Joe Mele’s quest for a Rolex

by Bruce Montgomery on 30 Dec 2016 Joe Mele is a New York physician whose office is about the same size as the aft cabin of his Swan design Triple Lindy, which finished last night in the 2016 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race.

Joe wears a black plastic Casio watch; he has several Casio watches, but he wants a Rolex. Joe wants to win one, not buy one.

“I’ve decided I don’t want to buy it outright so I am going to keep doing these races until I win it, so it may be the most expensive Rolex watch ever bought, but I’ll be damned if I don’t try to get it.”

To that end, he has taken a sabbatical.

“We are halfway through a pretty exciting year-and-a-half of racing,” he said today at the Hobart marina.

“It started out with the Newport-Bermuda Race. The boat was shipped down to Sydney for the Rolex Sydney Hobart. Now we’ll go to Europe for the (Rolex) Fastnet Race and then on to the (Rolex) Middle Sea Race.

“I thought that was it, although the crew has been pressing me hard to do a couple of more races in Europe, such as the Giraglia (Rolex) race. We’ll see about that. I haven’t committed to it just yet.”

So the adventure continues with some cruising in Tasmania then the boat will be shipped from Newcastle to the UK in time for the Fastnet in August.

The name Triple Lindy?

“Triple Lindy is named after a high dive in a Rodney Dangerfield movie called Back to School.

“I used to do a version of that dive as a young man, but when I was about to get married, my father-in-law told me it was too dangerous for a married man to do.

“It was a big part of my life and I needed to replace it in some way, so I started buying progressively larger boats and calling them all Triple Lindy,” Mele said.

A placated father-in-law will join the Tasmanian cruise.