Olin J. Stephens, II
The beginnings of his career
At twenty-six he was one of America's outstanding yacht designers
This page covers Olin Stephes' very early career – Stormy Weather had only just been launched and had not yet shown her true capabilities, having had a somewhat disappointing 7th overall in the Bermuda Race, her first offshore venture. It is adapted from an article in the September 1934 issue of The Rudder, text credited to Safford huntington and photos to Rosenfeld.
To few men in any profession is vouchsafed the experience of swarming up the shrouds to the masthead of success in less time than was required to obtain the necessary technical background for the climb. Still more of a rarity is the feat of remaining aloft after such a rapid rise, despite the obvious perils of the position. To do so requires unusual ability, a modicum of luck, a great deal of courage and, perhaps, a touch of genius.
Olin J. Stephens 2nd, an outstanding naval architect at the age of twenty-six with a lustrous record of achievement in all phases of the business, is an illustration of the point.
An innate love of boats developed by a boyhood spent afloat in racing and cruising craft led to a course in naval architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A fortuitous dinner date with Drake H. Sparkman, who had faith in the youth’s possibilities and was willing to gamble on the realization thereof, provided the necessary “break” from fate. Courage to tackle the design of yachts in the toughest of racing classes, backed by a genuine gift for laying down the lines for fast boats, took care of the rest.
His slips have been negligible; his successes above the average. Forty boats of all types for a wide variety of purposes have sprung to life from his drawing board and carried his name wherever men go down to the sea for sport or pleasure. He has designed everything from sailing dinghies up to ocean-going cruising vessels, from rowboats to fancy, luxurious power craft. The day does not appear far distant when he will be called in to create a defender, or mayhap, a challenger for the America’s Cup, the dream of every naval architect.
After his studies at M.I.T., Stephens, then a none too robust lad peering at the world through spectacles under a shock of curly, light hair and speaking in a quiet, low-toned voice that revealed his shyness and modesty, went into the office of Henry J. Gielow, Inc., as a draftsman. Poor health necessitated the abandonment of this orthodox start toward a career.
In the summer of 1928, a year after Drake Sparkman had gone into the yacht brokerage business on his own, Olin and his father had dinner with the broker at the Larchmont Yacht Club. During the meal Olin told of his ambition to become a yacht designer. Sparkman had known Olin as a youngster who cruised on the little sloop Scrapper and the able if somewhat ponderous ketch Sou’wester. He was familiar with his racing at the stick of Alicia, the family’s Sound schooner, and Natka, one of the better 6 meter sloops.
Sparkman played a hunch. He felt that the boy had that intangible something that makes the difference between mediocrity and flaming success. He suggested an informal partnership for a year and terms were agreed upon.
That winter, Arthur P. Hatch of Stamford, Connecticut, was persuaded to entrust Stephens, then utterly unknown in the field, with the design of a small auxiliary sloop. The result was Kalmia, which went into the 1929 Gibson Island race and won in her class. When Kalmia was taking form, the Junior Yacht Racing Association of Long Island Sound conceived the idea of sponsoring a one-design knockabout of modern type that would provide fast, comfortable and safe racing for youngsters. Stephens went to work and what he turned out is as sweet and easily-handled a small racing boat as any boy or girl could desire.
By that time — the spring of 1929 — Sparkman was convinced that he had not erred in his judgment of the studious, diffident lad he had, so to speak, picked up off the beach instead of shipping a more seasoned, better-known hand. So the partnership was made permanent but the formalities of organizing the firm of Sparkman & Stephens, Inc., had to wait until Olin reached his twenty- first birthday that autumn.
The success of Kalmia was used as an argument to induce Louis G. Young, of the American Yacht Club, to allow Stephens to design the 6 meter yacht he contemplated. Out came Thalia and in the fall’s informal racing she appeared to be a good boat. Later, however, she was tagged a disappointment.
