National Sailing Hall of Fame Celebrates With Balboa and Newport Harbor Yacht Clubs
The National Sailing Hall of Fame took this year’s induction ceremony on the road, to the Balboa Yacht Club in Newport Beach, California.
This year’s “class” joins the 114 current inductees. It is an impressive class, with several hailing from the West Coast. Included this year are Elwood “Skip” Etchells; Tim Hogan from Los Angeles; Peter Holmberg; Sally Honey, who lives in the S.F. Bay Area; John Kolius; William “Bill” Lapworth; John Marshall, who was part of Stars & Stripes design teams on multiple campaigns; Charles “Charley” Morgan; Designer Robert Perry from the Pacific Northwest; and Richard “Dick” Stearns III.
“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 emcee of this year’s event. “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.”
Winners from the West Coast include the Bay Area’s Sally Honey, Tim Hogan from Newport Beach, naval architect Bob Perry from Seattle, WA, and Bill Lapworth of Los Angeles.
Tim Hogan grew up sailing in Newport Beach, California. He went on to the University of Southern California and was a three-time All-American sailor. Since 2005 he has been president of the Interscholastic Sailing Association (ISSA). In the process he has become the champion of building interscholastic sailing in the United States. Hogan and his board virtually doubled the roster of teams over the past 20 years from around 330, until at the end of 2022 there were 626 high schools with competitive sailing teams.
Sally Honey has twice been named Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year (1973, 1974), and most recently shared an inspiring victory, winning the 2022 Newport Bermuda Race with her husband Stan Honey aboard their 56-year-old Cal 40 Illusion. Honey has been a leader in safety at sea and is the author of US Sailing’s Safety at Sea: A Guide to Safety Under Sail and Personal Survival. She has also been chair of several independent review panels studying calamities at sea. She has served on World Sailing’s Offshore Special Regulations Committee for many years, sitting currently as chairperson.
“The breadth of options offered by our sport is one of the best things about sailing,” Honey said. “I have benefited from my wide-ranging experiences with sailing throughout my life.
“I was fortunate to grow up in a sailing family,” she continued. “Whatever class I sailed, I have always been accepted based on my skill level. It has been my experience that sailing can be a great equalizer, no matter one’s strengths or weaknesses.”
William “Bill” Lapworth partnered with Jack Jensen to build Cal 20s, and later, one of the most popular yachts ever, the Cal 40. Lapworth was one of the first naval architects to successfully embrace the boatbuilding industry’s change from wood to fiberglass. Lapworth and Jensen collaborated on 32 different designs with Cal Yachts. Lapworth cruised for many years on his own Cal Cruising 46 with his wife Peggy and their five children.
Renowned West Coast naval architect Robert “Bob” Perry grew up in Australia, then moved to Seattle with his family when he was 12. He grew up sailing Penguins and eventually began drawing boats, with his career taking off on the success of the Valiant 40. He went on to design for many builders, including Tayana, Cheoy Lee, Valiant, Baba, Ta Shing, Hans Christian Yachts, Islander, Passport, Pacific Seacraft, and Saga. It would be hard to find a harbor in the world that hasn’t been visited by a yacht designed by Bob Perry.
Other winners included Olympic and America’s Cup sailor John Kolius from Houston, Texas; New England Olympic medalist John Marshall, who was in several America’s Cup campaigns and was president of North Sails; designer, builder, America’s Cup campaigner and founder of Morgan Yachts, Charles “Charley” Morgan from Florida; and Richard “Dick” Stearns III from Illinois, who won the International Star Class World Championship in 1962, and in 1964 earned a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games. Stearns competed in 53 Chicago to Mackinac Island races, winning in 2000 aboard his 35-year-old Cal 40, Elwood Widmer. “Skip” Etchells founded his own boatbuilding company, the Old Greenwich Boat Company, and developed the Etchells 22. And finally, Caribbean sailor Peter Holmberg (graduate of Sonoma State University), who won Olympic medals in the Finn class and four Congressional Cups in Long Beach, plus three America’s Cup campaigns and numerous maxi and other successful racing series.
You can watch the full induction ceremony below:
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Latitude 38’s November Caption Contest(!)
Welcome to November’s Caption Contest(!). This month’s photo was sent to us by a Navy-documented “shellback.” (We’ve seen the certificate of proof!) The shellback, an 82-year-old retired Navy chief, tells us the person in the photo had been illegally boat-camping and was “told to leave,” adding this month’s first caption: “I knew it wouldn’t fit in the blue garage.”
You can find last month’s Caption Contest(!) winners here.
Best Bottom Painting Packages on the Bay
Daniela Moroz Takes Gold at the Pan American Games
In August, Daniela Moroz competed in her seventh Formula Kite Class World Championship in the Netherlands, where she had a difficult series but came away having qualified to represent the US in the 2024 Olympics in Marseille, France.
Since then, Moroz has traveled to Algarrobo, Chile, to compete in the Pan Am Games, where she claimed the gold medal in the Formula Kite Women, closing out with a bullet in the final race of the series.
“Going to a games like this is always a really cool experience,” Moroz said. “Especially at the end of a tough week, to be at the top of the podium and hear your national anthem is a really cool moment. It makes me want to work really hard towards Paris and have the same experience there.”
