Fisher@Large - Memories of the Great Dane

by Bob Fisher on 12 Dec 2016 The sailing world became a poorer place on December 7th with the passing of Paul Elvstrom, the undisputed greatest sailor of the era.

No one challenges that claim – it is not one he made but one universally approved – it fitted him like a glove. How else could one describe a four-time Olympic gold medallist who also won the world championship of seven international classes of dinghies and keelboats over a 30-year period?

His determination to win was universally accepted by his fellow competitors, who, almost to a man, regarded him as a friend. This was reflected in his declared attitude: “You haven’t won the race, if in winning you have lost the respect of your competitors”.

Everyone who ever met him has their own memories of Paul and there are two of mine that I would like to share. The first concerns his attendance at the 1984 Olympic Games at Los Angeles, in a Tornado catamaran with his daughter, Trine, crewing him. At the time, I was contracted by BBCTv to present it’s sailing output. My producer was Terry Long and over dinner on my first night in LA, I had explained the backgrounds of the British Team members and Terry then asked me if there were any notables in any of the foreign teams. Naturally, I told him of Paul.

Two days later when we went down to the dinghy park, I soon spotted Paul, working on his boat, and mentioned it to Terry, whose reaction was that we should attack this in a specific manner. “We’ll go in with all guns blazing,” he said, meaning that the camera (16mm film in those days) would be turning over and the sound recorder on. “That won’t work,” I told him and tried to explain why, but Terry would have nothing of it. His reply was along the lines of “I call the shots and we will do it my way.”

So, in we went and as we approached, Paul looked up, saw me, and came over and embraced me, immediately turning away towards the dinghy park, calling out: “Trine, Trine, there’s someone here I want you to meet.” Behind me I heard the one-word command “Cut.” Terry waited a few minutes and, as I remember, we achieved a good interview with them both.

Subsequently Terry wanted to know why the Great Dane hadn’t won a medal at that Games and while knowing his answer, I asked Paul that question for the camera. “There were better teams here than us,” he admitted, there were no excuses – there never were.

Four years later, we met again, at the Half Ton Cup in Poole. I was sailing with Larry Marks aboard Demolition and almost crashed into Paul on the dockside and here it was Paul who became the “interviewer.” “Know thine enemy,” would appear to be a byword for Paul. He wanted to know with whom I was sailing and when I told him who it was, he needed to top up the biography he already had of the man. OK, so neither of us won that regatta, but we always had an eye out for one another and Paul always wanted to discuss it afterwards. His attention to detail was well known and doubtless contributed to his success.

I cast my mind back to 1967, when I was practising with Peter Schneidau for the Little America’s Cup (Yes, that was what we used to call it back then) off the Thorpe Bay shore. Regularly our Australian competitor would receive visits from a C-class catamaran that had sailed across the Thames Estuary from Sheppey. It was Opus II, designed, built and owned by Gert Fredericksen from Denmark, but, more importantly perhaps, it was sailed by Paul. My skipper had to remind me that we were not racing against the Great Dane, at least not that year, so it wouldn’t hurt to go and limber up with them .

The couple of days we did so provided me with the opportunity to see, and understand, the fine tuning of the wing-mast rig – Opus II had a similar one to the rig of Lady Helmsman – and how the power of the rig could be controlled by one simple trim. What we learned from Paul undoubtedly helped us to win but I have no doubt he learned something from us, or he wouldn’t have been there the second day.

It is therefore with great sadness that I learned of Paul’s passing. There is no doubt that he was the finest sailor ever to have lived and moreover one who was prepared the share his knowledge with others, possibly in the hope of learning something new himself. He never gave up.