Merlin, Lalla, Fun and Bacchant

I had a great conversation with Jerome "Jerry" Sullivan today to bring me up to speed on Merlin's future racing plans.  Merlin will campaign in the NOOD's in Chicago, the SSYC Queen's Cup, the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac and a number of other races in the Chicago area.

I also discovered that Merlin is such a famous race boat that Trisha Steele, a fourth generation racer in the Transpac yacht race has created a trophy called the MERLIN Trophy  The trophy is a scale model of Merlin.  How cool is that.

For the uninitiated Merlin was a ground breaking (water breaking) Bill "fast is fun" Lee design that dominated the Transpac for many years.  You can read some of the history of the design here.

The conversation shifted to Lalla, a 22 sq meter yacht also owned by Jerry.  This is a class I knew nothing about.  Designed by K. H. Reimers these are beautiful boats.  You can see some pictures at this facebook page but it helps if you speak Swedish.

My favorite Jerry Sullivan boat is Bacchant, a 1936 Plym 75 sq meter.  It is currently for sale, but I caution you, even if you can afford it, can you afford the upkeep?  I am reminded of the famous quote by J. P. Morgan about the cost of upkeep on his famous yacht Corsair "If you have to ask you can't afford it."

Rounding out the boats is Jerry's Fun.


Jerry's boats are in the North section of McKinley Marina with Bacchant at the Milwaukee Yacht Club.  So you can stroll by and take a look.

The best part of the whole conversation was that Jerry invited me to crew on Merlin for the Queen's Cup.  Wow!