After the excitement of the start, there’s the fun of overtaking all the slower boats that began the race in front of us. What’s impressive is the constant searching for tiny improvements in performance by changing sails whenever there is the slightest shift in wind speed or direction to justify it. It helps having Robbie Naismith and Joey Allen aboard, both Kiwis and respectively the best sail trimmer and bowman in the world. As night falls, Sayonara appears to be in the lead and putting ever more distance between it and its nearest rival—as predicted, Decision. The mood onboard is relaxed, and nobody questions skipper Chris Dickson’s strategy of heading as close to the mark as possible and not to go searching for better wind. We’re making about ten knots with a gentle breeze on our port beam. Ellison drives for a while, but with Dickson trying to get some rest, he hands over to Mike “Moose” Sanderson, another New Zealander, content just to chat and enjoy the night.
The conversation is exclusively about sailing. With the collapse of the world maxi series, the richest and most competitive owners are building ever-bigger and more extreme boats. It seems that the years of Sayonara’s domination are coming to an end. Ranged against Sayonara in open-class racing now are likely to be monsters such as Gianni Agnelli’s ninety-foot Stealth and Hasso Plattner’s new 140-foot Morning Glory. But although they are very fast, especially downwind thanks to their huge sail areas, Moose reckons they have a flaw. Their vastness means that the tried-and-tested America’s Cup–class equipment that could be used for the old maxi class is simply not up to the job, but the custom-built winches and the towering masts are inherently less robust. Ellison thinks that the answer may be to build a 150-foot two-masted ketch that could fly the same amount of sail without having to size everything up by more than 50 percent. The idea grows on him as we sail through the night. Racing in something a little more comfortable and less stripped down than Sayonara has a lot going for it. But only if a new boat can be as successful. The idea of racing and not regularly winning has no appeal to Ellison.
Meanwhile, it has become clear that Sayonara is going to have to fight to win this race. Through the night, a light on a boat sailing on the other side of the lake has been steadily making ground on us. At first nobody is concerned. It may not even be another racer, and if it is, it is sailing well away from the more or less direct route to Mackinac that Dickson has opted for. But as the light draws level and then overtakes us, the complacency evaporates. In the light airs in the middle of the lake, Sayonara’s speed has dropped to about eight knots, while the other boat seems to be making at least twelve knots. It’s Dickson’s turn to drive, and he asks Erkelens to give us accurate readings of how much ground we’re losing each fifteen minutes or so. After half an hour, Dickson decides to bear off toward the rival boat in search of the extra wind that’s pushed him past us. Suddenly, the idea that we might actually lose has entered everybody’s head. Ellison is below, trying to get some sleep. Although nobody says anything, they don’t want him to emerge at dawn to find us a distant second.
With hindsight, we should have moved to cover the other boat much sooner. As we move across the lake, the wind kicks up from little more than ten knots to nearly twenty, and Sayonara slowly starts to close the gap. By 4 A.M. we’re close enough to see that Sayonara’s old nemesis Decision has managed to get the jump on us. Dickson has decided to close right in on Decision and then take her wind. It’s a brilliant and ruthless piece of sailing. As we come within what seems like touching distance, Decision suddenly heads up to try cut us off. Immediately Dickson shouts, “No luffing, no luffing!” warning that what they’re doing is illegal and that if they persist we’ll flag them—issue a protest that will certainly lead to penalties. For a moment Decision seems anything but decisive. But by then Sayonara is level, and it’s as if Decision has stopped dead in the water. Within twenty minutes Sayonara has opened up a gap of nearly a mile. By the time Ellison surfaces, unaware of the drama, Decision is a couple of miles distant but managing to match Sayonara’s pace.
