Since April, most of Oracle Racing’s nearly 100-strong team and their families have been quartered in and around Ventura, California. The spring and summer breezes at Ventura are a good match for the conditions the team can expect to meet in New Zealand in twenty months. Oracle Racing contributed $75,000 to have the harbor dredged to a depth of sixteen feet to accommodate the team’s giant eighty-foot yachts after Ventura Mayor Sandy Smith convinced Oracle that its closely guarded design secrets would be safer from prying eyes there than at the more populous Long Beach harbor. It’s a boost for the port because the team will spend several million dollars, and their presence will encourage visits from other sailing enthusiasts.
We’ve been met at the airport by Bill Erkelens, who has managed Team Sayonara, Ellison’s world championship–winning maxi-yacht team, for the last six years and is now chief operating officer of Oracle Racing. Every evening, all the information on the day’s sailing is downloaded onto an Oracle database (which is running on a Digital supercomputer donated by Compaq). From there, it’s e-mailed to Bruce Farr and Mickey Ickert in Annapolis, Maryland, the designer of the new boats that will contest the cup and the team’s sail designer, respectively. There has been no word from the trophy holder, Team New Zealand, about a meeting with the challengers to agree on the ground rules for the 2003 competition, and Erkelens wants to know the dates for the qualification races, called the Louis Vuitton Trophy, and where exactly off New Zealand the races will be run. One of the reasons why holders of the trophy are traditionally so difficult to unseat is that they keep challengers in a permanent state of uncertainty. While Team New Zealand will want to avoid being accused of deliberately unsportsmanlike behavior, it’s not about to surrender any of the incumbent’s advantage if it can help it.
After inspecting the team’s headquarters—a series of portable offices and a dry dock big enough for both boats when they are hauled out of the water each night to have their hulls scrubbed and be reconfigured with the latest ideas from Annapolis—we board one of the chase boats, a high-powered thirty-six-foot whaler. Once clear of the harbor, the chase boat closes in on the two racers out in the bay. Even though the team owner is about to come on board, there’s no question of interrupting the racing. The whaler expertly comes up alongside USA 61, and Ellison, Erkelens, and I jump aboard, allowing the chase boat to careen smoothly away without hampering USA 61’s chances of overtaking USA 49, slightly ahead. At first, Ellison seems content to crouch out of harm’s way near the stern of the boat. But not for long. As USA 61 goes about, Ellison signals that he wants to drive. Without any fuss, John Cutler, the team’s number three driver, hands over to Ellison. The trimmers and grinders go about their work with the same intensity, the numbers are called from instruments that provide telemetric data on the other boat’s speed and position, and the race tactician continues to feed his thoughts to the driver.
And how does Ellison do? It takes him a few minutes to adjust his balance to the boat’s progress through the water, but after that, he’s sailing pretty well, taking in the mass of data being hurled at him and losing no ground to the other boat, which is being driven by Peter Holmberg. Thanks to a lucky guess about where the wind might be blowing more strongly, we actually overhaul and beat USA 49. Did the other boat let Ellison win? It’s not very likely. Ellison is treated by the crew with respect but no hint of deference.1
No sooner has that race ended than we’re maneuvering to begin another. Erkelens, who says this is about the first time he’s been out on the water since the team arrived at Ventura, describes the crews’ time out in the bay as being like “groundhog days”—a continuous loop in which one race follows relentlessly and repetitiously after another. Thoroughly pleased at his earlier success, Ellison decides he will drive at the start of the next race. Despite the fact that these are essentially sparring sessions, any advantage at the start, which, as in Formula One racing, is frequently decisive, must be fought for. It’s not uncommon for the boats to make contact and even sustain quite significant damage. Before the start, which is closely overseen by the two chase boats and an umpire’s boat, USA 49 and 61 circle each other aggressively. The boats are making nearly ten knots—fast enough to have a fairly big accident.
Suddenly the race is on, and immediately Ellison is muscled out of position. USA 49 makes it past the starting buoy a few meters ahead and with the right of way on the starboard tack. This time Ellison doesn’t get any breaks, and the distance between the boats becomes unbridgeable. The concentration required to maneuver these highly strung machines under the critical gaze of some of the world’s best sailors is draining, and he has been at the wheel for the best part of two hours. The boats are now running downwind, something that Ellison finds less entertaining than sailing close-hauled, and he seems happy to hand over the helm.
