THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 1, 1994 TAG: 9409010034
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRED KIRSCH, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 180 lines
WHEN THE REV. TED Brothers thinks about how he'd like to depart this earthly life, he sees a beautiful day, wind about 10 to 15 knots out on the Chesapeake Bay.
``They put my body in a Hampton-One design, just like they used to put the old Vikings on their boats. Then they set it on fire and let out the sail. Now wouldn't that be some way to go?''
For Brothers, a former Gloucester resident and now a pastor in Lake George, N.Y., this weekend will be the next best thing to going to heaven in a Hampton-One design: the Norfolk Yacht and Country Club's 50th annual sailing regatta and the Governor's Cup race for the state championship for Hampton-Ones.
There will be some 30 of the storied Hampton-Ones, their skippers hanging over the sides off those sleek 18-footers, water rising over the hulls, out there on the Elizabeth River.
Oh sure, there'll be other classes out there for the two-day regatta. Mobjacks, 505s, Lasers, Flying Scots, Optimists, Flying Juniors and Sunfishes.
But for guys like Brothers and Teddy Willcox and Charlie McCoy, there's only one boat, really. Always has been. Always will be.
``There's such a tradition and history to them,'' says Willcox, a 66-year-old Norfolk attorney. ``In a way, it's sort of like sailing into yesterday.''
Brothers first started sailing Hampton-Ones back in 1943, not many years after they were first being spotted on the Chesapeake Bay. Willcox will be sailing in his 38th Governor's Cup, and this is McCoy's 34th.
McCoy, a 57-year-old accountant, has seven boats at his Norfolk house, which sits on the Elizabeth River.
There's the big 36-foot Trojan powerboat down at the dock. And there's a 14-foot Wahoo and a Laser in the back yard. And a ``runabout'' and a few others here and there.
``Where's the Hampton-One?'' asks Charlie, his voice taking on an incredulous tone. ``You don't keep a Hampton-One outside.''
He takes you into the garage. Actually, it's not a garage at all. At least not for cars. The cars have to sit in the driveway.
And there it is. Eighteen feet. Classic lines. V-bottom. Red hull and natural wood combings gleaming.
One of only 703 ever made.
There were nearly 50 of them, just like Charlie McCoy's, jockeying for position, all trying to hit the starting line at the exact perfect moment at the first regatta.
It was 1945. The war, for all intents and purposes, was over. The shore was lined with folks in their blazers and shirts and ties. A big band was playing out on the lawn. And everyone who was anybody - or knew anybody - was there to see Gov. Colgate H. Darden give out the 3 1/2-foot sterling silver cup that cost the club more than $500.
The cup, which is permanently housed at the club, costs about $30,000 these days, and the newer Hampton-Ones are made of fiberglass. And the Hampton-One is no longer, as one old sailor called it, ``the fastest damn thing on the water.''
But, in some ways, things at the regatta haven't changed much at all for Hampton-One skippers and their one-man crew. Especially when it comes to the competition between ``the Norfolk boys'' and the other Chesapeake Bay yacht club boys.
``It's pure sailing,'' says McCoy, who has won the Governor's Cup six times and has been a three-time national champion. ``You can control things a lot more than in a larger boat, and it's a lot more fun.
``There's just two of you in the boat. If the wind is really whipping, you better know what you're doing or you won't be sailing for very long. You'll be swimming.''
McCoy, who crewed on a boat in the scow class at the second Norfolk Yacht and Country Club Regatta when he was all of 8 years old, fell in love with Hampton-Ones when he was in high school and knew he ``had to have one.''
He bought his Hampton-One in 1960 for $900. It had been built in 1947 - No. 514. Brothers had boat No. 153 before he sold it in the 1960s to current owner Hal Todd of Richmond, whom he'll crew for this weekend.
The legendary No. 1, which was restored in 1981 through the efforts of Ed Wolcott of Norfolk and is on display at the Mariners' Museum, was built in 1934.