For the rest of the morning, as we crawl northward to the Manitou Islands, the two boats cover each other, neither making ground on the other. If it carries on like this, Decision will finish ahead of Sayonara on corrected time because we carry a handicap of about an hour and a quarter. But as soon as we draw near the Manitous, the wind veers round to the north and picks up speed. By 2 P.M. it’s raining hard, the breeze is blowing at a steady twenty-five knots down the channel, and Sayonara is doing what she does best—sailing close-hauled at fifteen knots into a mounting sea, the water creaming over her decks. It’s also the kind of sailing that Ellison loves, and it’s not long before he grabs the helm. If the conditions are now perfect for Sayonara, they’re miserable for Decision, whose lack of stability means she is constantly being blown sideways. As Decision falls ever farther behind until she becomes little more than a distant speck, Ellison exults, “Boy, we’re really smoking ’em. They’re not having any fun back there. They can kiss that corrected-time trophy good-bye.”
But before dusk, the speck of Decision’s sail becomes just visible on the horizon some ten miles away. Despite Ellison’s braggadocio, with only another two or three hours to Mackinac it’s still touch and go whether Sayonara will have enough of a lead to overcome her handicap. I ask Ellison what matters more to him, winning on corrected time or being first to cross the finishing line. “That’s easy,” he says. “Being first to finish is what it’s all about. This corrected-time stuff is totally arbitrary. A fully tricked-out turbosled like Decision should beat us in the Mac—actually finish in front of us—under some conditions. If the sailing is mainly upwind, we’ll win. If the sailing is mainly downwind, they’ll win. Some years the Mac’s an upwind race. Some years the Mac’s a downwind race. So how do they figure we owe her seventy-five minutes? Why not fifty minutes? Why not a hundred fifty minutes? The handicap is just a wild-ass guess.” The other thing that would make Ellison happy would be to beat the record for the race, something he might have achieved when Sayonara sailed her first Chicago Mac if a piece of equipment had not failed a couple of miles from home. That’s not going to happen now.3
Just then an appalling smell of burning comes drifting up from below. After a succession of cold meals, Tugboat has decided that what the crew needs to warm up is a steaming bowl of spaghetti bolognese. Unfortunately, the distinction between cooked and burned has once again eluded him. As the bowls of pasta are passed up on deck and the very brave or very hungry begin eating, the sheer nastiness of Tugboat’s cooking becomes apparent. Some eat from necessity but immediately regret it. Others simply tip the muck into the water. Tugboat is furious and hurt by the ingratitude and is not even mollified when one of the grinders innocently asks him how he managed to introduce such an interesting “smokiness” to the flavor. Thank heaven for the sardines.
Ellison suddenly asks whether Sayonara should enter the Fastnet Race in a month’s time. It’s a notoriously tough course from the Isle of Wight to the Fastnet Rock off the southwest coast of Ireland and back again. The first thing to establish is whether it’s possible even to get Sayonara there on such short notice. Unfazed, Bill Erkelens gets on the satellite phone to see if he can get a giant Russian Antonov transport plane to fly Sayonara to England. But Ellison’s concern is whether Sayonara has a reasonable chance of winning against the new breed of supermaxis, Stealth and Mari Cha. Moose, who’s sailed on both boats, is doubtful. The problem is that they won’t be giving much away to Sayonara upwind, and downwind they’re likely to give her a beating. Surely, Ellison persists, if much of the race is upwind, which it often can be, Sayonara has a chance. A chance, agrees Dickson, but a fairly slim one. Ellison decides to call Bruce Farr, Sayonara’s designer and the man responsible for coming up with the design that’s meant to deliver Ellison the America’s Cup, and get him to do some computer simulations. If Sayonara’s chances of winning are less than 50 percent, he doesn’t want to do it. Besides, he has the excuse of not wanting to disrupt the training o
f the America’s Cup team any more than it has been already. By the time Erkelens, looking very pleased with himself, announces that he has an Antonov on standby, Ellison’s enthusiasm has significantly cooled.
