1958 – Bitito Mieres was a very good driver in race cars. He used to compete in the same team as Manuel Fangio, who was world champion of formula 1 race cars. In 1956 Bitito participated in the famous Daytona Beach race for sports cars in Florida, USA. Daytona was second only to the Indianapolis 500 race in fame and glory in the USA and it was watched by millions of people around the country. it just happened that Bitito came in first place on that race, so he became very famous for a while. Car racing made his wife very nervous, so he promised her he would change sports and bought himself a Star and started competing in Argentina a few months before the Daytona race.

From Daytona Bitito flew to Chicago and bought himself the Star owned by Bert Williams who had come in first place in the World Championship the year before. He travelled from Chicago to San Diego in two and half days at top speeds of over 100 miles per hour with a trailer and a boat in tow. He said that after a little bit of practice he learned how to make the trailer skid on the sharp curves to avoid slowing down. He was stopped by the police a couple of times but when they found out who he was they let him go.

I met him in San Diego a couple of days before the first race so we had very little time to practice and get acquainted with the boat. The race was a disaster for us and we ended the Championship dead last among around 60 boats. The lack of Bitito’s experience and the boat did not help. His boat had won in Chicago in a lake with no currents and short waves in very strong wind. We were sailing in San Diego with light winds, current and long ocean waves. We had the wrong boat.

We had a good time in spite of that. We were on the front page of the San Diego newspapers, not for the sailing but because of Bitito having won the Dayton Beach race just a few days before. We got invited to parties almost every night.

1959-1964 – During this period I sailed as a crew on an International IC, which is a boat similar to the Dragon. My skippers were not too good, so we never won a race, however we made the first page of the Examiner, one Sunday Festival. We were racing the IC and in approaching a buoy another boat shouted “you are passing it on the wrong side”. I told him that buoy is not part of the course. My skipper went first one way then another until we hit the buoy with our front stay which broke and the whole mast broke ad fell on top of us. Luckily nobody got hurt. A power boat with all the reporters came to our rescue and threw us a line. My friend was at the bow, tow line in hand when somebody in the rescue boat told the captain we were ready, which we were not. The captain of the rescue boat acceleratedwhile my friend was trying to find a place to anchor the tow line, which when it tightened took my friend flying forward and into the air and then the water. The picture on the front page of the Examiner showed my friend flying in mid air like a bird. Unfortunately I lost a copy of that article.

1966 – This year the St. Francis organized The Pacific Coast Keel Boat Championship. All clubs from the Pacific coast were invited, but few came from far away. In any case the clubs from the San Francisco Bay area responded positively. In total 18 clubs participated.

We were members of the Lake Merritt Sailing Club; only dinghies were allowed to sail in Lake Merritt. The lake was too small and shallow, so most members had no experience with larger keel boats, except me and another member. We both expressed interest in representing the club, so we had 3 races in the Snipe class to select who would go. I won the first two, so there was no need to run the third one.

The St Francis managed to borrow 18 boats for the championship. Six were IC International, six were Tritons and six more were Challengers. All boats were around 30’ in length with a three man crew. In order to protect the boats, the owners were allowed to sail on the boats as passengers, but were not allowed to give directions. Also, no one was allowed to sail their own boat. This made the field quite even as the boats were rotated every two races, so you would race 6 boats of your class, say the Tritons, then you would sail 6 races on the Challengers and so on. In total you sailed 6 races.

I won 4 races and came in second in the other two, so I managed to win the Championship for my club.At the trophy presentation I got a really big cup for my club and I got a smaller replica for myself. My crew got a medal each as a souvenir.

There was an interesting incident. In one race I got the boat I used to crew some years back. People were feeling sorry for us because it had been last or close to last in all the races in the past season. We, on the other hand, felt that we had a certain advantage because we knew the boat, but if we brought that up it would delay the next race, so we decided not to mention it since the boat was theoretically slower, after all my friend had never won a race on it. We got out and the boat did not feel right so we started changing things until it felt better. Right from the start we shot in first place and never looked back. We won both those races. We got all kinds of congratulations after that.

I considered this my greatest accomplishment. For once I had no advantage or disadvantage with boats or weight and I was competing with the best sailors of every club.

1968 – 1972 – During this period I sailed with Nancy as a crew. We sailed in Snipes which is a 15-foot dinghy, because that is all we could afford.The Snipe is a good family boat because the boom is high and you don’t get hit on the head when you jibe. It has a center board and no keel, so you balance the boat with your weight. Because we weighed so little in those days, we had an advantage on the days with little wind, and a disadvantage on the windy days.

