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to remember everything he did. Later we
took the boat out into the lake, dropped
the anchor, and got out a book we had
called How to Sail. It was my first time on
a sailboat with rigging."
Wallace sailed with a friend on his Morgan
45, chartered in the Caribbean a number
of times, took the Annapolis Sailing
Course for bareboat chartering in 1990,
and signed a contract with Richard
Matthews for the Oyster 53 at the
Annapolis Boat Show in 1999.
"We started looking at Oysters in 1995,"
Wallace says, "when we saw photographs
in Cruising World. Vicki saw all those
windows and said now that’s a boat I
could live on. A friend had a Hinckley 60,
a beautiful boat, but with no deck saloon
so it was dark below."
The Wallaces made their first trip to Oyster
in 1996. Today they call it their Oyster
Adventure. "We didn’t know if we could
ever afford one, but we could dream, we
could start down the path." Mike says.
They visited Fox’s Marina, Landamores,
and Windboats. They made five trips once
the boat was in construction, always
adding a couple of extra days to tour the
English countryside. "We liked our Oyster
Adventure," Mike says, "because at the end
of the day if Barrington Energy went south
and we had to sell the boat before it got
finished, we were at least going to enjoy
the trip along the way. And we were so
impressed by the craftsmanship that went
into the boat, the decking, woodwork,
panelling. It was incredible. Even if we
could only afford to own it for a while,
what a great experience it would be."
Unlike most Oyster buyers who suffer
through the two-year wait, Wallace put a
delay on construction. He didn’t want the
boat until April, 2003, when he and Vicki
planned to go sailing for eighteen months.
Then in 2001, just as initial work began
on Arbella, Wallace got a call from
Constellation asking him to come in and
run the Nuclear Group. His initial reaction:
been there, done that. "But Vicki and I
talked, and we thought how bad can this
be? We can take the offer, sell our interest
in Barrington, move to Annapolis and live
on tidal waters, take delivery of the boat,
work another year, and then go sailing."
It sounds glib, but what really drives
Mike Wallace is a personal obligation to
give back. Both Mike and Vicki are
Marquette graduates, where the
philosophy embedded is excellence, >
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