ADVENTURE: Eaton holds his biggest sails event
..
STEVE KILLING PHOTO
Eaton owns three C-class boats. Here,
Off
Yer Rocker rises out of the water in Toronto harbour.
A
scion of the old retail dynasty, Fred Eaton has become a world champ
with his catamaran
(Dec 09, 2007 04:30 AM Adam Mayers Toronto Star) Over the past three
years, Fred Eaton has spent pretty close to $1 million to create the
fastest, lightest, most advanced 25-foot catamaran in the world. Not
only has he succeeded, but he's done it in convincing style, building
the boat and winning an international regatta known as the Little
America's Cup in Toronto in mid-September.
In a series of races in the harbour and on the lake, Eaton and his
crewmate, Magnus Clarke, drove their experimental craft Alpha to a 5-0
victory over the reigning, U.S. champion. Eaton doesn't care that
outside a small circle of sailors, nobody knew the race was on, or that
the local media ignored him. Or that for the cool million, all he got
was bragging rights, a handshake and a rather modest trophy. "It's 14
inches tall, a Lucite cube," he says. "It's worth about 80 bucks, I
figure." But even as Eaton laughs at the spoils of becoming the first
Canadian to win the International C-Class Catamaran Championship, it is
apparent the 44-year-old economist, one-time biathlete, occasional
hunter and member of Canada's unofficial royal family (yes,
those Eatons) couldn't be happier.
Like Victorian gentlemen who climbed mountains because they could,
Eaton has indulged his small boat passion because he could. "I'm sure
many people think I'm nuts," says Eaton, who runs a family investment
company. "I'm okay with that. In a way, you have to be nuts to do this.
You can't justify what we've done except that we wanted to do it for
the privilege of sailing a great boat." The regatta he won is often
compared with the America's Cup because it's an international
competition involving experimental boats at the edge of yachting
design.
But unlike the America's Cup, the C-Class, which began in the 1950s,
has no marketing budget, no sponsors and no professionals. It is the
home of amateurs like Eaton, racing for the fun of it, to see who is
better. Fredrik D'Arcy Eaton is the son of Fredrik Stefan Eaton, a
former Canadian High Commissioner to the UK and among the last family
presidents to run the retail empire that for 128 years was part of
Canada's consciousness.
As a young man, Fred Jr. enjoyed small-boat sailing at the Royal
Canadian Yacht Club with Clarke. While attending Williams College in
Massachusetts, he was a keen participant in biathlons, placing in the
top 10 in North America. He also shared his father's interest in
big-game hunting, joining Fred Sr. on African safaris. These days it's
ducks and deer once a year. A taut, trim, physically fit non-drinker,
he describes himself as competitive yet risk-averse, with the ability
to focus for long periods.
"I'm not the imaginative guy," he says. "I do things carefully." "He's
not trying to prove anything or say, `Hey, look at me,' observes Steve
Killing, the Midland, Ont.-based yacht designer who drew up the plans
for Alpha. "He's got a nice handle on his ego."
Careful is really what you have to be with C-class catamarans. In this
rarefied and obscure corner of the high-performance sailing world, a
boat costs between $300,000 and $500,000. There are only eight C-class
catamarans in the world, and Eaton owns three. Together they add up to
$1 million, plus or minus. He races against the likes of American Steve
Clark, whom he beat in September. Clark recently sold Vanguard
Sailboats, the enormously successful Rhode Island manufacturer of
Laser, Sunfish and Optimist dinghies.
Eaton's world-beating Alpha weighs only 129 kilograms and is so
delicate that if she tipped over at her top speed of 23 knots (44
km/h), the boat would shatter. Unlike a conventional boat with a mast
and sail, Alpha has a 9-metre, one-piece carbon fibre mast with a
curved aircraft wing attached to it. The boats are not raced in breezes
greater than 20 knots (38 km/h) because of the danger of capsizing.
Is the Alpha insurable? "I haven't checked," says Eaton, "but I can't
imagine it would be." The great appeal of C-class is that they can go
very quickly in little wind – sometimes even faster than the wind is
blowing. They are sailed around a course, like a Formula 1 car, not in
a straight line like a dragster.
Eaton didn't make his C-class move until 2003, after more than a decade
sailing Internationals 14s, another class of competitive boat. As a kid
he had spotted a C-class catamaran in a sailing magazine and thought to
himself, "One day I'm going to have one of those." In 2003, he bought a
used boat from Vanguard's Clark as a trainer, and then put together a
campaign to build Alpha and another C-class,
Off Yer Rocker. Killing was the
main designer, but Magnus Clarke is an architect and designed the
hydrofoil sections under the water, the dagger board rudders and part
of the wing.
The boat's parts were manufactured from nine custom-made moulds at
Multimatic Inc., a Markham company that makes carbon fibre shells for
racing cars. Eaton, who doesn't expect to defend his title until 2009,
is now telling his Alpha victory story to sailing groups, including a
lunch speech on Wed., Dec. 12, at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club's
winter home on St. George St.
All in all, it has been an enormously satisfying journey, fuelled by
what Eaton agrees is more of an obsession than a sporting hobby. "Louis
L'Amour said there's a little bit of frontier in all of us, a little
bit of cowboy. Okay, so this is my little bit of cowboy. What can I
say?"
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