While I was at Officer Candidate School in Newport, RI in 1978, my company officer was talking with one of the other company officers about the Sunday War College racing circuit when I knocked on my officer's door. I mentioned that I had raced with my father every summer Sunday. I had also taken second place in a regatta behind a member of the Naval Academy sailing team.
I can hear you from hear, very nice LP but what does that have to do with BIC pens. Be patient grasshopper.
The other LT made a deal with my LT to get me assigned to him every Sunday afternoon so I could crew for him on Narragansett Bay. I crewed, he brought the beer.
One Sunday we had just rounded the windward mark, I got the spinnaker set and turned around to see the 12-metre yacht Intrepid, with Baron Bich at the helm, cut less than ten feet under our stern. Marcel Louis Michel Antoine Bich, aka Baron Bich, the founder of Bic pens was directing a torrent of personal abuse, in French, at our boat and us. The LT said, "Any idea what he's daying?" "Ah, yes sir. He is deeply questioning your ancestry for the past several generations and providing several anatomically impossible things you should do with yourself." The LT said, "F' him. We're racing. Break out two beers."
I should note here that Intrepid won the America's Cup in 1967 and 1970. Baron Bich funded Intrepid's 1970 challenge and win of the America's Cup. Intrepid was 64' long. Our boat was 19'. They would have crushed us and barely slowed down. It was a beautiful boat.
Intrepid
SpyNavy
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Wow how cool to have been passed by Intrepid! Indeed a beautiful boat, she was my favorite 12 meter, with the low boom enabled by the blocks being below the flush deck. As a kid I loved the 12 meters and wished we could have watched the racing, had to read about it in the papers. I remember how pissed my dad was when they allowed the Australians to cheat with a winged keel in 1983. The America’s cup was never the same after that
Good story.