An interview with Ken Read about his recent induction into the National Sailing Hall of Fame
by David Schmidt 12 Nov 03:00 AEDT
November 11, 2025
Ken Read, President of North Sails © Meghan Sepe
Eighteen years is a long time, but I can still recall the sounds of carbon-fiber skins grinding on each other aboard PUMA's Volvo Open 70 Avanti (nee, ABN Amro 2) as we pound into small chop on the waters of Block Island Sound. I'm crouched in the bow, forward of some watertight hatches with crewmember Neil Cox, as Ken Read, the team's skipper for the 2008/2009 Volvo Ocean Race (now called The Ocean Race), puts the team through their sail-changing paces. The sound is sickening, and I can feel the weight of my brand-new wedding ring on my finger.
Cox and I climb out of the dark, cave-like bow section and return to the cockpit. Read gives me a smile, and I recall his question, posed the day before, regarding the status of my (non-existent) life insurance.
I was on the boat as a journalist, and I remember being impressed with Read's cool and calm demeaner, given that the boat's bow was failing.
Read and the team would go on to place second overall in the 2008/2009 VOR aboard a brand-new V70 called Il Mostro, before returning with another new build (Mar Mostro) for the 2011/2012 edition of the race. Unfortunately, the team suffered mast breakage on the race's first leg, which effectively sealed their third-place finish.
Once back ashore from his VOR adventures, Read, who was already a decorated collegiate sailor, two-time America's Cup helmsman, 11-time world champion sailor (including in the Etchells and J/24 classes), recipient of the 1985 and 1995 United States Rolex Yachtsman of the Year awards, and VP of North Sails, took on two new big roles: President of North Sails and skipper of Comanche, the VPLP-designed IRC 100-foot supermaxi.
Read and company went on to win line honors aboard Comanche in the 2015 Sydney Hobart Race, not to mention a slew of other offshore wins and records.
Most recently, Read was inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame (Class of 2025).
I checked in with Read, who currently works as president of North Technology Group (in addition to still skippering high-performance yachts), to learn more about his career and recent NSHOF induction.
You've accomplished a lot in the sport of sailing. As you look back on your recent induction into the Sailing Hall of Fame, what achievements are you the most proud of and why?
I think it's really hard to place one, either achievement or accomplishment or regatta or whatever above the other. I would say there's a few things that I'm most proud of.
And first of all, it's how the kind of sporting/professional work life came together. I think it's something that more young sailors should consider because I've really been charmed in that way, and that is getting pushed out of the nest from a day-to-day work standpoint to go out and do major projects, all with the theory that you're going to learn from your successes and failures from the big projects, and then come back and translate those into making a company like North Sails better.
And the thing that's come out of that is how to create collaborative environments where people love working hard and working together, and experts in divisions that you just trust and try not to micromanage. And really just making an environment not only to succeed, but an environment to enjoy for all.
And I'm really proud of that and how that's come along. More so than saying this regatta was the best, or this regatta was the best. I think it's just the body of work that I'm probably most proud of at this stage.
What was the most challenging sailing-related project that you have been involved with, and what was it about the experience that made it formidable?
I would say the most challenging sailing-related project that I've been involved with [is] probably twofold, and both had completely different challenges.
The first one that was super challenging wasn't the first Team Dennis Conner project because in 2000 we had no expectations and completely blew away expectations and had just a spectacular experience with a bunch of friends—good friends to this day—who just worked hard and made something out of nothing with no money.
I'd say the second America's Cup campaign [in 2003] with Team Dennis Conner was quite challenging as we as a group didn't adapt to the consensus building team atmosphere that a lot of the other teams, especially Team New Zealand, had put together. What I mean by that is we had a hull designer and a keel designer and a bulb designer and a rudder designer and a mast designer and sail designers. And they never actually were even allowed to work together, and our boat looked like that, it felt like that. It was a bunch of great ideas from a bunch of really smart people that didn't have a package mentality to it.
And therefore, we went in with more money and much, much higher expectations based on our 2000 campaign. And it really didn't go well. And hindsight being 20/20, it was pretty clear what and why and how the mistakes were made.
