Sally Helme and Eric Goetz honored by RIMTA Members, local dignitaries

by Cynthia Goss on 19 Sep 2014 On September 13, Sally Helme of The Sailing Company (Middletown, R.I.) and Eric Goetz of Goetz Composites (Bristol, R.I.) were named the 2014 recipients of the Rhode Island Marine Trades Association Anchor Awards. These accolades—which are awarded annually to individuals who have had a significant impact on the promotion and advancement of the state’s marine trades—were presented at RIMTA’s Annual Industry Breakfast. Some 145 industry members attended the presentation. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a past Anchor Award recipient, and Congressman David Cicilline also addressed the audience.

Brad Read of Sail Newport presented Sally Helme with her Anchor Award. Read lauded Helme as a longtime advocate of the industry and the sport, and a leader in the media who continues to shine a spotlight onto recreational boating on a global scale.

A lifelong boater, Helme, who is group publisher for The Sailing Company, started her career as a yacht broker and then assumed marketing roles at several marine manufacturers before moving to the publishing side of the business in 1994. She now leads two R.I.–based sailing magazines, Sailing World and Cruising World, which are part of the Bonnier Corporation, and the National Offshore One-Design Regattas, the largest sailing regatta series in North America. She has donated her time and expertise to a wealth of marine-related nonprofits and business organizations, and she also produces the 'State of the Sailing Industry' report—an annual survey that tracks sailboat production, imports, and bareboat charters that is recognized as the key barometer of the U.S. sailing industry. She is a graduate of Princeton University and Salve Regina University, where she earned her Master’s degree.

Peter Van Lancker of Hunt Yachts presented Eric Goetz with his Anchor Award. Van Lancker praised Goetz as an innovator who has built elegant composite structures with precision, accuracy, and engineering skill, and also as someone who has shaped an industry as a teacher and mentor to many in the field.

Eric Goetz, chief technology officer at Goetz Composites, is recognized worldwide as a pioneer in the high-tech composites industry. A lifelong sailor, he went to Brown University and also took industrial design courses at the Rhode Island School of Design. Those classes sparked his interest in how design is influenced by materials and processes; after graduation he founded Goetz Custom Sailboats in 1975 and soon became established as an innovator who found new ways to stiffen and lighten boats—beginning with cold-molded boats with all-wood hulls and decks and graduating to today’s high-tech fibers laminated with heat-cured resin systems. He was the first to build a pre-preg carbon racing boat in the U.S. and has built over 100 custom boats, including nine America’s Cup contenders, and numerous architectural structures, including the restoration of the Buckminster Fuller original Fly’s Eye Dome. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and he helps students understand the potential of building with composites by lecturing at leading universities, including Harvard Graduate School of Design, Dartmouth College Thayer School of Engineering, Yale School of Architecture-Graduate Division, and the Landing School.

Both Read and Van Lancker are past recipients of the Anchor Awards.

RIMTA’s Annual Industry Breakfast was held during the Newport International Boat Show. The event was sponsored by the Governor’s Workforce Board Rhode Island, Honda Marine, Maritime Solutions, Newport International Boat Show and the US Superyacht Association.
RIMTA website