Sailing Legend Charley Morgan Is Dead at 93 (Video)

Last of the Founding Fathers of Fiberglass

Charley Morgan steers Heritage during the 1970s America’s Cup trials. Morgan used to like to say that it was “the most documented defeat in history.” This is a screen shot from a YouTube video, which can be viewed in its entirety at the end of the story.

This tribute to Charley Morgan is reprinted with permission from the author, Boomer Depp. Morgan died on Jan. 6, just a few hours after his wife Maurine.

By BOOMER DEPP

Charley Morgan is the only person to ever single-handedly design, build and skipper his own 12-Meter in the America’s Cup. Prior to and since Charley’s 1970 Cup attempt, all campaigns were made by large syndicates. He even sailed the boat on its own bottom from St. Petersburg, Florida to Newport, Rhode Island to compete in the 1970 America’s Cup Defender Trials.

Charley was born in Chicago in 1929 but grew up in Tampa. He was a boy when his uncle took him sailing on Lake Conway near a sleepy town called Orlando. At 10 he built his first sailboat out of discarded orange crates and sack cloth.

Professionally built sailboats were a rare sight during the World War II era in Tampa Bay. He never saw more than eight at once. Sometimes he got a loaner and sailed to St. Petersburg. At 19 his confident parents let him sail on a boat called the Red Bird— to Havana.

Morgan attended the University of Tampa and took a job with Johnson sails. In 1952 he founded Morgan Racing Sails in Tampa. While making sails Morgan met yacht designer George Luzier, who got him interested in designing boats.

In 1957, Morgan, along with Charlie Hunt, designed and built Brisote, a 31-foot plywood yawl. After successfully appealing disqualification due to a lack of engine, he entered the Havana race and took second in Brisote's division.

In 1960 Jack Powell commissioned Morgan to build the 40-foot centerboard fiberglass yawl Paper Tiger.

The famously successful Paper Tiger won the SORC (Southern Ocean Racing Conference) in 1961 and 1962. Because of that triumph, his prior success building racing sails, and a newly developed relationship with legendary yacht designer Olin Stephens, Morgan Racing Sails received an order to build some sails in 1962 for the Stephens-designed Americas’s Cup defender Columbia.

Charley Morgan and his second wife Maurine, who died a few hours before him.

Unable to find a builder to manufacture the Tiger Cub, a smaller version of Paper Tiger, Morgan founded the Morgan Yacht Corporation in 1962. Early models included the Tiger Cub and fiberglass sloop Morgan 34. The Morgan Yachts line of boats quickly grew to a fleet of sizes from 22 feet to the 54-foot Morgan Marauder. In 1968, Morgan sold his company, which increased his wealth substantially, but continued to design and help with the company.

In response to customer feedback while operating Morgan Yachts, Morgan designed the shallow-draft Morgan Out Island 41, one of the most popular boats over 40 feet overall ever built. First built in 1971 the spacious boat became popular with charter companies, becoming the standard charter boat of its time. Morgan left Morgan Yachts in 1972.

Loose Cannon’s home and office is a 1977 Morgan Out Island ketch named Rio. Derided by some purists, it is nevertheless one of the most successful designs in history with nearly 1,100 having been made. The design was hugely popular for bareboat charters, including the Moorings in the British Virgin Islands, before catamarans came to dominate.

(Editor’s note: When I purchased Rio in 2000 I immediately called Charley, with whom I had enjoyed several telephone conversations and a lunch. Here’s how the call went:

ME: Charley, I just bought one of your designs.

CHARLEY: Oh yeah, which one?

ME: An Out Island 41, a ketch.

CHARLEY: Ah, yes, the floating fornicatorium.

His joke was a reference to it’s popularity as a charter platform, given the distance between the two staterooms, one an aft cabin and the other a V-berth.

His fondness for shallow draft vessels as demonstrated by the Out Island line and later his trawler designs was firmly rooted in Morgan’s notions of seaworthiness. He said too many boatbuyers believed that a boat designed to cross oceans provided an extra margin of safety for coastal cruising and island hopping. Not so, he said. A shallow draft cruiser can often find refuge more easily than a bluewater boat. “The ability to find shelter is an element of seaworthiness,” he said.

Having said that, at least two “Outhouse 41s have circumnavigated.)

Morgan found Heritage Yacht Corporation in 1975, producing trawlers and sailing yachts. He later worked for Chris-Craft, doing design work on their trawler line. He designed sailboats in the 60's for Columbia Yachts including the the Columbia 40 and Columbia 38 as well as other yacht builders and private clients. Later in the 70's till the early 90's, he also designed for other manufacturers including the Com-Pac 35 for Hutchins Yachts.

At Heritage’s launching, one of the two cranes started to tip, causing some damage to Heritage. Heritage was repaired and relaunched. As I recall, a hurricane hindered Heritage's delivery to Newport, but that wasn't going to stop Charley and Heritage from participating in the Defender Trials.

There were four 12 Meters competing for the America’s Cup defense in 1970: Weatherly (12 Meter US-17), Intrepid (12 Meter US-22), Heritage (12 Meter US-23), and Valiant (12 Meter US-24). Heritage started the trials off well with a win over Weatherly but was later knocked out of the trials by Intrepid.

That summer Intrepid skippered by Bill Flicker was a wee bit quicker, but Heritage with Charley and crew had a strong following of supporters. Though I was a fan of Intrepid and Bill Ficker at the same time, like a lot of sailors, I was rooting for Charley and crew. Mostly we were rooting because of Charley, who had assumed the superhuman burden of designing, building and skippering Heritage.