In the meantime, however, Stephens had learned things from Thalia’s performances and he stepped boldly into one of the most difficult of all international open classes with three more boats, turning out for 1930 launching the 6 meters Mist, Comet and Meteor. Mist made a better showing in the Scandinavian Gold Cup series abroad the next year than was indicated by her showing on the Sound in 1930. Comet and Meteor were fine all-around boats and went to the Great Lakes where they experienced four seasons of success before being brought back to the Sound where they are now doing surprisingly well against newer and. theoretically more advanced craft.
The year 1930 saw the Stephens star in its ascendancy. He turned out another 6 meter, Cherokee, for Herman F. Whiton which won the Long Island Sound championship in that year and was a member of the U.S. team that beat the Britons off Oyster Bay in four straight races for the British-American cup.
That same year he designed the 8 meter sloop Conewago which in 1932 successfully defended the Canada’s cup for the Rochester Yacht Club.
During the winter of 1929-30, Stephens designed the fine little cruising cutters Cynara and Salabar; the jib-headed, thirty-rater sloop Alsumar for Dave Henen Morris, Jr., and the now famous yawl Dorade for himself.
Dorade and Stephens are synonymous in the world of yachting. The feats of this amazing yacht are high spots in ocean racing history. Dorade has repeatedly shown herself not only to be a fast offshore boat but an exceptionally able one. In the Bermuda race of 1930, Olin and his brother, Roderick, Jr., got Dorade to the “Onion Patch” so fast that she took second prize in class B. In 1931 she walloped a distinguished fleet of ocean racers in the long haul from Newport, Rhode Island, to Plymouth, England, and topped this brilliant performance by winning the Fastnet race.
She went to Bermuda again in 1932 and won in her class. A year later she made a notable cruise to Norway and paused on her way home long enough to carry the Stars and Stripes to victory again in her second thrash through the stormy Fastnet race. Olin’s brother, Roderick, who was in charge of Dorade that season, was awarded the Blue Water Medal for his superior seamanship.
To get back te the young man’s designing, we find him in the winter of 1930-31 working on the schooner Brilliant, a 60-footer of heavy construction that has brought her owner, Walter Barnum, no end of commendation for her offshore exploits ; the power boat Nortada, the auxiliary sloop Valero, and the 6 meters BobKat II, Jill and Nancy. In passing, this is a good time to mention that in 1932 this able trio of 6 meters teamed up with Briggs Cunningham’s Lucie to wrest another four straight victories from the British Sixes at Cowes. Olin himself skippered Nancy in this series.
Last year, just about the nadir in yachting activity due to the prevailing business conditions, saw Stephens turn his hand to creating the modern power cruiser El Nido for Everett Dickinson of Essex, Connecticut, and step into the motor-sailer field with the 65-footer Tamerlane for George B. Knowles of New Bedford. Tamerlane is a refutation of the oft-heard assertion that motor-sailers are nothing but clumsy buckets under sail. Tamerlane has repeatedly proved that she can step along under her tall ketch rig and carry it to windward far better than one would expect of a yacht of this type.
With business better and yachtsmen loosening up their purse strings, the 1933-34 season was another of persistent activity for the junior member of the firm of Sparkman & Stephens. He turned out an 11 foot sailing dinghy which the Larchmont Yacht Club adopted as a means of teaching the rising generation how to sail, a 65 foot motor-sailer for Clarence Postley, two 30 foot Duxbury Yacht Club one-design auxiliaries, the auxiliary ketch Roon III, the auxiliary cutter Aweigh, the auxiliary yawl Blue Heron and the 70 foot auxiliary cruising yawl Alsumar for Dave Henen Morris, Jr.
He also worked up the designs for Stormy Weather, a slightly larger and improved Dorade-type yawl, for Philip Le Boutillier, and the cruising sloop Edlu, in which Rudolph J. Schaefer, rear-commodore of Larchmont, won the Bermuda race.
This summer, besides watching the tuning up of his latest creations, he has served in the afterguard of the America’s Cup candidate Weetamoe and applied himself to learning things about class J cutters that will be invaluable one of these days.
He can design a boat and he can sail one, this amazing young man who at 26 can look back on achievements worthy of a naval architect of twice his age and five times his experience.