After that race I figured Nancy would not sail with me anymore but she was a good sport and kept on sailing with me in spite of having capsized three times.

In one of those races, we were sailing in Santa Cruz in the open ocean, when we capsized. On these races there is a rescue boat that patrols the course and they either did not see us or they were rescuing someone else. We managed to take the sails off and managed to right the boat but it was swamped so it would not sail very well, however we hoisted the small jib, and slowly but surely we got to the club. We had spent a lot of time in the water so we felt quite miserable. I thought surely Nancy was not going to want to sail any more after that fiasco, but she again was a good sport and kept on sailing with me.

In general we did quite well. We won the Bay Area season championship a couple of times and we made many friends with whom we socialized usually after the races. We hired a baby sitter to take care of the kids while we were racing.

We also bought a couple of El Toro boats for the kids, so sometimes we traveled with three boats, the Snipe on a trailer, one El Toro on top of the Snipe and one on top of the car.

This picture shows Sheila sailing with Michele in her El Toro.

1973 -1975 – Nancy and I organized what we called The Briones Sailing Club in the San Pablo Reservoir, which is a lake used for drinking water for the city of Orinda where we lived. No houses were allowed to be built around the water shed so the whole area around the lake was like a big park.

So it was that during the summer, Sheila had a job. She became an instructor, so she had fun and earned a little money in doing so.

The lessons started in a pool. When students see that the boat heels a bit, they get scared of capsizing so they let the main go, and stop the boat. In the pool they capsized a boat on purpose and then they had to right it up. This took away the fear of capsizing the boat and the lessons could proceed with less problems.We also had special sails made that were much smaller than standard sails so that the boats became less likely to capsize.

We charged $35.00 for a week of lessons.

Aside from sailing lessons, we organized weekend races for the club members and sometimes for other clubs as well. They were social events as well, because we had a picnic in between races. For the club members we used the lasers, so people did not have to have a boat to become members.

1976-1980- My company Kaiser Engineers transferred me to Rio de Janeiro, where we stayed for four years. I accepted the assignment provided the company my membership to the Sailing Club, which was $45,000 dollars, a large sum in those days. After just a few days in the office I discovered that one of the engineers was a member of the club. When I told him that I was going to apply for membership at the club, he told me there was a 7 to 10 year waiting list, which was very discouraging. One day I decided to go to the club to visit some of the sailors against whom I had competed in two previous South

American championships and they were very glad to see me and asked me whether I was going to join the fleet.I told them about the 7 to 10 year wait for membership. Two of these guys were members of the governing committee and they told me I could become a member the next day if wanted, privilege of Star sailors, which goes to show you that it is who you know that counts.

We did buy an old wooden Star that used to belong to Von Hutchler, a world champion a few years ago.

It was nice sailing in Guanabara Bay. We could sail in our bathing suits all year around. Every other weekend we spent at the club and we raced often but we did not do well. We were competing against more modern fiberglass boats and we did not have enough weight to keep the boat from heeling too much, but we enjoyed it anyway because of the camaraderie and the social life.

One day I received a call from Bitito inviting me to race with him in a Star in San Diego for the World Championship. I accepted immediately.

1983-2013 – When we got back from Brazil, I had the intention of purchasing another Snipe but Nancy refused to race with me anymore. She had gotten used to sailing in the warm waters in Brazil and she wanted no part of sailing again in the cold waters of San Francisco bay, so that ended my racing career.

While we were in Rio, the Briones Sailing club had been transferred to another reservoir in Lafayette, because they were repairing the one in Orinda and had drained the lake.Sailing lessons continued for three more years, and Doreen worked as a sailing instructor, but the insurance costs kept going up to a point that we were going to go bankrupt, so one day we organized a big farewell party, donated the boats to another sailing club and the Briones Sailing Club was no more.

One day my friend Jaime Villarroel called me to see if I was interested in buying a Columbia 24 in partnership. The price was right, so I immediately said "yes" without even taking a look at it. The Columbia 24 is a 24-foot long boat with 4 sleeping bunk beds, a small kitchen and a bathroom. I liked the boat because the cabin was tall and Nancy and I could be in it standing up. It made the boat a little ugly but its comfort was worth it.

We did not race this boat. It was slow and not in good shape but we took it out on some weekends for a sail in the Bay. We also cruised in it a few times. It was very comfortable inside. It was nice to take visitors out and tour them sailing underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, around Sausalito and Tiburon.

My favorite place was a small harbor in Angel Island where you could dock and have a picnic on the lawn in front of the museum.

