Interview with Howard Hamlin, 505 World
Champion and skipper of "US Challenge", which won the 18 foot Skiff
international series in Carnac, 5-10 June.
How did you become involved in 18
foot Skiff racing, Howie?
Well I've
always watched it from a distance – you know, in publications, never in real life. I
was always attracted to speed and high performance, and adrenaline type sailing, I guess,
and what happened was we became friends with Iain Murray over the years from 505 sailing.
The [18 Footers] League wanted to make the JJ Giltinan more of an international event, and
they asked Iain Murray who he recommended to represent the US, and he suggested us. So
that's how we got into it basically.
When was that?
That was five years ago.
So you've been lucky enough to sail Skiffs on several occasions, but unlucky that
you can't do it between events. Is that changing?
Well this is the first time we've actually sailed two regattas in the same year, having
come over here to do the European championships. I think we'd like it to change – our
first goal has always been the 505s, and having finally won the 505 world championships
last year – it's not that we're not trying as hard, we are – but I think we'd
like to try to make this more of a goal at some point to try to do well, and it's just a
function of priorities.
When we make it a bigger goal, then we'll sail more and we'll be able to attend more
events, and get better at it, basically.
Well you're doing very well now! You seem to go particularly well in heavy
weather.
We're going well in a breeze right now – we're kind of a heavy team, and I think we
all enjoy sailing in heavy air.
I'm actually trying to figure out why we're fast. I think that's important – it's
easy to sometimes think you're good, but the reality is speed can be quite elusive. We're
sailing against some guys here with just, you know, a hundred times more experience than
we have and we're going faster than them, so we're not taking it for granted, we're trying
to figure out what it is.
Maybe we got lucky with the rig, or the sails or something in the combination, but we're
not changing that much, and just trying to learn the boat.
Watching you, your tactics have been very good. You seem to be more at home on
open water like this with fairly true and constant winds, as opposed to Sydney Harbour
which is very tricky and takes some getting used to.
Yeah, no question! Sydney Harbour is a huge disadvantage for us – it's highly
localised, there's no substitute for experience sailing in that venue, and we really
struggle there tactically. We've really worked at it, but sailing one regatta a year is
just not enough to learn the harbour.
Mike does the execution of all our tactics and strategy on the water, and he's much more
comfortable here. We even said that going in – it's going to be nice to sail at a
venue where it's more normal type sailing than Sydney Harbour.
We keep hearing about the possibility of a Skiff regatta on the West Coast of
America – is that likely to happen now, do you think?
I think it definitely is. We have targeted the St Francis Yacht Club, which is right on
the city front of San Francisco between Alcatraz Island and Golden Gate Bridge, and
absolutely just a phenomenal venue both from spectating and from the standpoint of the
wind.
We've talked to them – they are a private club that's run by a board and committees.
It's gone up the flagpole to the various committees, and they've endorsed it, and they're
very much behind the idea.
In fact, they were willing to run a regatta for us sometime in September of this year, but
the decision was made that that's coming up too quick, and too hard to probably organise
the logistics for everyone, but right now it sounds like the game plan is to get a regatta
in San Francisco in 2001 – September works well for the yacht club.
Windwise, any time in the summer's good – it's very windy – and as you get into
fall, then the wind starts to back off again. I think the attraction of the venue is the
high winds.
Is there any chance of more boats in California, so you might get some home
practice?
Well, we certainly hope so. It's been tough trying to find somebody to do it – in our
opinion, the 49er sailors are probably the best target. There's a fleet of 49ers that's
kind of led by the McKee brothers in Seattle – they're a long ways away from Los
Angeles, a thousand miles away.
I think the McKees would be a target, we'd like to try to see them. Trevor and Tina
Bayliss who live in Portland and sail on the Columbia River Gorge have expressed interest,
and Tina's Canadian, so that would be great to get a Canadian team. And some others like
Morgan Larson and Kevin Hall, who were second by just a couple of points to the McKee brothers in
the Olympic trials in the 49ers.
My opinion is, just go after the very best guys that already have the experience in 49ers.
It just takes such a long time to learn how to sail Skiffs, you've got to start with the
guys that already know.
But you'd be their benchmark, and you'd be able to raise their standards!
We wish you luck, Howie. Thank you for talking to us.
Thanks, Peter!
