I also had a great time with our crew. In those earlier years, I’d sometimes cover for my lack of experience with an oversized sense of bravado, but the guys I sailed with knew how to put up with it, and occasionally they were able to put me in my place. One of my favorite stories along those lines was a time when we were out on
Vamp X,
not racing but bringing her back home from one of the SORC events. We ran into some bad weather, and after breaking our mast we had to ride out the storm using the motor. As we made this change, Jimmy Brown began hooking up a radio antenna and I said, “What are you doing?”
He said, “I’m putting up the antenna in case we need to use the radio.”
I barked, “Well knock it off. Columbus made it through waters worse than this, and if Columbus didn’t need a radio, I don’t need one, either!”
“Okay, then,” replied Jimmy, and he went right on rigging the antenna. An hour later, the engine ran out of gas. Jimmy looked at me and said, “Okay, Columbus, time for you to take over!” Thank God the radio worked. We called the Coast Guard and they came and towed us to port.
I learned a lot of lessons the hard way, but no matter how skilled a sailor anyone becomes, if you spend enough time at sea, you’re going to run into trouble. One of my worst experiences came in January of 1968. By December of 1967 it became clear that the next boat I was having built would not be ready for the 1968 SORC and I needed an alternative. I had a good boat broker and while it was late in the year to be looking for a replacement, he was able to find an older boat called
Bolero
in Oyster Bay, Long Island, that was available for charter. By this time, most new ocean racers were constructed out of fiberglass but she was built in the 1940s out of wood. She was also big, running seventy-three feet long and weighing about fifty tons, far bigger than anything I had ever sailed. My broker said she had already been decommissioned and placed in winter storage but the owner was willing to make her available. Given her age and condition, and since I already had a new boat in the works, I had no desire to buy her. I told my broker to let the owner know that while I wasn’t interested in purchasing the boat, having a champion crew race it would enhance its market value. The pitch worked and the owner agreed to let us take her south, but if we were to make it on time we’d have to move quickly.
Bolero
was in the water and ready to go by the end of December and I got to New York just after New Year’s. Our first race would be at the end of January so we only had a couple of weeks to get her down to Florida. Complicating matters was a record cold snap that had gripped the Northeast for weeks. Oyster Bay was covered with nearly six inches of ice. The night before we were supposed to leave, two of our crew slept on board with electric heaters and one of the guys forgot to pump out the water after using the head. Stepping out of their bunks the next morning, their feet slipped on the ice. A pipe had frozen and burst, and while they slept water filled the bottom of the boat and froze. While this went on, the boat began to sink. Fortunately, this all took place at a shallow dock and with just three feet of water beneath
Bolero
’s keel she only sank that far. Water from the pipe covered the engine and the battery as well, so once they pumped out the boat and fixed the piping they also had to change the battery and tear down the engine to get all the saltwater out. This cost us another couple of days and as we waited, the cold spell persisted. By the time we were ready to head out, the ice was frozen for about a mile and we had to hire an ocean tug to break the ice and lead us out. We made it down Long Island Sound and into the East River, but around the Battery in lower Manhattan, the pack ice was so thick we became stuck and had to wait for an incoming freighter to help us break free.
It was a struggle getting
Bolero
out to the open ocean, but once we did, it was a thrill. It was cold but sunny and the wind was blowing out of the north at about 15 to 20 knots. To race a boat of this size would require a crew of about eighteen but to get her down to Florida I only had six on board in addition to myself.
Bolero
was a yawl, meaning she had two masts. To race at full speed we’d want to put up full sail but with a tailwind and a small crew, I started out with just the mainsail up. As we cleared Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and headed due south we were going about 10 knots. We were making real progress. The air temperature was still cold but when you sail downwind like that, the boat sits upright and doesn’t throw waves.
