If you were to use one word to describe Butch Ulmer, it would be thoughtful.   He thinks about his words, and is one of the most respected sailors and volunteers around the waterfront.  He grew up sailing on Long Island Sound and sharpened his racing skills as a Midshipman at the United States Naval Academy (Class of 1961).  At the Academy, he was the winning skipper of Intercollegiate sailing’s oldest regatta, The McMillen Cup.

While serving as an officer in the Navy, he competed in the Finn Class Olympic Trials for the 1964 Games and somehow found time to do a series of offshore races in Europe, South America and the USA.  After completing his service in the Navy, Ulmer joined his father’s sailmaking company based in City Island, New York.  In 1969, he became President of the company when his father retired.

Ulmer Sails became one of the largest sailmakers, with 40 franchises worldwide.  He raced extensively in the Maxi Yacht Class and many one design classes.  He won the Mobjack National Championship (1966 and 1967); the Tempest National Championship (1967); was overall winner of Block Island Race Week; recorded wins in the Newport to Bermuda Race (1988), Marblehead to Halifax Race (1983), Miami to Nassau Race (1980), and was the overall winner of the Southern Ocean Racing Conference in 1980.

Ulmer told a story in an interview with WindCheck magazine about how one of his employees, Owen Torrey – a Harvard graduate with a law degree from Columbia University – gained inspiration for designing an innovative spinnaker from (Sailing Hall of Fame Inductee) Nathaniel Bowditch’s book the American Practical Navigator: “In Bowditch there’s a table of the width between meridians at various latitudes.  The top of the spinnaker is the North Pole.  Then you come down to the Equator, and how much longitude you want to use determines how full or flat the spinnaker is.  We started making radial head spinnakers. They were gorgeous sails.”  The sails were used by the 12 Meter Courageous and fast offshore yachts of the era, including Running Tide and Yankee Girl.

Over the past thirty years, Butch Ulmer has served as a tireless race officer running many championships in a variety of classes – including Etchells, Shields, Interclub, Stars, J109s, J105s, Block Island Race Week, 420s, Viber 640, Optimist Dinghies and the Intercollegiate Offshore Championship.  He was one of the first sailors engaged in creating the Safety-at-Sea Seminars in 1979, and was responsible for creating a series of short films on safety for the Storm Trysail Club.  He is a past commodore of the Storm Trysail Club, has been a Trustee of the Larchmont Yacht Club, and served on the Fales Committee at the U.S. Naval Academy.  He was inducted into the Intercollegiate Sailing Hall of Fame (1970) and has received many awards for his volunteer work on Long Island Sound.

~ Gary Jobson