1952

It was June, and up and down the northeast seacoast, the adrenalin was running hard. Sailors were readying their boats for the 1994 Newport (R.I.)-to-Bermuda race, the grandest of all ocean races. But the news this year was that Richard V.Nye would not be entering Carina, one of the greatest of all long-distance racing yachts, in the biennial bash.

One could not think of a finer distance-racing sailor. Dick has raced thousands of ocean miles in Carina, which he owned in a lifelong partnership with his late father, Dick Sr. There were East Coast races, southern races, trans-Altantic races, and many prizes and trophies. None, however, were more distinguished than the Bermuda race results. He sailed his first in 1950 and then 16 more. In 1952 he won and repeated the feat in 1970 and 1982, tying a record set by only John Alden and Carleton Mitchell.

The partnership between father and son took time to develop. "He was a shy fellow," says Ken Clarke from his North Kingston, New Hampshire home. Ken, Dick's roommate in our first year, is now teaching English as a second language in Guilford, N.H., after years of selling welding supplies and repairing generators in Worcester, Mass. "I think he was the captain of the sailing team, and he was a really good sailor," Ken remembers. After freshman year, "he vanished."

Margaret "Peggy" Branch remembers many great stories her late husband, Jim Branch, used to tell about his freshman year with Dick. "Dick's father wanted his son to be social," she says, "so he used to bring a case of whisky up once in a while, which Jim and Dick's other roommates would then valiantly finish off."

As the relationship grew between the Nyes, Dick Sr. began to defer to his son. Dick skippered his first trans-Atlantic race in 1963. By 1979, Dick was in charge when the boat crossed the ocean and competed in the infamous 1979 Fastnet race in which a sudden Atlantic storm caused 17 deaths and numerous sinkings. A Whole generation of yachtracing safety measures developed from that race. In the middle of the race, 80-year-old Dick Sr. poked his head up the companion-way way and saw only a small amount of sail up. He yelled to the navigator, Larry Huntington, to tell Dick to put up the blast readier. "It's designed for 40 knots," said Senior. Larry passed the message on to Dick who replied, shouting over the wind and noise, Tell the old bastard to come up here and put it up himself.

After graduation and a year at Tuck school Dick joined his father at Georgeson & Cos. a Wall Street company giving shareholder-relations

counsel and providing proxy service for tender and exchange offers of many Fortune 500 companies. Dick Sr.'s death in 1988 brought the partnership to a close, and Dick sold Georgeson in 1990 and retired.

Dick is an avid skier. He and his wife, Pat, sold their Greenwich home, moved into a townhouse, and purchased a mountaintop home behind Okemo which is much enjoyed by their five children and extended family.

Since 1982 Dick and Pat have been cruising the boat extensively. Carina was in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, from 1988 to 1991, cruising Newfoundland and Labrador. Dick s articles about this experience in the Cruising Club of America News are entertaining and informative. He lectures to new Bermuda racers and many others on long-distance race preparation and safety at sea. He club races with Pat, son William, and family friends in the non-spinnaker fleet, still sailing the third Carina, now much modified at 25 years of age.

This year when the racers reach Hamilton, Bermuda, and gather on the front lawn of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, the "Dark and Stormies" will stimulate ever more extravagant war stories about the race and then about past races. Before too long someone will "Remember back in 1982 when Carina..."

10 Grove St., P.O. Box 830, Pittsford, NY 14534