Storms Ahead
Rick Dodson: America's Cup champion to Paralympian, by Rebecca Hayter
award-winning journalist & author
STORMS AHEAD
Rick Dodson: America's Cup champion to Paralympian
Storms Ahead features interviews with . . .
Sir Russell Coutts, Tom Dodson, Tom Schnackenberg, Joey Allen, Murray Jones, Don Cowie,
Don Brooke, Jeremy Scantlebury, Matt Mason . . .
Featuring high points in New Zealand sailing . . .
OK Dinghy World Champs 1979 & 1982
The Finn selection trials: Coutts vs Dodson 1984
Admirals Cup 1987 (and the great cheating scandal)
One Ton Cup
America's Cup Fremantle
North Sails NZ
America's Cup 1995
America's Cup 2000
America's Cup 2003
the J-Class years
Rio Paralympics 2016
In 1997, America’s Cup-winning strategist Rick Dodson thought he was invincible. He had a happy marriage, a stack of wins in national and international sailing, and was part-owner of one of the world’s most technically advanced sailmakers.
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But a diagnosis of MS (multiple sclerosis) threatened his world. He kept it secret and was strategist in two more America’s Cups. In 2012, Rick co-founded Kiwi Gold Sailing to compete at the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games.
Storms Ahead – Rick Dodson: America’s Cup champion to Paralympian is a story of determination and relentless optimism, written by award-winning yachting journalist Rebecca Hayter. Including interviews with Sir Russell Coutts and other members of Team New Zealand, it captures the extraordinary mateship that won the America’s Cup in 1995 and 2000, and was a major factor in Rick Dodson’s Paralympian campaign.
from the back cover
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How New Zealand won the Admirals Cup
'We were always serious about the Admirals Cup, but in 1985
we learned we had to stop individual boats from trying to be
the best boat, and instead get the boats to sail as a team.'
– Don Brooke, commodore, RNZYS, 1987-89.
Goldcorp, skippered by Rick Dodson, 1985 Admirals Cup
The 1987 Admirals Cup would be remembered
for being won by a small country with a mostly unpaid crew
against heavily funded rock stars
and for one of the biggest cheating scandals
ever seen in yacht racing.
– Storms Ahead
'We got to Fastnet Rock, and I heard our navigator below decks on the radio. He came back and said, "Guys, we are not in a good spot." So I said to the crew, "We've lost the Admirals Cup for the team. It's our fault. Let's go full court press."
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'That means no one can go downstairs, except me because I was the skipper. Everyone was on deck hiking hard until we finished many hours later. We were the fastest boat going home. The boys took a lot of drugs to stay awake.'
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– Rick Dodson, in Storms Ahead
Rick Dodson, skipper, 1987 Admirals Cup
What the critics say . . .
...keen sailors will appreciate [Rebecca Hayter's] mastery of the technical details.
Rick Dodson is one of the brightest stars of New Zealand sailing –  two-time world champion, skipper of the only New Zealand team to win the Admirals Cup, and strategist to Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth on Black Magic in two America’s Cups. For more than two decades he also co-owned a high-tech company which supplied sails to many a race winning international yacht. But Dodsons’s business and sporting success is only part of this story. For years, Dodson competed at the highest levels of his sport despite a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS), a progressive disease which he kept secret. After suffering double vision during the 1995 America’s Cup, he was told his symptoms had been caused by MS, an illness he managed through two more America’s Cup campaigns and a stretch as tactician on the Volvo Ocean Race. After his symptoms became impossible to ignore, Dodson competed in the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, only just missing out on a medal. A sailing book by Rebecca Hayter, a former editor of Boating New Zealand, is always a great read, and keen sailors will appreciate her mastery of the technical details. Storms Ahead is gripping, funny, scandalous and heartrending in equal measure, filled with anecdotes from the likes of Russell Coutts, in his youth a bitter competitive foe of Dodson, and other members of Team New Zealand. Hayter’s interviews, coupled with memories from Dodson’s immediate family, paints not only a portrait of one of the most vivid personalities of New Zealand sailing, but also of the people surrounding him during an era of glittering success: Peter Blake, Kevin Shoebridge, Tom Schnackenberg and Peter Montogomery, to name a few. ‘Winning the America’s Cup in 1995 is one of the greatest stories in New Zealand sport,’ says Hayter. ‘Rick was a key part of that campaign under Sir Peter Blake and in its wake, he was at the height of his career. Suddenly, it was under threat when he was diagnosed with MS. So the story follows the brutal transition from success as an able-bodied person to sailing as a disabled person. The clock was ticking on his physical abilities but even now, he lives his life by looking ahead and he hopes this book will be inspiring for other people with MS.’
Jenny Nicholls, Waiheke Weekender