It appears he also has other problems to deal with. Speaking low enough so that others can’t hear, Chris Dickson tells Ellison that he’s having problems in his relationship with Paul Cayard, the distinguished American sailor with whom he shares Oracle Racing’s “afterguard.” When Ellison bought the two boats from the AmericaOne syndicate that challenged for the cup in 1999, he bought with them a large part of the team and its infrastructure, including Cayard as the leader of the team and skipper. Although he and Ellison had never much liked each other after they had sailed together on Sayonara in her first year of competition, Cayard saw that Ellison’s millions might bring him the cup after his own effort failed for want of funding. For his part, Ellison was prepared to go along with Cayard’s involvement as long as he didn’t try to take over Oracle Racing. But according to Dickson, that’s exactly what’s happening, and, even more dangerous, the AmericaOne veterans had become a team within a team, leaving some of the Sayonara boys isolated.
Suddenly, the rumors in the sailing press of a quayside fight a couple of months ago at Ventura Harbor, where the team is based, seem more solidly based. Ellison asks a couple of the guys closest to us how they feel about Cayard but gets back only cautiously noncommittal answers. The truth is that Cayard is not unpopular, while Dickson’s edgy perfectionism and intensity can put a strain even on colleagues who are in awe of his abilities. While Cayard is happy to go drinking with the lads after work, Dickson unwinds only when he is back with his family. But for Ellison, a choice between Cayard and Dickson is a no-brainer. He had always expected that sooner or later he would have to sack Cayard from the team and even suggests that he might fly down to Ventura to see Cayard before leaving for Europe in three days’ time. “Decisions like this are better made sooner than later,” he says.4
When we eventually arrive first across the line at Mackinac and moor, the only welcoming committee is the wives and girlfriends of Team Sayonara. It’s not entirely surprising. Not only is it 10:30 and a miserable, rainy night, but Ellison managed to offend the local yacht club after the near-record-breaking run a couple of years back. Asked by the beaming and beblazered commodore what the club can possibly do to make his stay on the island a happy one, a frustrated Ellison suggests a taxi to the airport. I’m worried about whether Ellison is in a fit state to fly the seven or eight hours back to San Carlos without sleep, but he’s as keen to get away as before. We decide to go, leaving the crew, after midnight, downing drinks in the bar at the Lilac Tree and repelling the advances (or not) of local girls.
There are no cars allowed on the island, so we hail one of the horse-drawn taxis that ply for hire along Main Street, while Ellison rushes to the grocery (everything is open to greet the arriving fleet) to stock up with ice cream bars. We tell the young driver that we want to go to the airport (airstrip, more accurately) and load our bags onto the cart. It’s only then that he delivers the bombshell that his horses have been working for six hours and local regulations demand that he change his team on the way to the airport. Dickson and the Judge, who has been seasick and looks shattered, implore the young man to take us to the airport directly. When he refuses, they get angry, telling him how important the passenger buying the ices is. Finally Dickson tries bribery, which is grudgingly accepted. When Ellison returns, the youth informs him that he’s doing this only because he’s been told that Ellison will “look after him.”
And off we go at what seems like little more than walking speed. At the top of a hill, the driver suddenly halts his horses, to the consternation of Dickson and the judge. “The horses need a rest,” he says stubbornly. “The horses shouldn’t be doing this anyway. I look after my horses.” Although as tired and desperate to get to the plane as the others, Ellison talks gently and approvingly to the young man, praising him for putting the welfare of his animals before the requirements of impatient passengers. From then until we get to the tiny airport fifteen minutes and several more stops later, Ellison and the driver chat about the horses and how they need to be cared for. When Ellison gives him a hundred-dollar bill at the end of the journey, a strange thing has happened. It no longer seems like a tip for bending the rules but a reward for standing up for his horses.5
* * *
1. LE writes: I was more apprehensive than “furious.” Years of experience had taught me to fear the food on Sayonara. Tugsy wasn’t solely responsible for our history of bad food. Jeff Stag would bring only freeze-dried stuff because he wanted to save weight. T. A. McCann was a vegetarian who thought the crew could live on PowerBars and nuts. I think we sailed faster than other boats because the crew wanted to finish, get off, and get a good meal.