• • •
Bill Erkelens met Ellison late in 1994 through an Atherton neighbor of Ellison, a New Zealander named David Thompson. Erkelens has sailed all his life. During summer vacations from university, he would earn money delivering boats for wealthy owners to and from Hawaii and prepare boats for sailors in the annual Trans-Pac (San Francisco to Honolulu) race. One of these was Thompson, whose boat won his division and came in second overall. About the same time, Thompson had begun encouraging Ellison to take up sailing. Ellison recalls the day that he was working out on the StairMaster at the public gym. “The guy next to me was David Thompson. David just casually asks me if I sail. I said, ‘Yeah, I used to sail. I used to sail a lot.’ Then he asked if I’ve ever raced, and again I said yes. So he goes on to ask me if I’d be interested in racing a maxi—the biggest, fastest class of racing sailboats. I’d always loved sailing, but I had to give it up in my late twenties because it was too expensive. I couldn’t afford it then—but I could afford it now. So we started doing some research, and we signed up the best designer, Bruce Farr in Annapolis, and the best builder, Mick Cookson in New Zealand, the best spar maker, Steve Wilson in New Zealand, the best sail maker, the best this, the best that. We found the right people to design and build the fastest maxi in the world. Shortly after David put the idea into my head, Sayonara was being designed as an all-out race boat whose only purpose was winning.”
Thompson had promised Ellison to find someone who would help to oversee the project and run the boat. Since one of the first races that Ellison wanted to enter was the Trans-Pac, Thompson had no hesitation in recommending Erkelens. He went out to Atherton to meet Ellison and go through the first set of drawings of Sayonara. Erkelens was hired on the understanding that he would go and live in New Zealand for the six months that it would take to build Sayonara. He says, “I was keen to do it, so we signed on. But it was a big decision for us. My wife, Melinda, was an attorney, and leaving her career a couple of years from making partner and going to work on boats meant that I was not very popular with her family.”
For the first year of the “campaign,” Erkelens took his orders from Thompson. But when Thompson’s businesses began to suffer due to the time he was spending on Sayonara, he withdrew and Erkelens was left in charge of running the program. Ellison was clear that his objective was to win races. But Erkelens says that it soon became something more than that. “Initially, it was a results-oriented thing. But then we sailed a nine-day race to Hawaii, and he just absorbed it all. He was up all night staring at the stars, sailing along in the middle of the night with the dolphins and the whales—he just loved it. It was a beautiful place to be, and he was proud of the boat. . . . One thing that struck me was how important the people were to him. He got a group of people he was comfortable with and enjoyed their company. That became a really important part of the whole campaign.
“The one thing that strikes everyone about Larry is that he has confidence in the crew. He does not second-guess them or question them or want to show that he can do a better job. He is quite happy to be part of the team, working with the team and doing his part. I don’t want to demean other owners, but he does not seem
to stick his finger into the pie just for the sake of doing it. He knows what he wants done, but he does not tell people how to do their job. I guess he gets people who can do their job well, and he respects them for that. I think that is why the people are so comfortable about it.” What about when Ellison is driving the boat? Is he willing to be influenced in terms of tactics and other inputs from the rest of the team about what he does? Erkelens says, “Yes, he works really well with our trimmers, who really have a direct line to the feel of the boat through the sail. Then there are the numbers from the onboard computers—it’s a very technical game. Quite a few people on the boat stay on the numbers, and there is also the feel of the rudder. He has the force on the rudder, which he needs to react to, so it’s a very dynamic job. He has to work with those people; otherwise he will not be able to do it.”
