every week, there are important regattas that take place across the United States, with competitors all sharing the same goal: namely, to win. To be successful on the water takes a lot of work and the type of knowledge that comes only from experience. As it relates to improving, top sailors are always quick to say that their defeats are as helpful as their victories. This is a common thread that runs through the weave of the National Sailing Hall of Fame, which will induct another class this fall.
Two inductees among the Hall of Fame’s incoming class are Greg Fisher and Ken Read, both of whom have enjoyed similar career paths and impressive results over the past four decades, but they have done so each in their own unique way. These two professional sailors are certainly two of America’s best, and now that they’re in their 60s, they both spend more time helping others achieve their goals rather than chasing their own victories.
Read grew up racing in New England, while Fisher honed his unique skills on what he describes as a “dinky pond” in Ohio. Read was a three-time All-American sailor at Boston University and was named Intercollegiate Sailor of the Year in 1982. Fisher was an All-American sailor at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1975. Read has won world championships in the 12-Metre, Etchells and J/24 classes. Fisher has won 25 North American or national championships in seven different classes. Later in their careers, Read went on to skipper in two America’s Cup campaigns and two Volvo Ocean Races, and Fisher elevated the College of Charleston’s sailing team into a national powerhouse. And today, both are in the sailmaking business.
Interestingly, both sailors got their professional start working for Shore Sails. Read says that he is grateful to its founder, Bill Shore, for giving him a job and helping him to become a better sailor. “I crewed for Bill when we won the Lightning North Americans on Lake Ray Hubbard near Dallas,” Read says. “He got up at the trophy ceremony and said, ‘None of you people know who this kid is, but you’re going to hear about him.’ It was one of the nicest things anybody ever said about me. He was a master at boats; he was intense; and he taught me the details about boats and getting the most of it.”
Fisher echoes Read’s comments about Shore: “Bill’s done a lot for a lot of people in the sport. I came through his program after college. It was great to be around people like that.”
For Fisher, the specifics of what makes a winning sailor should come as no surprise. “It starts with speed,” he tells me directly, rolling into his well-oiled coaching speech. “You’ve got to practice and work on getting the boat to sail fast. You need the right equipment that makes the boat easy to sail. If you’re confident in your speed, you can come off the middle of the starting line and get to the first shift. When I coached at the College of Charleston, I had the sailors spend time speed testing and experimenting with sail trim, weight placement, and steering. They improved their technique even though the dinghies were simple one-designs.”
As the president of North Sails, Read spends a lot of time these days racing with maxis and superyachts, which is a delicate balance of delivering results while ensuring an enjoyable experience for the owner. “It’s not easy,” he says. “There are plenty of times I’m not very good at it. I can be a little edgy striving for perfection. I hold myself to a standard as close to perfection as you can. I’m often not even close. I try to get the best people and put them in the best spots to be successful. You put the right people in the room, and now you’re the dumbest person in the room, and you let them work and trust their abilities to thrive.”
Like many of the greats of the sport before them, Fisher and Read have plenty of stories of soaring victories and disappointing defeats. For Read, there are two events that stand out among his most satisfying wins. “I made multiple attempts to win the J/24 Worlds, but I was too brash and young to know how to win at that stage,” he shares. “A few years later, we were racing in Japan and won. It was a big moment in my sailing career to realize I could win a big one.”
His greatest disappointment: dismasting in the South Atlantic in 2011 during the Volvo Ocean Race. When the mast broke on Puma Ocean Racing’s Mar Mostro, they limped to the remote island of Tristan da Cunha. “Talk about your dreams crashing down,” he says. “We had a good team that stayed together. We got ourselves back into the hunt.”
One of Read’s most notable performances came in the 2003 Etchells World Championship, which had a fleet of 93 boats competing in an eight-race series off Greenwich, Connecticut. Read and his crew, Scott Norris and Karl Anderson, opened with a second and then won six of the next seven races to win the title. Read remembers it well: “The starting line was three-quarters of a mile long. There was a midline race-committee boat. We started just to windward of the midline committee boat and had clear air off the line. After three races, [1998 Etchells World Champion] Dirk Knuelman came up to me at a beer party and said, ‘I know what you are doing.’ So, we battled Dirk for position.”
Running a racing campaign these days is very much like running a business, he says. And he would know, through his involvement with the big record-breaker Comanche, the J Class sloop Hanuman, and the 12 Meter Challenge XII, which won the 2019 International 12-Metre Class World Championship. “The structure starts with funding, finding the right people, being an operations manager,” he says, “filling holes with competent people, and not micromanaging them to death.”
Fisher, who always had a reputation of being a great starter, suggests being conservative early in a regatta. “I avoid the pileup at the pin end of the line or the stack at the windward end,” he says. “I try to sail in clear air. Even a little bit of clear air is good. Be careful about putting your boat in a risky position that you can’t get out of.”
Fisher wrote a book with Dr. Thomas Hubble, past president of US Sailing and a veteran Thistle sailor. In the excellent book, the authors say that a boat’s speed is “paramount” and that a conservative tactical philosophy will prevail. “Tactically, decisions now are a little easier with new electronics and technology,” he says, “which makes getting good speed even more important.”
While the bulk of Read’s professional sailing career was primarily in keelboats, Fisher has been a master in the sport’s enduring one-design centerboard classes, including, Snipes, Y Flyers, Thistles (five-time national champ), Flying Scots (seven-time national champ), the Johnson 18 class and Highlanders (four-time national champ). Fisher’s keelboat racing has been in the J/22 class. The 2010 J/22 North American Championship stands out as a special victory for him. “My wife, JoAnn, was on the boat along with my oldest daughter, Martha,” he says. “This was just before I went to coach at the College of Charleston.”
During his tenure at Charleston, by the way, his team won the Intercollegiate National Championship in 2017.
While both sailors started their professional careers at Shore Sailmakers and years later worked together at North Sails, Read leads North Sails from his office in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and Fisher is putting his decades of experience to work with Evolution Sails based in Charleston, South Carolina. Being a sailmaker keeps both superstars on the water helping clients improve their skills and making their boats fast. Any young person considering a career in the marine industry can learn from the arc of these two dedicated champions who push themselves hard and are happiest when they are on the water racing in any form.
