The 50th Anniversary of the Carter 37 is next year and Carter 37s in Europe are getting ready to celebrate! TOMIRA, owned by Francesco & Mietta Gandolfi, is looking gorgeous in Italy. MUSTANG, owned by Philippe-Jacques Roux and his son François-Xavier, has just undergone a refit and is looking “sensationelle”, as is LINUEN, owned by Thierry Ollat. Jean-Michel Hoarau, the owner of another French Carter 37, HYLAS, is having her beautifully restored in anticipation of launching her next Spring. Skippered by her original owner David Edwards, Commodore of the RORC, HYLAS won Class III in the 1973 Fastnet Race, a prestigious victory for the Commodore and HYLAS alike!
Grazie to Francesco and Mietta Gandolfi for the stunning new photos of their yacht RABBIT racing off Italy’s Ligurian coast. She was Dick’s first yacht design and the boat he skippered to victory in the 1965 Fastnet Race. The Gandolfis have invested much time and effort in her meticulous restoration, and it shows!
The international Admiral’s Cup regatta was for many years known as the unofficial world championships of ocean racing. Held every other year off the south coast of England, the Admiral’s Cup was contested by teams of 3 racing yachts from each participating country.
The Admiral’s Cup consisted of four races with points awarded to boats based on placement: the Cross channel race, Brittania Cup and New York Yacht Club Challenge Cup. The final race, and the only one to award triple points, is one of the world’s most prestigious: the Fastnet, a 650 mile, four day ocean race with a course beginning in Cowes, England, rounding Fastnet Rock off the south coast of Ireland and then finishing in Plymouth, England.
In 1969, eleven countries fielded Admiral’s Cup teams. Selected for the US team was RED ROOSTER (with lifting keel), designed and skippered by Dick Carter; CARINA, a McCurdy & Rhodes design skippered by Dick Nye; and PALAWAN III, a Sparkman & Stephens design skippered by IBM CEO Tom Watson.
RED ROOSTER, the night before the final race, the grueling Fastnet. Cowes, Isle of Wight, 1969.
The Australian team had won the Admiral’s Cup in 1967 and looked to be heading for a repeat victory in 1969. But RED ROOSTER won the Fastnet in a fleet of 140 yachts. This enabled the US to win the Admiral’s Cup, an achievement not repeated until 1997. It was Dick Carter’s second victory in the Fastnet, having won it in 1965 with his very first design, the revolutionary RABBIT. And RED ROOSTER was the high point boat of the 1969 regatta.
Dick Carter (left) and Dick Nye receive the Admiral’s Cup trophy for the US.
On January 19th, Dick gave a condensed version of his book talk on Zoom for the Off Soundings Club. A very big thank you to Commodore Paul Jennings and production wizard Edgar Smith for hosting such a fun event!
Need some gift inspiration this Christmas? In their recent December issue, SAIL magazine has recommended Dick Carter: Yacht Designer as a gift for sailors.
“Back in 1965, Dick Carter, who’d grown up sailing off Cape Cod, entered the first boat he’d ever designed, the 34ft Rabbit, in the Fastnet Race and against all odds won the thing, thereby kicking off one of the most celebrated design careers ever. Now we have his autobiographical Dick Carter: Yacht Designer, an eminently readable account of what it was like at the sharp end of the spear in terms of innovation at the start of yachting’s modern era. Because he was a sailor who competed aboard those same boats he designed, we also get a firsthand glimpse at what grand prix sailing was like back when fibreglass was still cutting-edge and GPS not yet even a glimmer in the design world’s eye. A crucial addition to any nautical library.”