Moroz is now continuing her quest to achieve the gold medal in the 2024 Olympics. She has been burning up the women’s kiteboarding world since she started sailing off Crissy Field, and went on to win her first Kiteboarding World Championship and Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year award when she was 15. Now, at the age of 22, her long trail to the Olympics is consumed by training, but also the fundraising needed to support the coaching and travel schedule required to stay competitive within the global kiteboarding scene. To learn more about Daniela’s campaign, and to offer support, you can visit danielamoroz.com.
We’ll follow up with more Bay Area Olympic success, with Richmond Yacht Club’s David Liebenberg winning a silver medal in the Nacra 17 class with skipper Sarah Newberry Moore, and St. Francis YC’s Hans Henken winning the gold at the Pan Am games with skipper Ian Barrows in the 49er class.
Two Maui Heroes Looking to Get Back on the Water
In the aftermath of the fire that swept through Maui’s coastal town of Lahaina, many boat owners are trying to rebuild, including those whose vessels once served the local communities. This story from Victoria Moore focuses on two women who lost all their working vessels and are struggling to find just one replacement.
Every boat owner has experienced that unsettling moment when something inside them says, “I better go check the lines.” Emma Nelson of Maui had an uneasy feeling on the morning of August 8, when the winds were picking up due to Hurricane Dora far offshore. She wanted extra assurance that all the lines were secured well enough on their newly renovated boat to withstand the big winds.
”We were already getting 70 mph gusts at 6 a.m., and we got some extra lines on the boat. After about an hour we felt like we had done what we could to keep the boat secure.” But as the day progressed, that uneasy feeling persisted. “We should just go check one more time,” she told her wife and fellow boat captain, Chrissy Lovitt. As they approached the harbor around 3 p.m, the lines were still attached, but they could tell Lahaina’s situation was rapidly deteriorating. “At that point we could see Lahaina literally coming apart. Garage doors were blown in, roofs were being ripped off, and then suddenly this black cloud of smoke was billowing down the mountain.”
The two women jumped into action. What followed was one of the most harrowing and heroic accounts I’ve heard of in the wake of the Maui wildfires. Since their own boat couldn’t be backed out of the slip against the strong winds, Chrissy, Emma, and fellow boat captain Lashawna Garnier jumped into a small skiff and started helping stranded boat owners get to safety. Fire started to engulf Front Street and was approaching the harbor, and Chrissy and Emma could barely see through the thick smoke. “The smoke and debris were completely blinding us,” Chrissy said. “It was like driving at night with no sunlight penetrating the smoke. I basically had to drive on memory since I’ve navigated that harbor for almost three decades.”
For hours, Chrissy, Emma, and Lashawna persisted in the rough water, toxic air, and blinding conditions looking for survivors who had fled into the water to escape the fires. Among the many people they saved that night, the women helped two small kids out of the ocean and got them to a Coast Guard ship waiting in deeper waters. They watched in disbelief as their own beloved 36-ft power catamaran, Wahine Koa (“Strong Woman” in Hawaiian), went up in flames along with nearly every other boat in the harbor.
Wahine Koa had only been in the water for two weeks after Emma and Chrissy worked tirelessly to get her just right after purchasing her. “To put every ounce of your energy, all of your finances, and all of your hopes and dreams into this boat that barely even got a chance to operate just crushes you,” Emma said. The couple also lost their two other boats that were trailered at the Pioneer Mill in the heart of Lahaina. “We’re really just left with nothing. Our entire livelihood burned.”
Many people whose boats burned in the Lahaina harbor are currently dealing with the accompanying sadness, loss of livelihood, and endless insurance claims. But Emma and Chrissy also feel as if they’re letting down the community they served. They were using Wahine Koa as part of their newly formed social enterprise called InstaBoat, helping to bring supplies and food to the neighboring island of Lanai at a significant discount to help support the community. “It’s not just that we’ve lost jobs, it feels like we’ve lost our ability to give to a community that we care about and that has supported us so much,” Emma said. InstaBoat is now on hold indefinitely until they’re able to relaunch.
Replacing all the boats that were lost in Maui is proving to be an incredible challenge. Unlike the mainland, where boat brokers are easy to find and extensive inventory exists up and down the West Coast, Emma and Chrissy are finding that local options on neighboring islands are next to nil. “We spend hours every day just trying to find boats to go look at. We’ve flown to other islands and just keep coming up short of something that will meet our needs,” Emma said. Since only two of their three boats were insured, and neither at the full replacement value, Emma and Chrissy are having to downsize to only one boat, ideally, a 35-ft powerboat that can haul supplies and possibly run charters to subsidize their delivery prices to Lanai.
“When something like this happens your priorities really shift,” Emma added. “If this experience has taught me anything it’s that community is really what matters the most, and we can’t wait to get back on the water and do our part in helping the community again.”
Emma and Chrissy are searching high and low for a boat with which they can resume their service to Lanai. If anyone knows of a boat, or has any leads, please let us know.
* We shared Lashawna Garnier’s account of her experience in the Lahaina fire in Latitude 38’s November issue.
Visit Vallarta Yacht Club in Banderas Bay
