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,