The Storied Legacy of Shorthanded Around-the-World Sailing Based in Maine
03/06/2025 08:58 PM
"There are some heavy hitters here," said Ed McCoy, my friend and frequent sailing partner.
"Agreed," I replied. Since arriving about 30 minutes earlier at the backyard barbecue in Falmouth, Maine, just north of Portland, I had reconnected with an old friend and two-time Vendée Globe veteran, discussed emergency composite repair with a Class40 round-the-world racer, and listened in on a discussion about rounding Cape Horn in heavy weather. "I think only in Portland, Maine, and somewhere in France does a house party like this even exist," I added.
My first arrival in Portland had been a year ago to pick up an old Open 50 called Sparrow and begin preparing for the Global Solo Challenge—a solo, nonstop, around-the-world race. I'd known about Maine's reputation for unparalleled sailing and cruising; with more than 4,000 islands and a coastline longer than California's, Maine is profoundly connected to the water. Whether heading offshore, hauling lobster traps, or commuting to a neighboring island, living in Maine and spending time on a boat tend to go hand in hand.
I also knew Maine's boatbuilding reputation. Legendary marques like Hinckley, Lyman-Morse, Morris Yachts, and the well known Landing School all call Maine home. So does an adventurous, free-thinking, and entrepreneurial population with a can-do spirit. Unsurprisingly, Maine has become a state of expert boatbuilders and equally skilled mariners—the New Zealand of America, if you will.
What I didn't know but quickly discovered is that Maine has also become the beating heart of American shorthanded ocean racing. As the finish of the Class40 Atlantic Cup and home base of every successful American campaign to finish the Vendée Globe, Maine—and specifically Portland—has become a major hub on the small but dedicated American shorthanded offshore sailing scene. A place that tends to scoop up round-the-world racing sailors and claim them as its own, it has a culture and passion for shorthanded ocean racing that is real and runs deep.
How it got that way is a story not just of place, but of sailing legends.
"Dodge Morgan set the tone here and set out on his record-breaking around-the-world sail here back in the '80s," says Maine Yacht Center General Manager Brian Harris. Morgan in 1986 became the first American to sail solo nonstop around the world, setting a new record of 150 days. While Morgan officially started and finished in Bermuda and sailed via the three Great Capes, he had originally departed from Portland. After finishing, he lived in Maine until he died in 2010. His Ted Hood-designed 60-footer, American Promise, today sails the Gulf of Maine as the flagship research vessel for the Rozalia Project.
"But there's the history of Walter Greene too," Harris adds. "He was a true pioneer of the multihull scene and became very, very famous both here and in France."
In the 1970s, solo ocean racing was in its infancy, and sailors were still grappling with which was faster across an ocean under sail: a multihull or a monohull. Maine-based multihull designer, builder, and sailor Walter Greene, who died last July at 80 years old, was one of the beautiful geniuses who helped collectively answer this defining question that would spark a revolution in yacht design.
During the inaugural Route du Rhum in 1978—a singlehanded race from Saint Malo, France, to Guadeloupe, sailed without class restrictions, size limits, nor division between monohulls and multihulls—36 intrepid sailors from around the world brought together the most impressive fleet of ocean racing hardware ever assembled at the time. In the end, however, it was a tiny plywood trimaran from Yarmouth, Maine, designed by Walter Greene, that stole the show.
After more than three weeks at sea, Canadian Mike Birch and his 31-foot Greene-designed trimaran Olympus Photo crossed the finish line just 98 seconds ahead of Frenchman Michel Malinovsky and his massive 70-foot monohull Kriter V. In a story that couldn't have been better scripted by the best minds in Hollywood, the stunning images of a small trimaran narrowly beating a huge monohull to win the inaugural Route du Rhum would effectively serve as the line of demarcation for the modern multihull movement.