After her America’s Cup campaign, Heritage was sold and converted into and ocean racer. Metal bunks, a galley, saloon, head, and engine were installed and a new racing era for Heritage began. Heritage campaigned in races throughout the East Coast and in the Great Lakes. During the 1980’s Heritage met up again with her old rival, Intrepid, on the Great Lakes and avenged her previous America’s Cup defeat. Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s Heritage dominated “big boat” racing, winning many of the prestigious races in the northeast, including consecutive wins of the Chicago to Mackinac race in 1983 and 1984.

In the late 1980’s Heritage left the Great Lakes and sailed south. On the way she stopped in Antigua and won Antigua Race Week for the second time. Next, Heritage sailed to Venezuela, then through the Panama Canal, and up to California.

In 1990, Heritage was purchased and brought back to New England. While back in New England, Heritage has remained a racing machine, dominating the New England and Newport racing circuit. She is a three time winner of Nantucket’s Opera House Cup, and was first to finish at OHC in 2010 and 2012. She is a two time winner of Figawi and wins races daily in Newport.

While Charley is one of the last living original pioneers of the fiberglass sailboat industry, his 1970 America’s Cup entrant, Heritage, is the last wooden 12 Meter yacht built for the United States. To this day, she maintains the bright hull and blue decks that she showed off in her 1970 duel with Intrepid and her storied and successful racing career. Heritage is now owned by 12 Meter Charters in Newport, Rhode Island.

The summer of 2014 Charles Morgan was invited up to sail Heritage in the Leukemia Cup in Newport. Charley was called on the phone, and told it was for a good cause, and he took care of the rest. He booked tickets for his artist wife, Maurine, and himself and it was a go. On a spectacular sunny breezy day, the plan executed perfectly. Heritage sparkled, the crew performed, and, at 44, Heritage placed first, beating her younger competitors.

Charles Morgan at the helm of Heritage the 12 Meter he designed and built for the 1970s America's Cup Challenger Trials. She took 1st place in the 12 Meter Class, at the Leukemia Cup in Newport, RI the spring of 2014. (Photo courtesy of 12 Meter Charters)

Heritage’s Specifications:

LOA – 63′
LWL – 50′
Beam – 12′ 6″
Draft – 10’8″
Displacement – 70,000 lbs
Sail Area – 1,785 square feet
Designer – Charley Morgan
Builder – Morgan Yachts, St. Petersburg, Florida
Original Owner/Skipper – Charles Morgan

An excerpt from Jeff Klinkenberg's interview with Charley in 2014:

In 1956, Charley met Sally Crawford, who did all their marketing. Their marriage lasted until her death from cancer in 2001. In Europe he spent months grieving and looking at art masterpieces. Perhaps because he is Charley Morgan, he wondered about reinventing himself as an artist. After all, he had enjoying drawing as a kid.

He studied, took lessons from Tarpon Springs maestro Christopher Still, painted like a maniac. In 2006 he married Maurine, an artist who paints on one side of the Florida room while on the other side he works on a painting inspired by seeing a panther near the St. Johns River when he was a boy.

His bookshelf is lined with art books and volumes about sailing and design. He likes nothing more than discussing the engineering involved in boat building, using the word "theorem" or mentioning "the propagation of gravity waves" or puzzling over the "vorticity in trailing eddies" that slow otherwise fast sailboats."

Charley Morgan as he paints a self-portrait. (Tampa Bay Times photo)

The late sailing writer Red Marston wrote this elegant statement about Charley in the St. Petersburg Times more than a half-century ago. “Morgan is a vibrant young man who is so tense with ideas, thoughts, philosophies, ambitions and self-improvement projects that on a clear, quiet night you can almost hear him hum as though he were a human generator, which, indeed, he seems to be.”

Accomplishments and Honors

• Founder of Morgan Yacht Corporation.

• Designer and builder of Paper Tiger, winner of overall honors at the 1961 and 1962 SORC (Southern Ocean Racing Conference).

• Designer, builder, financer and skipper of his own America’s Cup 12-metre, Heritage.

• Designer of the Out Island 41, one of the most popular cruising sailboats ever built.

• Designer of over 52 sailing yachts (see list below).

(Editor’s note: Two of Morgan’s protege’s at Morgan Yacht Corporation, Steve Seaton and the late Chuck Neville, went on to become successful yacht designers in their own right.)

Boats Designed by Charley Morgan

Antigua 53
Chrysler 27
Columbia 31
Columbia 38
Columbia 38 CB
Columbia 39 Constellation
Columbia 40
Com-Pac 35
CSY 505
Heritage 1 ton
Heritage Super 27
Hirsh 62
Melody 34 (Hunt)
Morgan 22
Morgan 24/25
Morgan 26
Morgan 27
Morgan 28
Morgan 30
Morgan 30-2
Morgan 33
Morgan 33T
Morgan 34
Morgan 35
Morgan 38
Morgan 40 Cruising Ketch
Morgan 41
Morgan 42-1
Morgan 42-2
Morgan 45
Morgan 45 (S&J)
Morgan 54 (Marauder)
Morgan Out Island 28
Morgan Out Island 30
Morgan Out Island 33
Morgan Out Island 33 MS
Morgan Out Island 36
Morgan Out Island 37/372
Morgan Out Island 41
Morgan Out Island 41 Classic
Morgan Out Island 415
Morgan Out Island 415 Ketch
Morgan Out Island 416
Morgan Out Island 49
Morgan Out Island 51
Nautical 39
Spindrift 24
Starratt & Jenks 45
Tiger Cub 28
TMI 27
West Indies 36 (Morgan)
West Indies 38 (Morgan)