But with all these programs, the mistakes were made before a boat is ever [built], even before a piece of carbon fiber is ever cut or glued, it's long before that where really the writing's on the wall for any program. Sailors make boats a little bit better, but boats have to have the right organization and structure put together beforehand, long before [the boat] gets splashed, to really work well.
The second challenge, which turned out to be just a phenomenal outcome, was the first Puma program where I kind of tripped over an amazing sponsor in Puma through a whole series of good luck events, tripped over Kimo Worthington, thank God, [and] put together kind of a team of all stars that I didn't really know much about a lot of 'em because I wasn't new to offshore sailing, but I was certainly new to trying to put together a program to go all the way around the world.
And I have to admit that right before the race, it was terrifying. I really didn't know what I was doing. It was very clear at the beginning. It was clear to me [and] it was clear to the crew. We almost had a mutiny. I almost had a mutiny on my hands about a third of the way through the race and finally just kind of pulled up my big-boy pants and got my [s$%&] together, and we made some changes that worked and all of a sudden [we] rallied back to second overall in our very first Puma program.
And it was just learning from your mistakes.
And in anything we do in our lives, I think you learn more from the mistakes than you do from the successes. And that was just not really knowing what I was getting myself into.
Eventually you got to do it your way, whether it's right or wrong, you got to do it your way. And others may disagree sometimes, but when you build a collaborative group that all wants to pull a rope in the same direction, success usually happens.
And that had success at the end of it, but it was certainly wildly challenging to get there.
Let's flip that question around—what was the most enjoyable sailing-related project that you have been involved with, and what made it so cool?
Well, probably in the big-platform arena, Comanche was just something special that you just so rarely get to do in anybody's career. And having the ownership in the Clarks, and the resources to do something that was special and that hadn't really been done before—you know, the project goal was make the fastest monohull on the planet.
To get the right people involved, it was really the six years of Volvo Ocean race experience with the two Puma projects that allowed that program to go so smoothly.
When you look back on it, the fact that it essentially got conceptualized, put together, designed, built, launched, and raced with not a single major failure was just something that is almost beyond imagination.
And combine that with the fact that it lived up to expectations. It has almost every major race record there is on the planet for monohulls. And for 10 years it had the 24-hour speed record, and that's only just recently been beaten by a boat with a foil and an autopilot, of which we didn't have either. And it's still going strong. It's still probably is the best monohull in the world all around.
So, all the experience that led up to Comanche, fortunately we were still so fresh out of our Volvo campaigns that it was easy to rally the same team that had put together the project with me before that we could just roll right into it. And it was seamless, it was flawless. It was amazing to live up to those expectations.
Would I be correct in thinking that the biggest disappointment that you shouldered in your sailing career—to date—was when you and your Mar Mostro team lost your rig and ended up on Tristan de Cunha in 2011? If so, did you learn any good sailing or life lessons during that ordeal that you've been able to carry with you?
I think it's fair to say if somebody came in from the outside and kind of went through a play by play of my career or sailing life, they would clearly think the biggest disappointment in my career was leg one in the second Puma program, losing our mast just out of the blue in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean and ending up in Tristan de Cunha for five days. And that whole unbelievable saga that started with a bang and ended with starting the race on time in Cape Town.
But I don't view it as the most disappointing, even by a long shot. In fact, you can make a case and after telling this story with videos and slides and everything else to probably hundreds of groups about that experience. I've been asked the question twice: You talk so passionately about your at Tristan de Cunha experience. Was that actually when you look back on it, was that a good thing or a bad thing?
And I think it's actually a fair point. In many ways it was kind of life-changing.
It just gave perspective out of what we're doing and why we're doing it. And did it throw a massive wrench into having the overall success in that race, in winning the Volvo Ocean Race, which was obviously a goal in my life. And the answer to that is yes, of course.