2. LE writes: Decision beat us back in 1995. Back then she was called Cheval, and she beat us to Hawaii by forty minutes. It was a long race—nine days—and we came in second. It was Sayonara’s first and only loss in our first few years of racing.
3. LE writes: We broke the ram on our backstay a few minutes before finishing our first Mac. We missed the record by about a minute. Very disappointing.
4. LE writes: Unfortunately, I didn’t go to Ventura and I didn’t make a sailing team leadership change at that time. My delay seriously hurt our chances of winning the America’s Cup.
5. LE writes: When I was a kid, I used to like animals more than people.
19
FAMILY VALUES
Until his twelfth birthday, it had never occurred to Larry Ellison that he was adopted. “I can remember exactly where I was. I was standing in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, and my father tells me I’m adopted. That was it. They didn’t give me any details. It was like ‘Tonight we’re having meat loaf, and, by the way, you’re adopted.’ It was many years down the road before I found out that my biological mother was my mother’s niece.”
Ellison’s reaction to the news was in character: “I don’t think I told anybody for a long time. I’m not sure I even thought about it that much. I just went straight into repression mode.” Ellison once jokingly described himself as a “repressions-‘R’-us kind of guy.” He said, “If something’s really unpleasant, I just don’t think about it. I’m very good at doing the Scarlett O’Hara thing: ‘I can’t think about that today, I’ll think about that tomorrow.’ Repression has been a very useful tool for me to manage things that are painful or delay a confrontation until I’m better able to deal with it. Something made me put off dealing with the adoption until I was much older and more mature. So I just put it into cold storage and didn’t deal with it at all. I’m sure that there are consequences to repression—knowing something like that and not dealing with it—but I have no idea what the consequences are. Anyway, repression makes the pain go away; I just freeze it and go live my life as best I can. When I’m a little bit stronger, a little bit smarter, I’ll deal with it then.”
In fact, it was thirty-four years before Ellison felt strong enough to deal with the emotional issues raised by his adoption. It was probably no coincidence that his resolve to confront his past was finally summoned up in 1992. In resolving the events that had come close to destroying the company, Ellison had come through eighteen months of fear, embarrassment, and public vilification. In doing so, he had learned something about his own resilience and ability to deal with intense pressure. He was also more confident than ever that Oracle had the strength to survive and prosper. Not only did he now have seasoned managers, such as Jeff Henley and Ray Lane, to keep the show on the road, but, with the release of Oracle 7, he knew that he now had a product that would sweep away the competition. In turning Oracle around, Ellison had been forced to ask questions about himself and to fight both inner demons and external threats. He decided that the moment had come to try to discover something about who he really was.
Ellison says, “I’d always been curious about
my biological parents, but don’t ask questions unless you want answers. After Oracle’s crisis, looking into the abyss and surviving, I felt emotionally strong enough to take a more realistic look at myself. I was tired of striving to be the person I thought I should be. If I was to have any chance at happiness, I had to understand and accept who I really was. That required me to ask some questions about my past and live with the answers, regardless of what they turned out to be.”
• • •
The facts of Ellison’s early life are these. He was born on August 17, 1944, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His nineteen-year-old mother, Florence Spellman, had fallen in love with a handsome, broad-shouldered third-generation Italian who was a pilot in the air force. By the time Florence knew she was pregnant, her lover had been posted abroad. What happened to him, despite Ellison’s efforts in later life to find out, remains a mystery. At the age of nine months, Florence’s baby contracted pneumonia and nearly died. Reluctantly, she concluded that it was impossible for her to work to support the two of them while giving her son the care he needed. And in those days the only solution was to have the baby adopted. Fortunately, Florence had an aunt living in Chicago who was prepared to bring Larry up as her own son.
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