``Some fellows in the Hampton Yacht Club came to me and asked me to build a boat for racing,'' says Vincent Serio in ``The Best on the Bay,'' the definitive book on Hampton-Ones.
``A fine idea, I said to myself, I'll build such a boat, and at the same time build a nice boat for easy sailing too. Why have it just for racing? I built a nice boat for everybody.''
Especially for those who wanted to race on the Chesapeake. The first race of Hampton-Ones, with seven boats, took place July 4, 1935.
``It was the perfect boat for the shoal waters of the Chesapeake,'' says Brothers. ``You could raise the centerboard and sail in almost no water, or you could draw up to 3 feet with the board down.''
Almost from the start, the Hampton-One inspired sailboat enthusiasts to poetry.
`She was
a wooden boat
with a wooden mast;
her wooden deck
was topped with canvas, drawn
as tight as skin.
Her mast, carved from a
straight, small tree,
exaggerated the slight roll
the tug had sent in.
All her fittings
shone in the early light.
She was a jewel, a treasure,
the delight of a proud man's heart.
It was a boat, as one Hampton-One lover says, ``you could get passionate about.
``Why, I know of at least two fellows whose wives didn't like the boat and didn't want to sail in it. So, they had no choice but to get a divorce.''
By the mid-'40s, hundreds of Hampton-Ones were in Tidewater, and it was time to see who was the fastest - one of the Norfolk boys or one of the Hampton Yacht Club boys.
So, the Norfolk Yacht and Country Club established a regatta with Hampton-Ones as the centerpiece.
Through the '60s, the regatta was the event in Norfolk for many. And Hampton-Ones ruled the bay. But gradually production slowed down on the Hampton-Ones, and the Governor's Cup race grew smaller.
In the 47 years since McCoy's No. 514 was built, only 189 - four a year - were built.
The advent of bigger, faster boats and small, affordable one-man fiberglass jobs was part of the reason. And the other was the old guys like McCoy, Ed Wolcott and Robert Harrell, who has won the Cup a record seven times, were so good, no one could beat them.
But in the last decade, a new generation of sailboater has fallen in love with the Hampton-One, just like the ``old guys'' did in the '40s and '50s. This year's Governor's Cup race is the biggest in years and includes such young guys as Scott Wolff, Kevin Hanna and 17-year-old T. Brockenbrough.
Brockenbrough, the youngest active Hampton-One skipper on the Bay, sails the oldest active Hampton-One around. No. 313.
``It was always regarded as an old guy's boat,'' says Hanna, 26, assistant sailing coach at Christopher Newport University, who will be at the helm of No. 693 this weekend.
``I sailed Flying Juniors and 420s mostly in college. First time I raced a Hampton-One, those guys beat me. But I was hooked with the whole tradition of them. After that, I knew I wanted one.''
So did Brockenbrough, a senior at Norfolk Academy.
``Some of my folks friends had them, and my folks are old as dirt,'' says T. ``I knocked around in Lasers and stuff like that. But I saw the Hampton at a regatta and said, `Wow, that's a classy boat.''
Brockenbrough, who finished seventh in the recent nationals, looked and looked and finally found an old Hampton-One in a barn in Maryland and spent the past year restoring it.
``I don't think it had been sailed in 25 years,'' he says. ``This is really going to be a special day.''
But perhaps it's going to be most special for Ted Brothers, who is coming down from upstate New York to sail in his first Governor's Cup race.
``I moved away without ever being in the race,'' he says. ``It's something I've wanted to do all these years. And to be in my old boat after all these years is going to be a thrill.''
One of these days, Brothers is going to be in his new boat. He's been building a Hampton-One in his garage the last two years.
``You can take the boy out of the Hampton-One,'' he says. ``But you can't take the Hampton-One out of the boy.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI/Staff
T. Brockenbrough, left and Charlie McCoy sit in Brockenbrough's
boat, the Expresso. Both men will compete in the Governor's Cup.
McCoy is the defending champion.
Photo
Some 30 Hampton-Ones will be at this weekend's Governor's Cup at the
Norfolk Yacht and Country Club.
by CNB