March 2012 - Fairwind Yacht Club

How John Wintrode Helped Launch The Laser Revolution
By John Wintrode
It was a cold winter’s night in NYC. The boat show was on in Madison Square Garden.
Nobody in my crew wanted to go out that frosty January night in 1971. I put on my London Fog with liner
and froze walking to the show. Most of the displays were power boats. But there was one little red mono hull
that caught my eye. Beside it, the dealer had a film clip running on a small screen that showed a very proficient
sailor demonstrating the boat’s capability.
Cool. I asked the guy at the display who the sailor in the film was and he said it was Hans Fogh, who I knew
was a world-class sailor. I was impressed. The guy at the booth and I
talked for about an hour, and I decided to take him up on his offer to
become a dealer, provided he could get me a boat in time for the Miami
boat show in February.
He shipped a red hull in an Air Canada stretched DC-8, and I put it in
the Miami show for four days and nights. Nobody seemed to be
interested. I sold that one boat to a guy in the Bahamas, but I needed to
get the boat before the sailing public in Miami.
So I ordered three more, built a trailer to hold three boats and
demonstrated them around south Florida. A grind. Still no interest.
Middle of the summer 1972 and the Miami to Key Largo Race was
coming up. It’s big among sailors, cruisers, multi hulls (the Shark was
big then) and a few racing mono hulls. The race committee
handicapped everybody using a Portsmouth Number (before PHRF ).
Since the Laser was brand new it had not established a Portsmouth
Number, so they gave me the same handicap as a classic Moth. Forty
miles to Key Largo, usually port-tack close reach or beam reach in the
prevailing east wind. The start was at 0800. Dead calm. A helicopter
was flying close overhead taking pictures, so I sculled over (against the
rules) , caught his downdraft and shot out into the lead. I will never
forget looking back and seeing 250 boats behind me!
UCLA and the California Yacht
When the wind filled in later in the day, a lot of the bigger boats with
Club have Laser fleets in MDR.
spinnakers, a Raven and a Flying Dutchman passed me, but not by much.
One Windmill and I cut the corner a bit by going between the Arsinickers and shore at Homestead (too
shallow for most boats). I won the race. Everybody was talking about the little boat that won. The Laser was
on its way. I wound up selling 210 boats in seven years. My part-time hobby was becoming full time, so I
turned the dealership over to Blue Water Marine in Coconut Grove. What a great time. My first three boats
had sail numbers 15, 17 and 22. There are now over 200,000 Lasers sailing.
Note: Bruce Kirby, a Canadian, designed the Laser. Ian Bruce, the guy in the booth at Madison Square
Garden was another Canadian. He helped put it together and manufactured the boats in his company,
Performance Sailcraft.
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