-aged children that is complementary to what is currently being taught on the dock or in the classroom,” said Heather Ruhsam, executive director of The Sailing Museum. “The Sailing Museum will be able to offer a hands-on and high-tech platform to illustrate some of the more challenging concepts, or those that are weather dependent. REACH is implemented at 400+ sailing centers and events across the US, and as the nation’s sailing museum it makes sense to align our educational programming with that of US Sailing.”

“We are thrilled with the innovative approach the National Sailing Hall of Fame has taken in creating the vision for The Sailing Museum,” said Jack Gierhart, CEO of US Sailing. “The National Sailing Hall of Fame plays an invaluable role in recognizing leaders in the sport who have shaped sailing through the years, and now they are providing an opportunity for people to not only experience this history first hand, but also to connect with sailing personally and get involved. We are excited to support this initiative and play a part in introducing more people to sailing.”

Experience a sneak peek of The Sailing Museum through the rendered virtual tour.

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The National Sailing Hall of Fame is looking for more nominations to help us honor the heroes of the sport! This year’s public nominating period ends on March 31, so there is still time to nominate the sailor you admire the most. The process is simple – go to the NSHOF website and review the eligibility requirements and nomination categories. Then check that your nominee hasn’t already been inducted into the Hall or nominated. Fill out some basic information about your nominee and press “submit.” It’s easy.

Here’s the link: Sailing Hall of Fame Nominations

Candidates must be at least 55 years old (or in the case of passing before 55, 5 years posthumously), and have made a significant impact on sailing at a national level. While the majority of nominees are US Citizens, foreign nationals may be nominated if their work has contributed significantly to the development of the sport in the USA. Candidates may be Modern (living or deceased) or Historic (deceased 60 years or more at time of selection).

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As a Memorial Day tribute to all the brave men and women who have protected our country, the National Sailing Center & Hall of Fame is streaming from our online Film Library a rarely-seen documentary – “The Hooligan Navy.”

Hard to believe, but true… American recreational sailboats were used as ships of war during WWII.

The Story of the Corsair Fleet

“The Hooligan Navy” tells a little-known story about the Corsair Fleet, a band of young yachtsmen and fishermen who were recruited into service by the Coast Guard – their vessels “armed” – so they could patrol the coastline of America’s Eastern seaboard and, if necessary, engage Nazi U-boats that were attacking American merchant vessels and threatening seaside towns.

The sailors and their sailing yachts were sent out so quickly the gray paint on their hulls was still wet when they left the docks.

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NSHOF

Recognizing how important sailing is to America’s history, the National Sailing Center & Hall of Fame, working with US Sailing, has complied a centralized listing of award-winning American sailors, which can be found at the “Sailors & Stories” section of the website. Here you can find a list of the Rolex Yachtspersons of the Year, US Olympic and Paralympic medalists, and Herreshoff Trophy winners.

In addition to the award winners is a collection of stories about American women in sailing and yacht clubs. The NSHOF is continuously seeking additional materials to add to this section. If you have any photos, videos, recordings, or stories that you would like to share, please send it to info@nshof.org.

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