Here is a thing I did not know until this week, and now I cannot stop telling people. The sailboat that won the America's Cup back for the United States was built in Mamaroneck. Not designed here, not named here. Built here, on the harbor, by people who drove home to Westchester at the end of the shift.
The Yard on the Harbor
Bob Derecktor opened Robert E. Derecktor Inc. in Mamaroneck in 1947, right after the war. The oldest photo of the place shows a low storefront with ROBERT E. DERECKTOR INC. YACHT BUILDER painted across the front and a couple of fat postwar cars parked at the curb. He started small. A few workers, wooden sailing yachts, built by hand. By the 1960s and 1970s the yard had a national reputation for racing boats, and it had moved into aluminum, which let it build much bigger things. The yard has since launched more than two hundred and fifty boats. It still builds today, and it now turns out pilot boats and wind farm support vessels alongside the yachts.
Then America Lost the Cup
For 132 years the New York Yacht Club never lost the America's Cup. It was the longest winning streak in sports. That ended in September 1983 off Newport, Rhode Island. Australia II beat the American defender Liberty, and it did so from behind, down one race to three before winning three straight to take the Cup 4-3. The Australians sailed with a secret weapon. Their keel had wings, a shape tested quietly in the Netherlands, and the hull itself stayed wrapped in canvas at the dock with an armed guard standing watch so no one could copy it. The New York Yacht Club even challenged whether the keel was legal. It was. Australia II went home to Fremantle with the trophy, and the boat still hangs in the Western Australian Maritime Museum with that keel on display.
So Derecktor Built Conner a Boat
The skipper who lost that match was Dennis Conner. He wanted it back. His group, the Sail America Foundation, went to Mamaroneck. In 1986 Derecktor delivered a 12 metre designed by David Pedrick, Britton Chance Jr. and Bruce Nelson, and named it Stars and Stripes 87. The yard built the entire boat in 86 days. It was built in aluminum and shaped for the heavy wind and big seas of Gage Roads off the Western Australian coast, which is exactly where it was headed. Bob Derecktor's own son, Paul, worked on the hull himself, on the lighter, stiffer construction that went into this boat.
And It Won It Back
The match ran from January 31 to February 4, 1987. Stars and Stripes 87 beat Kookaburra III, sailed by Iain Murray, in four straight races. Conner became the first person ever to lose the America's Cup and then win it back. Five days later he was in the East Room of the White House with the trophy in his hands and his whole crew behind him in blue blazers. Stars and Stripes 87 was the last 12 metre ever to win the America's Cup. That Mamaroneck boat closed out an entire era of the sport.
The yard is still open, and it is still family run. Paul Derecktor, the son who helped build the hull that won it back, runs the company today. Same harbor, same name on the sign, seventy nine years in. Next time you are on Boston Post Road in Mamaroneck and you catch a glimpse of the masts, that is the place.
Photos courtesy of Derecktor Shipyards, the White House Photographic Office, Nino Eugene La Pia and kenhodge13.
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