But that 10 days, from pulling the mast back on board the boat, to motoring to a Russian thousand-foot tanker, to get enough diesel fuel to get to Tristan de Cunha, and then living there for five days until a ship came out from Cape Town to grab us, put us on the ship and the trip back with one container on onboard the ship and fixing the boat ourselves, and having a sail loft down below and the hold of the ship.
And then the 48-hour turnaround of flying a mast from Rhode Island to Cape Town and getting it in the boat and figuring out what parts actually broke so we didn't just throw another mast in that had the exact identical problems and then continuing on with the race. You know, winning legs and getting really close in the end. It was maybe kind of life-changing. So I really don't look at it as a dark moment. I look at it as a moment that I don't know if anybody could ever repeat. So there's got to be something said for that.
Do you have any advice for young sailors who are interested in a career in sailing or in the marine industry?
I speak to groups of youth sailors quite often. And I do have advice for young sailors, and I don't think it's advice that a lot of them want to hear.
So, I think the best sailors in the world now are people who have specialties far outside their obvious specialty in making a boat go fast. And the reason I say this is, it kind of started early on back in the J/24s, when somebody pointed out in an article that Ken Read's team showed up and all five people on board kind of spread out in the parking lot and everybody had their job, and everybody had a specialty on the boat that they did in order to make the boat as perfect as possible, measure it in, get it prepared for world championship, whatever the case may be.
So I think that kind of came naturally was being collaborative, putting together a team, allowing that team to do their thing and succeed, but at the same time, put people around you with certain specialties that fill in for the ones that you know don't have.
So kids, you got to go to school, and you got to learn something other than how to pull a sheet in on a jib because no big program these days is going to take somebody that doesn't have a secondary specialty. And it could be something as simple as rope work or sailmaking—a vocation. It could be carbon fiber specialist, it could be electrician.
For sure, engineering is a huge part of modern day sailing because as these boats become so much more advanced, the engineering side of it—and understanding the engineering side of it—is just crazy important.
And so, you have to have a specialty besides being able to make a boat go fast. And the second thing is, I feel blessed that I had this dual life and that is a businessman as well as a sailboat racer.
And I understand that I had a pretty special, unique series of events and a special boss in Tom Whidden who kind of pushed me to do this and a special partner and Dan Neri, who realized that the better I did in sailing, the more sails we were going to sell way back when in the Shore Sails days.
But I see people in their fifties and sixties now holding on to professional sailing and they don't have a secondary life that is going to come easy to them. And I always did, I always have. I didn't have to rely on a day rate. I could go to work and work hard and try to improve an amazing brand like North Sails, as well as go out and get my fix in the sailboat-racing world and hopefully organize a program that was successful.
So, if I were a young sailor, I'd be considering that kind of dual-life relationship.
And I think it's also easier on family life because I really feel for a lot of pro sailors, who in essence, it's kind of a contradiction at home: You're either home and with the family and not making money or out sailing away from the family and making money. And I think that gets tiring sooner or later. We've all been there.
And so that considering that dual purpose to your life, a professional side as well as a racing professional side, I think is a potential successful outcome for a lot of people.
Is there anything else that you'd like to add, for the record?
First of all, the Hall of Fame was wildly humbling and just exceptionally cool for my whole family to be a part of. And not just me. Having my 91-year-old father there just made it an unbelievable day.
But I did a lot of homework and I've never taken a speech so seriously, because I knew it would be watched and listened to by a lot of people, and hopefully it does.
And I started the speech by saying I didn't think that a Hall of Fame speech was about the Hall of Famer. I thought it was much more about the people that allowed the Hall of Famer to get to where they were. And I mean that with all of my heart.
So, with that said, I've been so fortunate to have unbelievable people to rely on, to befriend, to work with, to laugh with, to cry with, over these years that it had to lead to success and to see where some of those people have gotten to after doing programs with us and things like that—it's just nothing could make me happier.
And to say thank-you to a bunch of people who helped build the base and get a career moving— the list is so long. It's unbelievable. So anyway, I'd love to think that this was my doing, but I know for sure the fact is that this is a lot of other people's doing and I happen to be the end result, the end product.
So anyway, thank you, thank you, thank you to all involved. You know who you are.