In addition to staying dry, when you sail with the wind at your back, you don’t feel its full force. For example, if you’re running at 11 knots in a 25-knot tailwind, you only feel 14 knots of wind, but if you’re going into the wind at 11 knots with a 25-knot wind, you feel 36 knots of wind and you have waves and spray on top of it. It’s not to say conditions on board were good, but they could have been worse. For those first two days we had about a quarter-inch layer of ice all over the deck so it was really hard to walk around. When I leased
Bolero
I assumed that a boat of that size would have steam heat on board but in fact she didn’t have any. Our water tanks froze, so for drinking water we were forced to warm ice on the stove. (Jimmy Brown later would say that on that trip the warmest place on the boat was in the refrigerator.)
On trips like this one, Cape Hatteras is the turning point. Conditions are generally much better on the southern side, but getting around can be rough. South of Cape Hatteras the Gulf Stream warms the water significantly and this differential often contributes to very windy conditions. When we passed the Cape the wind was swirling in a clockwise direction and once we were to its south, we faced very strong headwinds. This is when things got really bad. I had been fighting the flu and another one of our stronger guys had hurt his hand. A third crewmember turned out to be a real loser and was no help at all. We were reduced to just three able men and we had a difficult time trying to get our sails down as conditions worsened. When waves started crashing over the boat we discovered that during the two months when
Bolero
was decommissioned, her wooden deck and sides had dried up and opened up slightly and now she was taking on water.
The bilge started to fill and as it did we found out that the electric pump was broken. Our next option was a set of hand pumps but the rubber diaphragms inside them were rotten and they proved worthless. The water wasn’t rising so quickly that we were in danger of sinking but we knew that if it got much higher it would flood our batteries and we’d lose electric power, and once that happened we wouldn’t be able to start the engine or operate our radio. Our only remaining option was to start a bucket brigade. As the winds continued to build (we’d later learn they blew upwards of 70 mph), the three able guys on the off watch used buckets to bail the boat. That process worked but it was never-ending—if we took a break, the bilge would start to fill up again.
Despite the heavy seas and wind we did manage to get all our sails down but sediment buildup in our engine caused it to stall and we couldn’t restart it. At this point, darkness was setting in and we had all been working flat-out for about twenty-four hours straight. Between fatigue and the cold (it was still below freezing on the boat) we finally decided it was time to give a Mayday call to the Coast Guard. We radioed their station at Cape Hatteras where they had one of their most durable all-weather boats. They were only about forty miles away to our north and made an attempt to come get us, but they turned back after deciding the seas were too rough. The Coast Guard called and told me that a two-hundred-foot oceangoing tugboat had been dispatched from Morehead City, but since that was more than a hundred miles to our south, it would take them all night to get to us. As we considered hunkering down for the night, the wind continued to roar in from the southeast and we were afraid it was pushing us right back into Cape Hatteras, which was now only about twenty miles away. One of the most dangerous features of Cape Hatteras, in addition to its frequently bad weather, is a shallow sand bank called Diamond Shoals. Jutting out about ten miles, this area has been called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” since so many ships have wrecked there in conditions just like the ones we were facing.
As the rest of the crew tried to sleep, I could see the light from the Cape Hatteras lighthouse and I figured we only had about three hours before we had to start worrying about the shoals. I decided that I should let everybody sleep and gather some strength, then when we got a little closer I would wake them up and try to raise at least one small sail to steer her out of the way. Fortunately, we didn’t get that close. As the night went on the wind shifted around to the south, so instead of blowing us toward the shoals it moved us slightly farther away. Through the night a freighter had been keeping an eye on us from about a quarter mile away. They had heard our distress call and decided to stay close until the tug got there. I’m not sure we’d have ever been able to transfer ourselves onto that ship in that weather but regardless, they were great to keep a lookout for us, just in case.
