Rich Roberts Notes

"Same old boat."

(son Brian but not Betty Sue Sherman)

"She usually prefers to go on one of the faster boats. Cadenza is sort of a lumbering old dog, a 20,000-pound boat with a short waterline. But it's a nice boat."

MARK REYNOLDS…

(Eichenlaub)

"The first time I remember I went sailing when I was 3 or 4 years old was in a Sabot that Carl had just built for my dad. I used to hang out at the boat yard when I was a kid, and later when I was trying to decide what to do . . . I wanted to be either a boat builder or a sailmaker. I used to build little boats and do a lot of woodworking and rigging. A lot of that stuff I learned by hanging around Carl's yard."

"He's a storyteller when you get him going."

(broken hip in Sydney)

"He said he tripped over a woman Bulgarian weightlifter. The next morning he was all skinned up and couldn't walk, but he wanted to get down there because he had some welding to do on Pease's trapeze harness and everybody was assuring him that she'd be fine."

"The doctors came and carried him off. They suspected something was broken, but he doesn't worry too much about that stuff. He was just worried making sure everybody was all set."

(went from New Orleans to Sydney for Paralympics)

"He was saying that by being on the crutches he was trying to fit in better with his new teammates."

ROBBIE…

"I remember crewing for Carl in the 1972 Olympic trials in San Francisco in the Soling. We were going really fast upwind and he said, 'Let's make sure to weld the turnbuckles when he get in' – meaning, keep everything adjusted the same way. I've never forgotten that."

("Any slob can sail an Eichenlaub")

"There was a company called Eichenlaub Boat Company back in Ohio that used that slogan."

"We were together in 1976 on the Olympic team. That was his first year as the boatwright.

"He's a real craftsman, and he has a very witty personality. He used to play a bassoon in the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. He's not the most tidy guy in the world. His pants are usually halfway down. It's not important to Carl, looking nice. He's one of a kind."

"I remember asking him once, 'Is so-and-so a good sailor," and his response was, 'Well, he's not as good as you and me, but he's good.' "

(run over by SUV two years ago)

JJ ISLER…

"He always fixes boats for sailors of other nationalities, as well. He spreads goodwill for our team by being willing to fix anything for anybody. I remember in Barcelona, the Argentine women's team had been in a really bad collision a couple of days before the Games. Carl stayed up all night not only fixing their boat but he'd taken time to march the gelcoat perfectly. You couldn't even tell there had been a collision. He goes that extra step to make sure you're able to put it out of your mind and see your boat as perfect."

(how young when you knew him)

"My brother Trevor worked one summer for him sweeping floors and doing maintenance work around the yard."

(doesn’t fit yachtie profile)

"Which is great. I remember when my dad owned Kettenberg's all the boatyard owners were having a meeting and my dad had asked his secretary to organize some snacks and stuff. She put all the hors d'oeuvres out, then came running in saying, 'A homeless guy wandered in off the street and he's eating all the hors d'oeuvres!' I walked in and it was Carl."

PEASE GLASER…

(Eichenlaub)

"'86 was the first time I went to a regatta with him."

(herreschoff award)

"He is truly deserving. He's given a ton of time to the sport. He is incredibly respected by the sailors."

"The first regatta I met him was the Goodwill Games [in Russia]. They'd decided that the women's teams would sail Tallinn-built 470s instead of our own boats that we'd brought. so we got this Russian-built boat a day or two before the regatta started and Carl helped us totally re-rig the whole thing. The boats weren't very well built, so every day when we got in Carl would have to drill the gudgeons out where the fiberglass kept cracking. The last day of the regatta when we got in Carl asked, 'How'd it go?' We said, 'We got a medal,' and he said, 'Well, it's a good thing it's over because that's the biggest bolt I had.' "

(at Sydney)

"I wasn't with him that evening. I guess he got run over getting on the bus by some Belorussian weightlifters or somebody. They wanted him to stay laid up for a few days, but he stayed home only one day and went right back down to the container. There was a lot of commuting on crutches for him."

CARL EICHENLAUB….(11-00) …70….bassoon

Carl Eichenlaub (San Diego, Calif.) will be the recipient of the 2000 Nathanael G. Herreshoff Trophy. The award, US Sailing's most prestigious, is bestowed annually to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the sport of sailing in this country in any associated activity. US SAILING President James Muldoon (Washington, D.C.) made the announcement earlier today at the organization's Annual General Meeting, which is being held October 12-15 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The award presentation will take place at a banquet Saturday evening, October 14, at the World Trade Center's Plimsoll Club.

