HALSEY CHASE HERRESHOFF

He was born in Bristol Rhode Island in 1933 and learned to sail at the age of five in a dinghy designed and built by his grandad. In this case the dinghy was a Herresho 12.5 and the grandad was Nathanael Herresho . After reading naval architecture then mechanical engineering at MIT, Halsey’s yacht design career saw more than 10,000 boats launched to his designs. He was instrumental in founding the Herresho Museum in his home town of Bristol, then founded the America’s Cup Hall of Fame, with the benefit of considerable experience, having crewed in no fewer than four cups, from 1958 to 1983. From birth, Halsey has been steeped in the heyday of wooden yacht sailing and later in life, in its preservation and revival. Where many today will feel pride at having attended the seminal 2001 America’s Cup Jubilee in the Solent, Halsey actually won the event, aboard his New York 40 Rugosa. He followed it up by a grand cruise that took in much of northern and southern Europe, then the Caribbean.

These days, Halsey is not only a grandee of sailing, but a decorated public servant to the town of Bristol: the green sward behind the waterfront was named after him in 2018, for his “tireless, unprecedented” advocacy of its improvement.

He went back to yacht designing in 2018, at the age of 85. We could award Halsey our lifetime award on his sailing career or his Ad te Cs hi agrlnie cB a arr er’ esrg,roarveh,iws ha idchvoB co abcrayi, sc eadmpaigning and stewardship of American sailing history and the Herresho legacy. He’s allfounfdtsh too sree,sbt our te ma no dr meatih na tan in tih nap te, rh pe ti us itsy imply one of the nice st, humblest people you could ever hope to meet.