You learn about a boat quickly when the wind blows above 15 knots, and that’s what happened in St Maarten over four days when several of us had our first sail aboard Dorade. But even before absorbing the dozens of sailing lessons the 82-year-old yawl had to teach us, we quickly discovered that we’d first have to get used to sharing this classic Sparkman & Stephens design every step of the way with the paparazzi.




Dorade reaching

Balanced nicely, Dorade reaches at 9-knots-plus in the Anguilla Channel - photo JAH




Maybe it’s not quite the same as dating Marilyn Monroe, but from the moment we tied up at the St Maarten Yacht Club dock before the 32nd Heineken Regatta, all cameras were trained on our slender 52-foot starlet. As dusk fell, ESPN’s Jo Ankier came down the dock with her crew to interview owner Matt Brooks and skipper Jamie Hilton under the lights on Dorade’s gleaming foredeck. The next day, Friday, Matt and his wife Pam Rorke Levy gave more interviews at the regatta press conference, one of which can be seen on the


&list=UU9o65Rriuj3lDOVJsqPd9rw&index=15&feature=plpp_video" target="_blank">Heineken Regatta YouTube channel.



Jo Ankier interviews Dorade owner

On the eve of the Heineken Regatta, ESPN's Jo Ankier interviews Dorade owner Matt Brooks and skipper Jamie Hilton (right)




After Saturday’s race, while we anchored off Marigot, a camera crew from Martinique motored alongside and shot a short interview on the boat’s history with Greg Stewart, a naval architect in our crew who has worked on technical aspects of the restoration. The crew then stayed aboard for half an hour filming close-ups of Dorade’s immaculate brightwork, her six-foot tiller, skylights, and new Sitka spruce masts.


Dorade upwind

With one reef tucked in the mainsail, Dorade still heels over easily (the camera, mounted on the lower shroud, magnifies the effect)




Finally, at the regatta’s close, there were Jamie, Matt and Pam on camera again with Jo Ankier, discussing the silverware Dorade had just won for us. But it didn’t end there: we were also waylaid at the post-race party by crews from other boats who pulled out their cameras to show off their own snapshots of Dorade as we had sailed nearby them.

While Dorade was looking good all weekend, she taught us plenty of other lessons. We learned how to handle the loads on the halyards, sheets, topping lifts, and running backstays, which tend to multiply on a boat rigged with two masts that can reach with five white sails flying at the same time. We got the hang of reefing and un-reefing the main quickly. We discovered where some re-rigging or beefing up might be required, such as the base for the mizzen sheet winch, which came off the mast with winch and winch handle in my hands at one point.

Dorade remounting mizzen sheet winch

Greg Stewart remounts the sheet winch for the mizzen



We made some mistakes that we might have got away with in lighter winds, such as leading sheets improperly, or worse, dropping one under the boat with the engine running and fouling it in the prop. (Luckily, this was before our start, and after a relatively quick swim, Jamie cleared it without resorting to his knife.)

Equally important, using four helmsmen and several sail combinations, we collectively began to develop a record of how fast the boat can sail in big waves or small, puffy or steady winds. (More on this in a future post, after we’ve captured a second regatta’s worth of notes.)

Perhaps the number one lesson we picked up was that if we sailed her reasonably well, Dorade will still perform against a younger crowd. But like Marilyn, she has her moods, and most of them can be traced to what she’s wearing and how smoothly her entourage keeps her on the straight and narrow.

In one race, when I was steering on a reach, I was rewarded with nothing but smiles as her helm was light and we tore across Anguilla Channel at a steady 9 to 9.5 knots, topping out at 10. But later, as we beat along the island to finish at Simpson Bay, she was none too happy when I steered too fine a course in a lull or too deep a course in a puff. In the lulls, she’d slow down to 5.5 knots and challenge me to build back up to 6.75-plus. In the puffs (up to 25 knots or more), she would often put her bow down and charge ahead at 7.5 knots, but heeling over hard, she’d carry a river of white water down her rail and slide to leeward. Hopefully, with practice, I’ll find the groove more often.



To get a sense of what it looks like onboard, we shot a simple video during one race (“