One problem with that boat is that it had an outboard motor that was very heavy and difficult to install. We took it out of the water and washed it in sweet water at the end of a sailing day. I am pretty sure that handling that motor caused me to get my first hernia.

We were not using the boat that much and my partner Jaime was getting old and not using it either, so we finally decided to sell it. The year was 2014. We had also bought a Laser that our daughters used to use occasionally when they came to visit. We sold that one also. That marked the end of our sailing career. Jaime died a year later.

2005 – The Club Nautico Olivos organized the Star Class World Championship that year, so we timed our visit to Argentina to coincide with their racing schedule.

It just happened that one of the regatta judges was an old friend of mine from Brazil, so I was lucky to be invited to witness a couple of the races. Normally no passengers are allowed on the judge’s boat.There were about 50 boats from many different countries in competition. The following picture shows the start of one of the races.

1956 - The most notable championship in which I participated was in 1956 for the trials of the Olympic Games to be held in Melbourne, Australia. The government told us they had only money to send two boats, a Dragon and a Finn. Under protest, the sailing authorities agreed to let the Argentine Champion of four other classes participate in the Dragon eliminations trials but it was up to the Champions of those classes and their clubs to find a Dragon to participate in.

I chose to participate in the Argentine Season Championship in the Grumete class which is a popular three man keel boat because the Nautico San Isidro had several club boats and they agreed to assign one to me for the season. That had the advantage that I could tune the boat to my liking and I could also use the racing sails for the season. Of course the private boats already had that advantage.

Since the Grumete was not a kind of boat I was used to, I did not think I was going to do well, so I did not take it very seriously but would have a lot of fun. I asked my brother who was not a real sailor to crew for me and another friend who knew how to sail well. We started the first race and did not bad coming in the middle of the pack. The second race went better and we managed to come in second place.

At that point I started to get serious, fired my brother and incorporated another friend that was a very good sailor. I started winning races and ended up winning the Argentine Season Championship by a good margin, so I earned the right to participate in the Olympic trials of the Dragon class. Now I had to find a Dragon to sail in.

That extra race started with light wind and we traded places several times during the race. Eventually the wind died completely about one hundred yards from the committee boat. I was in first place at that point but Salas outfoxed me and got the wind first when it started again, so he passed me and won the race, so he got to race in the Olympics and did very well. He came in fourth in spite of having been disqualified in one race for hitting the flag at the starting line.

Eventually the government decided to send an extra boat which was the Star class, where I had a lot of experience, but I had decided not to race the trials on it as supposedly that class was not going. Other people had the same problem, so the winner of the trials was my friend Ovidio Lagos, who was not such a good sailor, but he wanted me as a crew to be his tactician and that is how I got to go to the Olympic games in Australia.

There were no jet passenger planes in those days, so we flew in propeller planes that flew low and slow. Also their range was short so we could not fly the southern route. Since Canadian Pacific gave us the best price, we flew all the way to Vancouver. It took 12 hours to fly to Hawaii and from there to Fiji, another island whose name I don’t remember, Sydney and Melbourne. It took four days. We calculated that our delegation was the one that took the longest to get to Melbourne.

We did not do too badly in most races ending up in the middle of the pack or better, however we were disqualified in one race for hitting a buoy and in one race the wind was so strong (gusts of 50 miles per hour) that we broke a rib on the deck and we had to abandon. With only 5 races out of seven we did not score well. We came out 12th in a field of 14.

On the way back I disembarked in Hawaii where I stayed in the new YMCA for four days. I was wearing my Olympic uniform which served as a door opener, so when I went to the Yacht Club I was immediately invited to sail on the new catamaran by the famous designer Woody Brown. I was also invited for dinner at an entertainment club by pilots of the Hawaiian Airlines and they tried to convince me to stay in Hawaii to live there. At the Waikiki beach I found a couple of Olympians together with that year's Miss California and her sister. I took her phone number but never called her. I had a good time!

Sailing in competition was more than a hobby for me, it was a passion.

1944-My cousin Horacio Manley was four years my senior. I had great admiration for my senior cousin as he was a very good Rugby player and he was also a good sailor. He introduced me to sailing by making me a member of the Nautico San Isidro and then taking me out in sailing boats and giving me lessons on the basics of sailing. I was 14 years old at the time.

1945 - The Nautico San Isidro was a little far away from my house and without a car it took me between half an hour to an hour to get there depending with my luck with public transportation. Club Nautico Olivos on the other hand was very close to my house, so when an opportunity arose I became a member of the Nautico Olivos but kept my membership on San Isidro. Monthly dues for Junior members was very inexpensive in those days.

