A Brief History…

UPDATE: The business end of a Cal 40 looks like this:

The Cal 40 revolutionized ocean racing when it appeared in 1963. It was fiberglass, for one thing. For another, it was cheap by racing sailboat standards. William Snaith, famous and colorful ocean racer from the 1960s, once described ocean racing as being like a man standing in a cold shower tearing up thousand dollar bills. The Cal 40 was eventually retired from racing by the simple action of changing the rules. The IOR rule (International Offshore Rule) came in 1972 and penalized the hull shape of the Cal 40. In addition, the new rule set out standards for construction that would lead to a disaster in the 1979 Fastnet Race, where boats were lost and men’s lives were lost because many of the smaller, newer race boats were not seaworthy in extreme conditions. Here is a better link for that story. Olin Stephens, one of the authors of the rule, later wrote that they had erred in the rule’s factors for scantlings, meaning the hull construction.

Eventually, the Cal 40 came back and Stephens, at the age of 99, had the privilege (I’m not sure he considered it as such but he was a gentleman) of presenting a trophy named in his honor to a Cal 40 that had won the Bermuda Race twice in a row in 2006 and 2008.

The first winner of the Olin J. Stephens Ocean Racing Trophy was Peter S. Rebovich Sr. from Metuchen, N.J., and the Raritan Yacht Club. After winning a St. David’s Lighthouse Trophy in his Cal 40 Sinn Fein in the 2006 Newport Bermuda Race, Rebovich heard about the Stephens Trophy and entered his first Marblehead to Halifax Ocean Race. His third-place finish in the race’s ORR Division in 2007 won him the trophy. Olin Stephens himself made the presentation at Halifax. When Rebovich, in his seventies, came up to the podium to accept his prize, the 99-year-old Stephens joked, “It’s good to see an old guy like me still sailing and winning.” A year later, Rebovich won his second St. David’s Lighthouse Trophy in the 2008 Newport Bermuda Race and was again presented with the Stephens Trophy at the award ceremony in Bermuda.

Now, the indefatigable Timm Lessley has provided us with more Cal 40 action.

I wish I could be there.

Tags: cal 40, Olin Stephens, Peter Rebovich, sailing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 1:07 pm and is filed under sailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.