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Download PDF - Oyster News 66 - Oyster Yachts

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OWNER PROFILE<br />

“We started looking at <strong>Oyster</strong>s<br />

in 1995, when we saw<br />

photographs in Cruising<br />

World. Vicki saw all those<br />

windows and said now<br />

that’s a boat I could live on.<br />

We were so impressed by<br />

the craftsmanship that went<br />

into the boat, the decking,<br />

woodwork, panelling.<br />

”<br />

It was incredible.<br />

60 www.oystermarine.com<br />

TOP: Close racing between Arbella and the <strong>Oyster</strong> <strong>66</strong><br />

Avolare during the <strong>Oyster</strong> BVI Regatta 2008<br />

MIDDLE: The crew aboard Arbella, BVI Regatta 2008<br />

BOTTOM: The Wallace family onboard Arbella during<br />

passage from Bahamas to Annapolis, 2004<br />

Mike Wallace is Optimistic continued<br />

life, with lack of respect for nuclear<br />

safety. Chernobyl was an accident<br />

waiting to happen."<br />

In 1998 Wallace resigned as ComEd<br />

Senior Vice President to co-found a niche<br />

investment banking firm in the energy<br />

sector. Called Barrington Energy Partners,<br />

Wallace guided the new company into<br />

taking advantage of acquisitions triggered<br />

by the deregulation of energy that was<br />

beginning on a state-by-state basis. It was<br />

a good call. The company grew from the<br />

two founding partners to a talent pool of<br />

18 experts in all phases of energy in just<br />

15 months. Barrington’s clients were major<br />

utilities in the US. Among them was<br />

Constellation Energy.<br />

Just a year into Barrington Energy, Wallace<br />

did something he’d been looking forward<br />

to for some time: he bought his second<br />

sail boat, an <strong>Oyster</strong> 53. The only other<br />

boat he’d owned was a Sunfish.<br />

Mike Wallace remembers the first time he<br />

went sailing as if it were yesterday,<br />

perhaps because he very nearly died.<br />

He was 19, spending the summer of his<br />

sophomore year in Corpus Christi,<br />

Texas, going through Naval aviation as<br />

part of ROTC training. One Saturday his<br />

roommate, another Marquette student,<br />

suggested they go sailing. It sounded like<br />

fun. They went to the harbour and signed<br />

out a Sunfish from Navy Special Services.<br />

They picked up a third guy along the way.<br />

Off they went, the three of them<br />

crammed onto the 14-foot, minimalist<br />

boat, with no life jackets. Roommate<br />

practiced a few tacks in the harbour, then<br />

confidently sailed through the breakwater<br />

into the Gulf of Mexico. The onshore<br />

breeze was building.<br />

An hour or so later, with land fast<br />

disappearing, Wallace recalls suggesting<br />

they turn back. Roommate tried several<br />

times, but failed when the strong wind got<br />

behind the overloaded boat and kept<br />

rolling it over. Finally, Roommate<br />

suggested it would help if one of them<br />

got off. The third guy was shivering<br />

with cold, so Wallace jumped in the water.<br />

To this day he shakes his head about<br />

doing that. His pals continued upwind,<br />

and capsized every time they tried to<br />

turn back.<br />

"I could only see them part of the time as<br />

I bobbed in the waves," Wallace says.<br />

"Finally they gave up and took the sail<br />

down. They disappeared." He treaded<br />

water for three and a half hours before a<br />

Special Services launch found him. "I was<br />

in the best shape of my life, and I was<br />

totally exhausted. I slept for 18 hours."<br />

Wallace didn’t sail again for 15 years<br />

when he bought, of all things, a Sunfish.<br />

When the odd coincidence of that<br />

purchase was pointed out, Wallace said it<br />

had never occurred to him. "Perhaps part<br />

of the reason lies in the submarine<br />

training I received along the way," he says.<br />

"When I received my dolphins that meant I<br />

could drive that war machine, fix it, dive it,<br />

surface it. I respected the sea, but was<br />

confident I could be safe and function on<br />

and under the sea. I never once had any<br />

fear of sailing."<br />

By 1982 Mike and Vicki were married<br />

with two children aged 8 and 10.<br />

He taught himself to sail on the lake<br />

across the street from their house in<br />

Arlington Heights, IL. The family spent<br />

summer weekends visiting lakes in<br />

Michigan and Wisconsin with the boat<br />

strapped to the back of their camper<br />

and they all caught the sailing bug.<br />

A few years later, Vicki surprised Mike by<br />

chartering a 25-foot Catalina on Lake<br />

Winnebago, in Wisconsin. "I went into the<br />

office where they asked for my sailing<br />

resume," Mike says. "I said I didn’t have<br />

one, but that I was a Navy officer for five<br />

years. The guy said that covered it, and<br />

took us out for a trial run. I told my son<br />

Shawn, who has a photographic memory,

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