The Nautico Olivos was built on a peninsula owned by the Navy so during Peron’s time they were threatened with expropriation because the members were a bunch of rich old guys who practiced very little sailing and no competition. In order to change the character of the club the board members decided to recruit a bunch of young members that would change the spirit of the club. That is how I got in without paying for the entrance fee. Here I started competing right away with the boats of the club. They owned three single handed boats, called the Yola Olimpica. They had been the class of boats that competed in the 1936 Olympics.

At this point I would like to clarify that trying to compete with a club boat against private boats was a handicap. The club boats are used constantly and are usually not well maintained. In the case of the Yola Olimpica that was not true as there were no private boats, only club boats.

1946 - The next year I inherited the boat Barendson was sailing. It was called the “Chingola”. It turned out that boat was made in Finland and it was imported as a model for all the other Yola class boats that were made in Argentina. That boat was faster than the others, as I would soon find out. I won the first race and all the races that next year and some by a very wide margin. In the end it became embarrassing, so the following year I refused to sail on it. I still did well, but not nearly as well as when I was sailing the “Chingola”. However, the other members that sailed it afterwards, did not do as well. I guess my sailing lessons from Barendson had helped me a lot. We never weighed that boat, but I am sure it was a lot lighter than the other club boats. I realized then that Barendson was not such a good sailor, he just had a good boat. 

1947 - After graduating from the Yolas, I started racing larger club boats. The Nautico San Isidro and many other clubs had boats called the Rio de La Plata. There were no private boats in this class so I had an advantage as I did not have to compete against better boats. I did very well in this class and won many trophies; however, since we lived in a small apartment, we had little room, so my mother started throwing some away.

There was an important interclub race called the “Carlos Marin” cup which started in San Isidro and ended up across the river in San Juan, which in those days was open to the public. San Juan was a river that ended in the Rio de La Plata. The estuary had a very nice sandy beach where boats could anchor and spend the night. It was a beautiful recreational area.

I had decided not to participate, because I was studying hard in those days until I got a call from the San Isidro club manager who was an avid fan of interclub races. He told me he had a boat available who nobody had claimed for the race. I told him I could not do it because I was studying and also I did not have a crew. He twisted my arm and told me he could get a crew for me if I was willing.

The next day I got calls from two guys I did not know. On the phone we agreed who was going to bring what, the time to meet, etc. The next day we got together, rigged the boat and took off for the starting line. The gun went off and we found ourselves in first place, but, at that point we needed to raise a Spinnaker and I found out that neither one knew how to do it, so I gave the tiller to one of them and did it myself. We were dead last at the next mark before heading across the river for Uruguay. These guys were no sailors.

The river is 40 miles wide at this point, so you cannot see the other side until you are more or less half way through. In the beginning you need to use a compass to take the correct course, until you see land on the other side, so I asked one of them to take out the compass he was supposed to bring. He told me he could not find one, so we decided to take a bearing from the guys ahead and used the shadow of the sun as an aid for direction. We noticed that after a while the other boats were way to our right but I assumed they were fighting to take each other’s wind so we continued happily on our own course.

As soon as we could see the coast we realized we were completely off course. I forgot the sun rotates, so we had sailed in a long arc that took us a couple of miles up river. Then the wind died down to a complete calm, so we decided to have lunch. I had brought the drinks, which consisted of a bottle of water and a bottle of milk. "And where is the wine?" My crew almost killed me and they swore to desert me when we got to Uruguay.

About an hour later, the wind started to pick up and to our surprise all the distance we had sailed up river was decreased because of the current going down river. To make matters better, the boats that had sailed the correct course had been swept down by the current during the calm. The result was that we ended up in first place at the entrance of the estuary. There were about 500 yards to the finish line and we had a tail wind so the boat that arrived in second place very near us took our wind and passed us. I was tempted to do the same thing to him but I waited until about 100 yards from the finish line, took his wind, passed him and finished first by about a foot. The race was so close that I could not tell who won until they told us later.

During those last 500 yards we had an audience of over 100 people cheering for one boat or the other. It was very exciting. We got congratulated for our excellent tactics and about having anticipated the current problem. We did not tell them the truth. I got teased by everybody for having brought milk instead of wine in a country where wine is the main drink for lunch and dinner. The word got out to the rest of the sailing community, and when people were introduced to me they often asked: "are you the guy that took a bottle of milk to a race instead of wine?"

I earned an enormous silver cup, which, like the America’s cup, is kept by the winning club, so I got a small replica as a souvenir and the cup stayed in the club for another year.