First thing the following morning, with a bit of sleep and the storm finally letting up, we decided to give the motor another try. The engine started but it turned out that the ropes that had been tying our sails was dragging overboard and had wrapped around and choked our propeller, so that was the end of that. Fortunately, the tug made it to us about an hour later. They shot us a line that we tied to our mast for a five-hour tow to Morehead City. It was a relief when we were finally safe on dry land. With the weather now calm, we had a scuba diver remove the rope from our propeller and we left the next afternoon to motor our way down to Charleston. We made it there safely and the following week, with an entirely different crew, Jimmy Brown and I reached St. Petersburg in time for the first race.
I will never forget that night near Cape Hatteras. I really thought there was a decent chance that I wouldn’t see the sunrise the next morning. I remember taking a picture of my wife and kids out of my wallet and just sitting there in my bunk looking at it. I kissed it several times and hoped that I’d have a chance to see them again. It was the most harrowing time I had ever had at sea, but it couldn’t diminish my enthusiasm. I was determined to learn from the experience and to continue racing. I had found my sport and nothing was going to stop me now.
WTCG: “Watch This Channel Grow!”
B
y the late 1960s we owned five radio stations but I was frustrated to be based in Atlanta and not have one there. I looked around but it was clear that there weren’t going to be any twenty-four-hour stations for sale anytime soon. I might have been able to get my hands on a daytime AM station but those seemed to be losing propositions. The situation was frustrating. I had energy to burn and knew I’d be restless if the company didn’t keep growing and diversifying.
At about that same time I noticed an ad on one of our billboards for a UHF TV station called WJRJ, Channel 17. I wasn’t following the television business back then—to be honest, I didn’t even watch much TV. I remember having to ask someone what UHF stood for. (“Ultra High Frequency,” was the answer, which I soon learned was a fancy way to describe a station most people couldn’t see because their antennas couldn’t receive it.) Still, this business intrigued me. The VHF—Very High Frequency—stations in Atlanta were all strong network affiliates that were probably worth more than my entire company. But since the VHF stations were so strong and because they basically split the market three ways, I figured I might be able to get my hands on a UHF competitor at a price I could afford. As I asked around town, it appeared that WJRJ was not doing well and might be on the block. The idea of getting into the TV business was exciting and if my options came down to buying a lousy radio station or a lousy TV station, I wanted to bet on the medium that looked like it would grow.
Channel 17 was owned by Rice Broadcasting, which was run by Jack Rice, Jr. (not only was his name on the parent company, his initials provided the call letters for WJRJ). I went to see him and my visit confirmed that the business was indeed in bad shape. They had just gone public (the market for new issues was really hot at that time), but the station was bleeding cash. This wouldn’t be the worst thing, though, since our radio and billboard businesses were quite profitable and we could use these losses to lower our tax obligations while we turned the station around. I also came up with another way our company could squeeze value out of this deal. In an average month about 15 percent of our billboard inventory went unsold. With signs all over Atlanta, I could put the unsold ones to use promoting our station, just as we had done to promote our radio stations. The more I studied this deal, the more I wanted to do it.
My board, on the other hand, thought I was crazy. The directors were mostly friends of my father’s and they were having trouble getting used to my more aggressive style. They also read reports from analysts who did not believe that UHF stations would ever be successful. (I remember one who referred to UHF as “the lunatic fringe of broadcasting.”) But after considering it carefully I wanted to go ahead. Television would be a new challenge and it looked like it might be a lot of fun.
Rice was represented by Atlanta investment bank Robinson-Humphrey, and everyone involved was prepared to make a deal. Disappointed with the station’s performance, they thought that now might be a good time to merge with a partner or make an outright sale. They valued the company (which consisted entirely of the TV station, WJRJ) at $2.5 million. At the time the rest of our company was probably worth about $7.5 million, so this would be a big deal for us. There was no way we could pay cash, so we negotiated a stock swap that would leave me as the largest single shareholder in the combined company but would drop my percentage ownership to about 47 percent. My board of directors continued to raise objections but they knew I had voting control of the stock and in the end my enthusiasm wore them down.