Two years later, the 1980 OSTAR helped confirm that multihulls were the ticket to speeding across an ocean and that Greene's Maine builds were wicked fast. American Phil Weld would win the race on Moxie, a Dick Newick-designed trimaran built by Greene in Maine. Third-, fourth-, and fifth-place finishers sailed trimarans designed and built by Greene. When the modern singlehanded racing movement began, the fastest boats in the world weren't coming out of France or the UK; they were coming out of a shed in Yarmouth, Maine.
Around the same time that Greene was pioneering the modern multihull movement and cleaning up in the solo races, Portland native Phineas Sprague Jr. and his wife, Joanna, were wrapping up a four-year circumnavigation on a classic John Alden-designed schooner. Returning home and beginning the next chapter of their lives, the Spragues would go on to enter the marine industry with the founding of the Portland Ship Yard and Portland Yacht Services. A full-service boatyard that would eventually take on major projects up to and including new constructions and full restorations, PYS established itself as a major player on Portland's relatively small but bustling working waterfront.
As solo ocean racing continued its maturation and the newly created Vendée Globe became the most prestigious solo ocean race on earth, Portland would again find itself playing a key role.
"After finishing the 2002-03 Around Alone, I was trying to figure out where to go and how to do the preparation for the Vendée Globe," says Bruce Schwab. "I wound up in one of the Portland Yacht Services sheds for over a year…The support that Ocean Planet and I found was amazing, and I don't know how I would have made it to the start of the (2004) Vendée Globe without it. In the process of preparing Ocean Planet in Maine, I got to learn about the maritime and yachting history here. I had been unaware previously of how deep it was and of the ties to shorthanded ocean racing."
The following year, Schwab would go on to become the first American to finish the iconic Vendée Globe, the world's toughest and most prestigious solo offshore sailing race. Finishing in ninth place with a time of just under 110 days, Schwab became a national sailing hero and only added to Maine's rich shorthanded ocean racing legacy.
"After completing the Vendée, returning back to Maine became a homecoming for me," Schwab says. "The maritime and yachting economy in Maine was a much bigger thing relatively than it is in California, and so it seemed that it would be easier to get back on my financial feet here. Also, there was the logistics of what to do with the boat since sailing it out to California was not financially possible at that point…I suppose it took me a while to get my bearings after the Vendée, but in hindsight I was ready for a new beginning, and Maine was the place to do it."
He would fall back on his rigging skillsets to start a business in Maine before going on to found Ocean Planet Energy in Woolwich, just up the coast from Portland, which has established itself as an industry leader in marine batteries, electrical systems, charging systems, and renewable energy systems.
At the same time Schwab was returning to Maine to begin his next chapter, Brian Harris was also getting resettled in Portland after a decade of working on racing yachts in France and abroad.
"When I moved back to Maine, I was looking for a job and the Maine Yacht Center was in its final stages of being constructed, so I interviewed and got the job as general manager," he says. "When I started here, there was nothing. There were no pencils or chairs, nor customers, and so we had to kick-start the thing from scratch.
"I had worked for Emma Richards on her Pindar program during the Around Alone 2002/03, and as we were wrapping up that project, I met James Burwick. James had just purchased an Open 40 that had sailed in the race, and he needed a place to refit it. I told him, 'Hey, I just started this new job at this boatyard in Maine.' And so James was customer No. 1 at Maine Yacht Center. It wasn't a Pearson 26 as our first customer; it was a Finot-designed Open 40 preparing for another world tour! And that's when Will Rooks came to work for us. Will is an exceptionally talented composite boatbuilder, and we needed someone to join the team for the refit."
Rooks was also a member of the Ocean Planet project with Schwab and brought a high level of expertise to the fledgling operation. While Burwick and his growing family went on to complete a well documented lap of the planet on their Open 40 Anasazi Girl, their refit at Maine Yacht Center also marked the beginning of what would become a long and rich legacy of preparing racing yachts to sail solo around the world. As the business grew, the unique level of expertise housed within MYC grew as well. One by one, expert boatbuilders, electricians, technicians, and systems specialists joined the team. When American Rich Wilson set out to become just the second American to complete the Vendée Globe, he chose Maine Yacht Center to prepare his boat.
