INTERVIEW WITH RANDY SMYTH ON JANUARY 24, 2002
DURING KEY WEST RACE WEEK

Randy driving the F-28R Dealer's Choice
Photo by Rich Roberts

Reprinted from the Key West Race Week News

Randy Smyth moved from California to Florida in 1989, but it took him 13 years more to reach Key West. The boats he sailed had too many hulls.

"I've done the Ft. Lauderdale to Key West race but I've never done Key West Race Week," Smyth said. "They had catamarans here only one year, and a catamaran was on starboard [with right of way] when a monohull got in the way on port."

Although the monohull was in the wrong, that was it for multihulls for a while.

"They threw the cats out," Smyth said. "Figure that one out."

The barrier came back down this year when Premiere Racing, producers of Terra Nova Trading/ Yachting Key West Race Week, invited a limited group of trimarans as a one-design class-first at its related event, North Sails Race Week, at Long Beach, Calif. last summer and now at Key West.

Thirteen F-28R models signed up. No, the R doesn't stand for Randy but for the racing version of the F-28, which has a carbon fiber mast and other go-fast extras, including an asymmetrical spinnaker.

The F-28Rs, with Smyth usually up front on Dealer's Choice, are sharing the Division I course with the IMS and larger PHRF classes. So far there have been no serious conflicts.

"I find it's easier when you're racing multiple classes on the same course at quite different speeds," Smyth said. "With equal boats you get stuck in other people's wind shadows and never get out. So the monohulls and the multihulls can co-exist quite well because they don't stay in each other's wind very long. Normal sailing, we go different angles at different speeds."

Smyth, 47, lives in Ft. Walton Beach with his wife Paula, 4-year-old daughter and 9-month-old son. He designs sails for The Smyth Team company which are produced overseas.

As America's premier multihull sailor, he is the unofficial ambassador for a type of boat that has had trouble gaining full acceptance from a monohull-dominated sailing scene-and he remains baffled by that attitude.

"[Multihulls] annihilated Europe years ago," Smyth said. "It's the Americans who have this hang-up on lead. You look at any television show over there that has anything to do with Grand Prix excitement and it usually involves multihulls."

Smyth has sailed almost every type of multihull imaginable. He won Olympic silver medals on Tornadoes at Long Beach in 1984 and Barcelona in '92, defended the America's Cup with Dennis Conner against New Zealand's big monohull on a custom-built 60-footer in '88 and sailed around the world on Cam Lewis' 125-foot Team Adventure.

Closer to home, he has sailed the Worrell 1000--multihull sailing's version of the Ironman-seven times and won it six times.

"I broke a mast one year," he explained.

How tough is the Worrell? Some people break legs.

"For me, it's been a one-way street," said Smyth, who was raised in Huntington Beach, Calif. "I grew up sailing monohull dinghies like Sabots, Transpac and the California thing. Once I started sailing multihulls it was hard to go back to the monohulls. It was hard to get the same excitement."

He enjoys making converts.

"Even Dennis Conner, if you ask him point blank he'll tell you it's much more fun. After the '88 Cup in the catamaran he kept one of those boats as a personal boat. He was very gun-shy at first. He'd heard how they tipped over and pitchpoled and couldn't go upwind. Of course, he disproved all those things."

The trimarans are enjoying Key West, especially when the wind blows.

"We'll go about 1.2 times the wind speed," Smyth said.

The courses are windward-leeward, but for the tris they might as well be diamond-shaped. They go so fast and the apparent wind moves so far forward that they are always sailing on the wind at sharp angles to the marks.

"Ninety degrees up, 90 degrees down," Smyth said. "We cover a lot of water."

Around Florida, some multihull sailors base their tactics on what they call the "Randy Smyth rule." The rule: follow Randy.

Smyth laughs. "There's some of that. To me, it's always been a learning experience. If you can stay one step ahead of everybody, they're all followers. But it's hard to stay even one step ahead."

As he flies a hull into middle age, he is most concerned about the next generation.

"You need the bottom of the pyramid to create hundreds of possible top leaguers, and we're kind of losing that," he said. "We have a lot of people but they're all the same age group. You go to [social] tent and there's no new blood. You have to keep bringing people into any sport.

"Youngsters today, it's video games and skateboards and two minutes doing this or that. Sailing is a sport that takes dedication to learn."