Although I’d now seen Ellison sailing for myself, I found it hard to believe that, never having sailed at this level, Ellison could so quickly contribute something other than money to the team. Erkelens insists, “The first two races Sayonara did were down the coast of California. He did a lot of driving in the Cavalier race, which we won, and he did a phenomenal job. A lot of it is about numbers and concentration. He has a mind for numbers, it seems, and he concentrates, so he did really well at it. But I must admit these were ocean races, so he was not right next to another boat. It’s harder to judge. . . . After that we took the boat to New Zealand and did a little refit to adjust to the new handicap. We got it prepared because for the first time we were going to race alongside other boats in Hawaii. But when we got there, he did an excellent job and we won the regatta. We did not win every race—I think we might have got a few seconds—but we won most of our races. Then we thought, ‘Well, this is all good for us,’ because what was shaping up was that the Owners Association decided they were going to enforce the owner-driver rule. The owner has to drive at the start and the first lead and then two thirds of the race after that. What happened in San Francisco, in 1996, was that there was a bit of a standoff where the other boats were going to withdraw from the regatta before it started if Larry did not commit to their rules of driving the boat. I think he was a little reluctant at first, but he agreed to do it. He started the boat and did the first upwind leg, and we won every race by a long shot. All of a sudden we overcame this confidence hurdle. He was better than all those other owners.”
Nevertheless, Ellison had been frank (or modest) enough to admit to me that with the best boat and the best crew, he could be 10 percent less good than the next guy driving and still stand every chance of winning. Erkelens says, “We always had, in my opinion, a little bit better crew, a little bit better sails. But I still think Larry was better than the other maxi yacht owner-drivers.”
Chris Dickson, Sayonara’s skipper for most of the last four years, is now on a retainer of nearly $1 million a year, fulfilling the same role for Oracle Racing. Dickson is notorious for his willingness to scream criticism at some of the world’s best sailors, and the yachting press has been running stories about a bust-up in the Oracle Racing compound a few days before in which fists flew. He says of the approach he brought to Team Sayonara, “We have an uncompromising commitment to winning. We don’t accept excuses for anything. We have an absolutely ruthless approach to doing the best we can.” What is also not in doubt is his genius. Few who have sailed with him, including those who have endured his volcanic temper, dispute that there is anybody better at skippering a racing yacht.
Ellison recalls the arrival of the Kiwis: “We made some key crew changes, and we immediately started sailing better. Chris Dickson and Brad Butterworth were both great to get on board. If there are better sailors in the world than those guys, I haven’t met them. The Kiwis are the world’s best sailors, no question about that. But what I really enjoyed was the greatly improved chemistry on the team. The Kiwis we had on board were older than their American counterparts, and they came from more diverse backgrounds. A lot of the American sailors are privileged yacht club kids. Not all of them. Mike Howard, one of our American grinders, is as regular as a guy can be. Anyway, the Kiwis are more blue-collar types. You know, ‘My dad is an auto mechanic, and he taught me how to sail.’ ‘My dad is a postman, and he taught me how to sail.’ ‘My dad is a farmer.’ ‘We raise red-tail deer—and sail.’ Everyone in New Zealand sails, young and old, boys and girls. Everyone. So New Zealand’s best sailors are a true cross section of the community.
“The America’s Cup really should be renamed the New Zealand Big Boat Championship. New Zealanders are the key sailors on Alinghi [Switzerland], Oracle [USA], and Prada [Italy]. And of course Team Zealand is made up of mainly Kiwi sailors. That’s not to say that there aren’t some pretty good American sailors; there are. But the Kiwis are better—much better.”
Ellison says that Dickson reminds him of his friend Steve Jobs, the founder and once-again boss of Apple Computer. “Dickson wants everyone to do everything perfectly all the time. He’s so brilliant at what he does and so unforgiving of himself that he becomes unforgiving of others.” Erkelens adds, “The parts of Chris’s personality that rub some people up the wrong way don’t really seem to get to Larry. He’s getting all the benefits without the negative impacts of Chris’s methods, which isn’t to say that Chris doesn’t qualify his behavior around Larry a little bit . . . even though I’m pretty sure that Chris has had a little shout at Larry here and there under extreme stress.”2 But while Dickson may be willing to yell at Ellison just like any other member of the crew, he doesn’t forget that it’s Ellison who’s paying the bills. When Ellison made it clear that he wanted to sail the start of the 1998 Hobart, despite the risk of an accident because of the hundreds of yachts jockeying for position in Sydney Harbor, Dickson had no objections. On the eve of the race, he told the other Sayonara helmsmen, “He’ll have the helm for the start, and he’ll keep it until he gets sick of it. I’ll be there to give him guidance. He’s the boss, and that’s it.”