"When Rich showed up with Great American III, we did quite an extensive refit for the 2008 Vendée Globe, a race that was successfully completed," Harris says. Removing the keel, mast, rudders, and most onboard systems, the boat was meticulously prepared from stem to stern by what was now a formidable team of technical experts that called Portland and Maine Yacht Center home.
When the refit project was completed more than a year later, the boat had been modified and altered enough that it had to be recertified as a class-compliant IMOCA 60. Conducting stability and inversion tests normally completed at a small group of facilities in France or the UK, the team strengthened Portland's reputation as the place to refit a round-the-world racing yacht on American shores. When Wilson set out to sail the Vendée Globe a second time in the 2016 race, he again chose to refit his next IMOCA at Maine Yacht Center. And he again finished.
"Never in my wildest dreams did I think that any of this shorthanded racing stuff would follow me here; it never even occurred to me," Harris says. "But Portland is a welcoming place. It's got a great harbor and an enthusiastic sailing scene. There is an adventuresome spirit here in Maine, and the sailors find a local community outside of the boatyard that endears them to Maine.
"There's so few places to go really. In Europe, there's a lot of places, but here in the U.S.A., there's only a few places you can go that have the knowledge of working on these unique boats," he says.
During the mid to late 2000s, the introduction of the Class40 changed the shorthanded ocean racing world, and Portland would further cement its place as the capital of American shorthanded ocean racing. Harris and team knew that this new design would be more affordable than an IMOCA 60 but still possess the speed and abilities of a planing monohull, so they sought out Akilaria in France—a Class40 designed by the late, legendary French designer Marc Lombard.
"We started bringing over incomplete boats and finishing them up for final assembly as well as commissioning. As a result of that, it also attracted other people with Class40 interest. That's how we met Mike Hennessy and worked on both of his Dragon Racing Class 40s," Harris says. "We worked on other Akilarias and non-Akilaria boats as well. Over time, Portland and Maine Yacht Center became the default place to work on these boats in the U.S.A."
To this day, the Atlantic Cup—America's largest Class40 regatta—ends in Portland after racing from Charleston and then Newport. Bringing world class professional sailors from Europe and attracting some of the most cutting edge ocean racing hardware on earth, the Atlantic Cup is an important part of Portland's modern maritime heritage. During the recent Globe 40 doublehanded around the world race in Class40s, seven boats entered and five finished. Of those five finishers, three were prepared at Maine Yacht Center, including both American entries and the lone Canadian entry.
I arrived in Portland in August of 2022 to pick up Sparrow at Maine Yacht Center. A 1994 Open 50 designed by David Lyons, it had already raced in two BOC Challenges, and I had to prepare it to race in the Global Solo Challenge.
Having never been to Portland, the small seaside community quickly gained personal relevance the moment I decided to race solo around the world. A year after first picking up the boat and sailing down the East Coast and back, I returned to Maine Yacht Center to conduct my prerace refit. In the process, I fell in love with a local girl, and she even helped me find a local company, Shipyard Brewing, to become my title sponsor for the race.
My own race came to an unfortunate conclusion when I dismasted after completing 80% of the course and sailing in third place. But it was almost inevitable that I would end up back in Portland. Just another solo ocean racer and Cape Horn veteran who now calls Portland, Maine, home, I hope one day soon to work towards basing another campaign here.
While sailors and boats may come and go, their stories live on as part of the sport's traditions, vernacular, and history. This long and storied legacy of shorthanded around-the-world sailing based in Maine has resulted in a vibrant culture and passion for the sport that is truly unique in the country. As the mystique and allure of shorthanded ocean racing and voyaging continues to grow, it's inevitable that many aspiring sailors will at some point book a one-way ticket to Maine. What happens after that is anyone's guess, but it seems safe to say this this story has many chapters left to be written.
March 2025
