Bow legend

Puma's Jerry Kirby describes why he has returned for his third crack at the Volvo Ocean Race

High up the list of remarkable figures competing in the Volvo Ocean Race is ‘the legend’ Jerry Kirby.

Typically race boat sailors as they get older work their way back down towards the blunt end of the boat. Not so with Kirby, who has remained resolutely on the bow for the three decade long duration of his career competing on many of the world’s leading race boats.

So why has he stayed on the bow and not headed aft? “I started in the afterguard!" Kirby quips. "I left Newport as a teenager and took a 58 footer to Europe and I was navigating, driving, trimming and had an Austrian owner. We sailed all around the world and I was always a trimmer/driver. Then I went and got involved with guys like Rod Davis on the match racing circuit, back in the 1970s and early 1980s. And you are doing things like Congressional Cup and if Rod is there you are in a mini Cup scene so if you want to come, sailing you have to be on the bow. So ‘okay – great!’ Once you do it and you do a good job…I have made a career out of doing the worst job well.”

In the last Volvo Ocean Race Kirby did bow with Alinghi’s Curtis Blewett on Pirates of the Caribbean and even then he was being dubbed the ‘world’s oldest bowman’. But that was not the first time - far from it, in fact.

“I remember Fremantle when I was 31, they were writing articles about how this old man on the bow. ‘We can’t believe there is a 31 year old bowman, etc’. Most of them were out of it by the time they were 22. In Fremantle most of the bowmen were teenagers if you looked at the average age. But at the time, it was the same thing – that was the job that was available and it all worked out, Paul Cayard said ‘hey, come and be the bowman on Il Moro’ and at that point it was one Cup after another…”

Impressively Kirby’s first Cup experience was way back in 1970 when, aged 14, he was boat boy for the 12m Inteprid. “Back then it wasn’t a pro sport and I didn’t come from a big sailing family. So I worked on the boat and went out and practised with them and I learned a lot, but I was still sailing dinghies. Then 1974-78-80 I was going to college and then I got out of school and wanted to go sailing, but there was no money. I couldn’t do the Cup because I couldn’t afford to pay my rent. So I went to Europe and raced over there and in 1983 when the Cup went away – I’d started a little construction business to pay my way when I wasn’t on a boat, so that I had something going on on land.”

Kirby-Perkins construction is now one of the largest building firms in the Newport, RI area and among the companys projects is a giant new dwelling in Newport for Numbers owner Dan Meyers.

“I’ve always said that I needed to work, so that I could sail and the construction has grown and sailing has turned into a full time professional sport, so it is fun - I have a great partner in the business who I say to ‘I am going to be going away sailing’. I could have just focussed on construction and been a wealthier guy, but I’d be missing all the fun. You can never buy back the Cups and the Transpacs and the stuff that happens in the Volvo Ocean Race.”

From a financial standpoint, Kirby doesn’t need to be sailing the Volvo Ocean Race, but he points out that in fact - no one needs to do it… “If you are a pro-sailor there is so much pro sailing you can do making a great living, sail as many days a year as you want. If you are good enough to be on a Volvo boat you are good enough to sail anywhere, anytime and make a living. I think the guys who choose to do the Volvo, they are a different breed of guy and there are a lot of people who are dying to do it and I’m sure a lot of them are really capable but with eight boats that means 80 sailors. A guy who is a skipper and wants to win has got to choose his team careful. With the America’s Cup being in the state it is in, there is a ton of talent available so you really get the pick of who you want.”




So why has he come back again for his third go at the round the world race following on from George Collins’ Chessie Racing and then Pirates ? “It’s because I haven’t won it! It is one of those things. There are a bunch of friends of mine and they’re in this club - they have won the Cup and the Volvo. I have been involved in two Volvos, but I haven’t won it. Honestly it sounds crazy, it is the worst thing you’ll ever do and the best thing, all rolled into one.”

