Bob Foulds

The first time I went sailing was in 1977, when I joined the University of Washington sailing club. We sailed C-Lark's, Kite's, and Laser's. The year before, my brother (Tom) met Bill Stange in the dorm (Lander Hall), at the U of W. They started sailing, and went on several races. In 1978, Bill borrowed a Person 10 meter (named Rapture), and Bill, Tom, and several others from the 4th floor Lander hall went on the Straight of Georgia race. During the course of the race they managed to break almost everything on the boat. When they arrived back at Shilshole, my brother called me on the phone, and told me to come to Shilshole, and see if I could fix the motor on Rapture. So I asked him, "How do I get to Shilshole?" They agreed that they would take me sailing if I fixed the motor. After about five minutes I fixed the motor, so they had to take me sailing. It was blowing about 20 knots that night, and the main sail for Rapture was in the shop. So we put on our safety harnesses, raised the jib, and went sailing in the dark. One problem we had was the lanyard for my safety harness was missing, so we used a jib sheet. Since it was way too long we wrapped it around myself a dozen or so times.

After that I started sailing on Protanto with Bill, Tom, Bill's father, etc. We did almost every race that was available. A few year later we were at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club and we saw a poster on the wall for the San Francisco to Kauai Race in 1980. As soon as we saw the poster we knew that we had to do the race. At the time we were all in college. Our grades all suffered in the spring of 1980 as we prepared the boat for the race. We did the race, and finished first in our class, and sixth overall. It took us 17 days, 5 hours, 12 minutes, and 11 seconds. See article for more race details, and course for a chart of our course.

In about 1984 Bill and myself purchased a San Juan 24 (named Double Trouble). We did every San Juan 24 race there was, and in 1986 we won the San Juan 24 North Americans. When we purchased the boat it had a lot of very old sails. So, shortly after we bought the boat we purchased all of the sail from another San Juan 24 (named New Wave). So now we had good sails, and a lot of old sails. One Tuesday in about 1985, we were getting ready to take the boat to Lake Union for a Duck Dodge. We figured that we needed to be able to go a little faster, so we took two of our old spinnakers, and taped them together. The tape held for that race and we won that Duck Dodge. We still wanted to go a little faster, so we sewed the two spinnakers together, then we cut the whole thing in half horizontally, and then added about 6 more feet vertically. This worked really well, except in light air. In light air it would drag in the water, and we couldn't see where we were going. We would have to yell ahead to see if we were going to run into any other boats.

After we sold Double Trouble, Bill purchased an Olson 30 (Intense). We took Intense on a Duck Dodge, but we didn't think it was quite fast enough. So we borrowed a spinnaker from Tim (Airloom). Then we took a mast from a 14 foot dingy, and raised it to the masthead of Intense. We used a 2x4 for spreaders at the masthead of the Olson 30, and we raised Tim's spinnaker on a Duck Dodge. Well, about a minute after we raised it, the temporary backstay for the topmast broke, and it all came tumbling down.

After about a 10 year break from sailing I started sailing on Airloom (the mean green eight knot machine).

Now when I am not sailing I am spending most of my time building a vacation cabin on Lake Cushman. See www.bobslittlecabin.com.