The 1998 Sydney-to-Hobart, which Sayonara won, has gone down in yachting history as one of the most lethal ocean races ever: only 43 of the 115 boats that started made it to Hobart. When the fleet hit hurricane-force winds in the Bass Strait, which separates Australia from Tasmania, seven boats were abandoned at sea, five sank, and six sailors lost their lives despite the heroism of the air-sea rescue services. Ellison has said he was traumatized by the experience, and he has sworn never to enter the race again.3
Erkelens had a close-up view of how Ellison responded to the stress and the physical danger: “Well, I think he and the rest of the crew were in awe of the size of the seas, the conditions of the ocean, not just the wind. There was wind, sixty-eight knots or whatever, but the sea state was much bigger than that wind would normally kick up. Even people on our boat that had done three or four Whitbreads (the around-the-world yacht race) were amazed at the size of the waves. It was difficult for everyone, it was physically stressful . . . you could not sleep, you were being bruised by the waves smashing you. Larry told me that he was comfortable in the situation as long as we—the rest of the crew—were comfortable. The point is, I think, that he had confidence in us, confidence that we would get through it. He could have been in a safer place, that’s for sure. But if you were going to do it, you could not have been with a better group of people. I think that helped him deal with the situation.”4
For Erkelens, Ellison’s finest hour as owner-driver of Sayonara was not the 1998 Hobart but a long-distance race to Bermuda that was part of the 1997 Maxi World Championships. The race was worth 1.5 times the normal number of points to the winner, but it didn’t go well for Sayonara. Erkelens says, “It was a real light-air race, and on the evening before we finished, we saw boats several miles ahead of us on the horizon jibing to make Bermuda on starboard. We were losing the regatta at that stage.” The leading boat was Alexia. If Alexia won the race and Sayonara failed to finish higher than fourth, Alexia would win the World Championship by half a point. The race tacticians th
ought they had come up with a way to use the wind angles to bring Sayonara back into contention. But if they guessed wrong and the winds became lighter again, Sayonara would not be able to take advantage of her superior size. In fact, the wind did begin to lighten. Erkelens says, “I remember Larry saying, ‘You guys . . . I think we need to jibe.’ So we jibed back and he made a strong call, some people were rumbling a little bit, we jibed back into the cloud and got another six knots’ breeze or so and sailed for another hour and a half. It turned out we had sailed around them all except Alexia. At that stage Alexia was fifty miles ahead, but by the finish we had shaved that down to about six. It took another ten hours for the rest of the boats to even finish. That really impressed me. It was the biggest single gain we ever made in a race.”
• • •
Ellison first learned to sail when he came to California in the mid-1960s. He took a sailing course at the University of California and got started on “a little plastic boat called a Lido 14.” He says, “I should tell people I attended the University of California and majored in sailing.” He enjoyed it so much that a year or so later, when he was twenty-five, he bought first a twenty-four-foot boat and then something quite substantial: a thirty-four-foot racing sloop. “I was passionate about sailing and the idea of sailing . . . the idyllic independence . . . traveling with the wind . . . that kind of stuff. I guess a lot of people have dreams of sailing around the world. I was one of them. I remember reading Robin Lee Graham’s story of sailing his twenty-four-foot sloop, the Dove, around the world. It was published in National Geographic. I’m pretty sure it was the most popular story they ever ran.” But if Ellison, like most other leisure sailors, fantasized about circumnavigation, the reality was more prosaic: “I was just racing around the bay, sailing out to the Farallons [islands 27 miles west of San Francisco] and back. I was having a good time. The trouble was, I really couldn’t afford it.” The point was driven home to him when racing Galilee Hitchhiker, the thirty-four-footer he had bought by borrowing $25,000. During a slight storm at the start of a light-ship race, the jib halyard broke and Ellison’s first wife, Adda, nearly fell overboard trying to bring the expensive sail back on board. Soon afterward he sold the boat. “I finally had to accept that eating came before sailing in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.” Adda had become so worried about how much money the boat was eating that she was driven to seek counseling.
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