Eichenlaub has been a mainstay of the U.S. Olympic Sailing program for over twenty years. In 1979 he accompanied the Team attending the Pan Am Games as the official boatwright, a position he has held with five subsequent Pan Am Games Teams, two Goodwill Games Teams and six Olympic Teams. With an ability to fix boats that has become legendary, Eichenlaub now travels to each event with a specially outfitted 40' container that holds, among other things, a swedging machine, drill press, compressors, as well as a microwave for curing resin. The 70 year-young Eichenlaub, who seldom sits around with nothing to do, is frequently approached by foreign athletes with damaged equipment and seldom refuses a request for assistance once his work for the U.S. team is complete. His dedication to our sailors is unfailing and never more apparent than now -- Eichenlaub suffered a broken hip at the Athlete's Village during the Olympic Games yet maintained his duties while on crutches. Following a week of R&R at home he will return to Australia to assist the 2000 Paralympic Sailing Team during their competition scheduled for October 20-27 in Sydney. The owner/operator of Eichenlaub Marine can be found playing with a local symphony when not messing about with boats.

"I think it's amazing that they chose me."

(Olympics since '76)

"I had been a Star boat builder and Dick Stearns was the team leader, and he had been a Star boat champion. He called me up and told me they had opened up a new position on the Olympic team for, uh, the likes of me. A friend had told me that if I ever got a chance to go as part of the team to do it, for sure do it. Well, I had such a good time and wound up contributing that they've asked me back every time since."

"They've asked me to do it for Athens, too. I've gladly accepted." (although … I pointed out to 'em I'd be 74."

(not money)

"You don't get any money."

(Eichenlaub Marine …. "I've chopped it up into nine individual small businesses. I used to be a shipbuilding tycoon and now I'm a land baron." (leases out shops)

"I sort of wander around and help out where needed . . . a little welding, a little crane work for the riggers."

(helps foreigners, too)

"I have helped sailors from number of countries get out of a mess from time to time."

(crash on Rosecrans…. "Just before I went to the Pan American Games. I broke my left shoulder."

(Sydney… 5 days before sailing ended)

"I did trip over a big stout lady. I don't know if she was Bulgarian or a weightlifter. She couldn't speak English, whatever she was.

"There was a big crowd of people at the dining hall all trying to get on this bus. I tripped over her when she cut in front of me on this asphalt incline. It was a minor fall. I can't believe it did that much damage, but I suppose when you get a little older things break easier."

(right hip… "just a fracture. A small fracture."

(back to New Orleans on crutches… flew back through L.A. 2-hour layover then to Sydney)

"I was busy from the time the wheels touched the ground until the regatta was over. There was a big problem waiting for me. A Sonar had cracks around leading edges of the keel radiating up toward the mast area. I had to get in there and put in a floor timber and repair the cracks. Nothing out of the ordinary."

(crutches… fit right in at Paralympics)

"We were joking that we had only two able-bodied people on our team, and one of those was a woman, Betsy Alison, and Serge Jorgensen. The rest of us were either on crutches or in wheelchairs. It wasn't a lot of fun, in our conditions, to pack the containers to come home."

(any slob can win in an Eichenlaub)

"The way I heard it, it got started in Havana, Cuba the first time Lowell [North] won the Star worlds in one of our boats."

(live in SD all life

(north)

"He's probably the best brain in the sailing world. He has done so many innovative things it'd blow your mind. He was an immense help doing the star boat design for us until I learned to do it myself. The thing about Lowell, on any given subject on a sailboat he has about a million ideas. If you're smart enough to figure out which ones are good, you'll be terrific. When he gets a boat the first thing he does is take a drill and moves everything until he finds the right place. Then nobody beats him."

(Conner)

"Dennis is another brain. He started crewing for me when he was a kid. It wasn't very long until I figured out that he knew a hell of a lot more than I would ever know. You'd like to say he's a natural talent, but he's really smart at figuring things out. He can figure time and distance better than anybody ,mI've ever been with. If you sail with him you realize that none of this is by accident or a fluke or he had a better boat. He is really better than 'most anybody."

(mark Reynolds)

"Mark Reynolds fits right in with those guys. I was closer with his dad, Jim. He sailed with Dennis. Everybody sailed with Dennis. His dad and I were very good friends. It was fun watching Mark grow up and be able to do all these things. Growing up in that environment is one of the things that made it work."

(Cadenza… built in '88…

"I'm going to try to hop up the old one. It's supposedly a Nelson/Marek 45. I reality, it's 45 feet 10 inches long, last time I measured it. It's a nice boat, I like the boat."