"Seal" Start at the Bermuda Race, 1958
Pair of Framed Vintage Photographs

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Seal, Start at the Bermuda Race, 1958

"Seal" Start at the Bermuda Race, 1958

 Start of the Bermuda Race, 1958, featuring Seal

Start of the Bermuda Race, 1958 (Wind Velocity 43 K)
detail detail

Details
"Seal" Start at the Bermuda Race, 1958
Start of the Bermuda Race, 1958 (Wind Velocity 43 K)
American: 1958
Black and white photographs
Titled in pencil on the mats
10.5 x 13.5 inches, photographs
15.75 x 18.5 inches, frame
Sold, please inquire as to the availability of similar items.

Two black and white photographs of yachts at the start of the 1958 Bermuda Race.  The yacht Seal is shown among other yachts in both photos: in the foreground in one, and close behind another yacht in the other.  Seal was owned by Connecticut lawyer Frederick J. Lorenzen and finished second in the race.

Seal was among the first group of 40-foot fiberglass centerboard yawls known as the Block Island 40 model, designed by Bill Tripp and built by American Boatbuilding.  In this period, fiberglass was a new and experimental material for ocean-racing boats.  Lorenzen urged Tripp to design a fiberglass yacht, commenting about wooden boats, “I don’t like them.  They leak.”  Sailing journalist Ted Jones offered this account of Seal and its participation in the 1958 Bermuda Race.

Of that first batch of BI 40s, I remember Swamp Yankee (#1), built for Van Allen Clark; Seal (#2), for Frederick J. Lorenzen; and Rhubarb (#3 or #4), for Ben DuPont.  There were others, as well... All did extremely well in the 1958 racing season and several entered the Bermuda Race of that year. Seal became infamous for taking a hunk out of the concrete dock at Pearlman & Watlington's in Bermuda without so much as a scratch to her (or so the legend goes). I often sailed aboard Seal with Fred and Dottie Lorenzen after the 1958 Bermuda Race.

Provenance: Estate of John B. McPherson, Old Lyme, Connecticut, an electro-mechanical engineer, who might have been a member of the crew in this race.

References:

Jones, Ted.  “Remembering Bill Tripp.”  SailNet.com.  17 August 2007.  http://www.sailnet.com/forums/seamanship-articles/36138-remembering-bill-tripp.html (12 June 2009).

“Tripp Up.”  Time Magazine. February 16, 1959.   Online at Time.com.   2009.  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,894192,00.html (12 June 2009).