Share Your Alaska Eagle Memories

We felt a bit sad after learning that the longtime flagship of the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship, Alaska Eagle, had been sold, and will soon return to her Dutch roots. But we’re probably not nearly as sad as the roughly 3,000 sailors who honed their offshore sailing skills aboard her during three decades of blue-water voyaging. 

We know from the many first-hand reports we’ve received over the years that participating in those voyages gave ‘student’-sailors both the skill sets and self-confidence to later cruise the world on their own boats. If you count yourself among those lucky passage-makers, we’d love to have you share some of the highlights of your days aboard Eagle.

As offshore racing buffs will recall, this custom S&S 65 first came to international prominence in 1978, when she won the second Whitbread Round the World Race (’77-’78), then named Flyer. After the S&S-designed Sayula won the first Whitbread (’73-’74), Dutch businessman ‘Conny’ van Rietschoten, a virtual unknown in international racing, commissioned S&S to design him a yacht capable of safely completing and winning the Whitbread. Flyer was built of aluminum at the Netherlands’ renowned Royal Huisman Shipyard, with no expense spared.

That race, which Flyer eventually won, marked the end of the era when race boats actually had relatively comfortable accommodations and interior amenities. The boat competed in the next Whitbread under the name Alaska Eagle, then owned by Alaskan businessman Neil Bergt. She was the first American entry in the Whitbread (the precursor to the Volvo Ocean Race and others), finishing a respectable 9th out of 29 entries. But Bergt could see that she would no longer be truly competitive against newer speed machines, so he made the decision to to donate her to the U.S. Naval Academy. Before that happened, however, watch captain Mike Farley (an Orange Coast alum) alerted his friend Dave Grant of OCC. Grant made repeated pleas to Bergt to steer the donation to OCC, and to his amazement, he did. It was quite a coup. 

Since then, she has logged nearly 300,000 miles, zig-zagging all over the Pacific Basin and elsewhere, making exotic landfalls at places such as Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia. 

Alaska Eagle was sold earlier this month to Dutchman Diederik Nolten for $350,000.

So if you have funny, dramatic, or life-changing memories of time aboard Eagle, please take a minute to share them with us. We’ll run excerpts from these reader comments in our March issue. In the meantime, "So long, Eagle, it’s been great to know you."