SAILING / RICH ROBERTS : Slater Gave No Quarter at Helm

The sailing community was stunned by the recent, sudden death of Peggy Slater at 72. She seemed indestructible.

As sailor, yacht broker or all-around good person, with her flaming red hair and a trademark flower over her left ear, Slater was a match for anyone.

Peggy Slater taught Humphrey Bogart to sail. On her advice, he bought his sailboat, “Santana,” from another actor, Dick Powell.

Stories such as that will be told in Slater’s book “An Affair With the Sea,” due out in February. A couple, brought to mind by longtime friends Rick Ermshar and Elyse Mintey, are worth telling now.

Slater learned to sail at 3 and was racing at 13. During World War II she crewed on the 56-foot ketch “Lucky Lady” to Mexico to collect shark livers for vitamins for the Army Medical Corps. One Christmas Eve they weaved back into L.A. Harbor through mines, unaware that the pattern had been changed while they were gone.

On a singlehanded sail to Hawaii she went forward to change a headsail during a squall in the Molokai Channel, fell overboard and was trapped against the hull by the sail for 11 hours.

“I believe I’m the only person to sail to Hawaii underwater,” she said.

Peggy Slater retired as a broker two years ago and was living in San Pedro on her 43-foot boat, “Valentine.”

She had just arrived for a speaking engagement before the women’s Sailing Assn. at Marina del Rey when she suffered a massive stroke.

San Diego’s Larry Klein--Rolex Yachtsman of the Year and an America’s Cup hopeful one minute, an outsider the next--declines to discuss his firing by billionaire Bill Koch’s America-3 syndicate, but the move wasn’t a big surprise.

The feeling was that Koch absorbed Klein’s Triumph America syndicate in a merger not to get Klein--he already had competent skippers in Gary Jobson, Buddy Melges and himself--but to acquire the services of Klein’s designer, Heiner Meldner.

Klein was expendable, and when he caused a commotion at the Columbus Cup in Baltimore last month by asking that a woman crew member be removed from his boat because she wasn’t big and strong enough, Koch felt Klein might become an embarrassment.

However, a source said, that was only “one of a series of things” that led to Klein’s dismissal. Koch sensed they weren’t going to get along.

Sailing Notes

CONGRESSIONAL CUP--Once sailing’s most prestigious match-racing event, it took a step back toward that status with the introduction of the agile Catalina 37s last year. Now the Long Beach Yacht Club is trying to upgrade it more with a strong field for the March 13-16 event.

Eight America’s Cup-class skippers include Rod Davis, the only three-time Congressional winner; past winners Peter Gilmour, Australia, and Chris Dickson, New Zealand; Russell Coutts, New Zealand; Joachim Schumann, Germany; Marc Bouet, France, and Americans Paul Cayard and John Bertrand. The key is that all will be in San Diego prepping for next May’s International America’s Cup Class world championships and will welcome the competition. Cayard will have the nucleus of his Italian Il Moro di Venezia crew. Dickson will have a predominantly Japanese crew, and Davis may, too.

They have been working with separate Japanese challenge syndicates, although Davis, an American citizen but a New Zealand resident, is scheduled to rejoin Michael Fay’s effort after the worlds. Bertrand is the Beach Boys skipper. Other entrants will be Jim Brady of Annapolis, Md., and Steve Steiner of Long Beach. Brady won the Ficker Cup sailoff berth, as well as the J-24 and J-22 world titles this year. Steiner won the host club sailoff. . . . The Congressional still doesn’t offer prize money, as some other events on the World Match Racing circuit do. Gilmour said recently he would do “no more freebies” but accepted, anyway.

AMERICA’S CUP--Bill Koch’s America-3 syndicate has bought a half-interest in F-1, the new America’s Cup class boat the Beach Boys syndicate bought from the French for $2.25 million. Starting in January, American-3 and the Beach Boys will share the boat for training until their own boats are built. . . . The Christina Group is another defense syndicate that refuses to quit despite a September dismissal by the America’s Cup Organizing Committee. The Christina Group is based at the Courageous Sailing Center in Boston and is headed by longtime Cup hopeful David Vietor. Christina is a hope of the old Eastern yachting establishment for whom the Cup is only a memory.

The international jury for the IACC worlds and the Cup: Goran Petersson, Sweden; Cy Gillette, Hawaii; Paul Henderson, Canada; Graeme Owens, Australia; John Ripard, Malta; Carlo Rolandi, Italy--top judges all. . . . Two problems remained after a recent meeting of the 12 challengers in San Diego. One is whether the surviving challenger can switch boats before meeting the defender. Under the Deed of Gift, the defender doesn’t have to declare what he’ll sail until the first race of the final round, but the challenger must post notice 10 months ahead. Hardly fair. The other problem is getting the Soviet entry cleared to sail past the U.S. Navy for San Diego Bay. As it stands, the Soviets will have to dock in Mission Bay. . . . There will be random drug testing during the worlds in ’91 and the Cup trials in ’92.

NOTEWORTHY--Charles M. (Chuck) Kober of Long Beach is this year’s recipient of the U.S. Yacht Racing Union’s Herreshoff Trophy, its most prestigious award for contributions to the sport. Kober was USYRU president during the ’84 Olympics and has been involved in Olympic sailing as a competitor, coach and manager. . . . Wendy Thomson, Lanee Butler and Kathy Chapin of the U.S. placed second, third and fourth behind Britain’s Penny Way in the women’s world boardsailing championships at Buenos Aires. Their coach is Charlie McKee, bronze medalist in 470 dinghies at Pusan, South Korea in ’88. . . . Mike Segerblom of Newport Beach was re-elected youth representative on USYRU’s board of directors.

The Ultimate 30s--billed as the “world’s fastest monohulls”--have found life after the death of their Texas-based professional series. As the “Open 30” class, they ran a four-boat event at San Francisco and hope to have eight boats, including two from Europe, at Key West, Fla. Jan. 13-18. John McLaurin of the California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey has won three of the last four events and was second in the other. The San Francisco event was tentatively scheduled at Long Beach for next week but was moved north for better wind and sponsor satisfaction.