And being a bowman on a VO70 has to be one of the toughest jobs in sailing… “There is no harder thing,” Kirby agrees. “It is tough because when you finish it, it takes about a year for your body to get over it. After the last one, I ended up with a fractured vertebrae and a broken hand by the time I came home. It is just stuff that happens. And also it is time away from your wife and kids. There are a lot of downsides to it. But if this is something that you love and you sail and you like the offshore, super-extreme sailing, once you get a taste of that 40 knot boat speed, big waves, you know that somewhere along the line you’ll be in it again.”

But aside from the adrenalin rush, the other reason Kirby is back is because of Puma skipper Ken Read. “For me, I thought the last one was my last one, but Kenny is a life-long friend, based out of Newport and honestly I didn’t want to have to sit around with Kenny for the rest of my life knowing that we could have gone around Cape Horn together, so it is a good opportunity.”

Friends since they were kids, Read and Kirby have sailed together for years. They did the 2003 America’s Cup together with Dennis Conner and were together on the Esmerelda and Carrera campaigns and many many others.

While Kirby has a long history in the Cup, it is the offshore racing to which he is most attracted. “Last year sailing on board Rambler was some of the best offshore ocean racing I’ve done in my life, bar none. In that Nordback transatlantic we just got day after day some of the biggest waves ever, great surfing, 50+ knot winds, insane conditions, 40+ knot boat speeds. And then we did Fastnet and broke the record in the Middle Sea Race with water spouts, crazy surfing again and then we did Cape Town-Rio and broke the record in that. That was just the last year.”

Compared to Cayard’s Pirates of the Caribbean campaign, that was a very very 11th hour affair, Kirby says he has enjoyed the longer lead-up with Puma. “When Paul called it was a last minute thing - the boat was late in the build, there was no choice on the boat, it was already built, pick it up 60 days before the start, try and figure it out and you are off. We left the dock for the first time and went into a storm and we were leaking, sinking and we had no idea how to sail the boat. So to end up where a) we finished and b) came second was a huge thing. It was a real indication of Paul Cayard, Erle Williams and a great, tough group of guys, because the boat was not easy to sail. With Puma it is still a little bit late, but Kenny was still able to choose a designer, he had a very short window to make big design decisions and then he had to pick his team. He got Chris Nicholson, who has so much experience, and it feels like we are a lot further ahead than we were with Pirates. But still it would have been great to have had another year…”

Kirby’s input into the campaign included technical things, but also acting as a sounding board for his old friend. “There was a lot of input in terms of advice and helping to shape some of the decisions. But once he got Chris Nicholson in he did a thing where collectively the group that start picked the next guys and they picked the next guys.” On board as well as being the venerable bowman, he is also the moral booster and the font of top yarns, most of which the crew will have heard before...

Alongside Torben Grael’s posse on Ericsson 4, Puma has the most experienced crew in the race. As Kirby explains: “Kenny looks at things analytically. It is not like he came in with a group that he’d done four Cups in a row with. Kenny and I have done a lot of sailing together, but all of the guys he’s done the most of his sailing with had no Volvo experience. So when he stepped in the ring he said we don’t have time to develop people. We need to go out and get veterans because you need two under 30s who won’t have that experience. So he said it is better to have myself, seven veterans and two under 30s. With the seven guys who he was going to choose he wanted them to have the most experience possible. And he’s really big on guys that get along.”

While Read, Kirby and their Media Crew Member Rick Deppe have sailed together for eons, otherwise few of the others had. Chris Nicholson was on movistar in the last race and also from that campaign came navigator Andrew Cape, while Kirby had sailed with Justin Ferris on Pirates. Also into the mix came Olympic medallist, Cup sailor (and Mini sailor) Jonathan McKee and France’s top man in the Volvo arena, Sydney Gavignet who was part of Mike Sanderson’s winning crew on ABN AMRO One.

It will be interesting to see what state Kirby is in by the time Puma reaches Cape Town after a week of brutal conditions. For this time the bowman’s job has got no easier with the introduction of the giant Code 0s. As Kirby puts it – “the bad job is a nightmare now.”