1998 Volume 121 No 1–4 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

The 41st Newport-Bermuda Race was a long one, slowest
since 1978 when Ted Turner's 63-foot sloop Tenacious
took 105 hours to cover the 635 ocean miles. The lazy
progress south across the Gulf Stream last week left time for
skippers and navigators to plot and scheme.
On Donnybrook, a shiny, black, million-dollar 73 footer campaigned
by Washington businessman Jim Muldoon, Maryland
'66, the talk was of rhumb lines and tacking angles and sail selection.
Muldoon had much to say, and so did navigator Angus
Lumsden of Annapolis, who went so far to be deferential to the
I'd smash people on the head and break the bones all over
again, right through the cast."
He was at Wabash for only a year. Having completed pledgeship
at Indiana Beta in 1957, he had to leave before initiation.
The Air Force sent him to Germany where he signed up for
overseas courses through the University of Maryland. If you got
an 'A,' the service picked up the tab. Muldoon, always a poor
Jim Muldoon: Captain of his
own yacht, a strong company
THE SALTe^
and now
A
U.S. Sailing.
c
OF THE SEAS
by
Angus Phillips
boss that he unwittingly crossed an invisible line.
"And another thing," said the swarthy, combative Muldoon at
the end of one long debate, "don't give me any of that 'with all
due respect' crap. I know what that means. It means you're trying
to argue with the captain. And arguing with the captain
ain't allowed!"
Anyone who thinks sailboat racing still is the province of
well-mannered trust-fund babies with summer estates in the
Hamptons need to look no further for a contrary view.
Muldoon is many things. Refined he ain't.
He's not as bad as people think," said longtime crewman
Brian Johnson of Potomac. "He gets most of his reputation from
short races on the Chesapeake where things happen fast. He
starts yelling and everybody on the bay can hear. He's a different
person offshore, much calmer. I really like the guy. Sure, he
yells. When he yells at me, I just ignore it."
For 20 years, Muldoon's sailing rants were confined to a series
of big, black offshore boats called Donnybrook that he
campaigned from here to Europe on the ocean racing scene.
These days the voice booms larger. Recendy, he was elected
president of U.S. Sailing, the sport's 42,000-member national
governing body, successor to the snooty U.S. Yacht Racing
Union, long the province of yacht club bluebloods with hands
as soft as tissue paper.
The mind reels. Muldoon, son of a hard-drinking Teamsters
organizer in Gary, Ind., running U.S. Sailing. Muldoon, the examateur
boxer and ex-college fullback at
Wabash College who busted his wrist so
badly in a football game he couldn't play
anymore, lost his scholarship and had to
leave school and join the Air Force.
"I broke eleven bones in one fall," said
Muldoon, who in middle age is still built like
a firetruck. "They put it in a cast, but 1 kept
rebreaking it. When I came through the line.
Student and never a big spender, suddenly pulled down As.
"Otherwise, I had to pay for them," he said. After his military
stint he landed a day job as an aide to then-Sen. Birch Bayh (D-
Ind.) and headed for College Park to finish up at night.
He soon joined Maryland Alpha where his roommate, who
had a sailboat, took Muldoon out on the bay. He clapped on to
sailing like a leech, bought a half-share in a 24-foot Rainbow
and proceeded to sink it twice and plot shoals and oyster bars
in the Chesapeake by doing what he did best: hitting them.
When he wasn't racing, Muldoon worked. He couldn't find a
job after graduating from Georgetown Law School, he said, so
he started his own company. Meteor. With its headquarters at
15th and K streets. Meteor has a branch that does high-tech
training, one that supplies communications equipment and a
third that advises firms seeking to do business with the government.
It has oil and gas leases and offices in Texas, California
and Fairfax. Meteor has been good to Muldoon, who rides
around in a big black car and a big black boat.
Sailing success, however, has been tougher. "Our first regatta
in 1976," he said, "they had four races. We got a did-not-start,
two did-not-finishes and a disqualification. We didn't know
how to do anything."
His first big boat was a C&C 41-footer. Later, he upgraded to
a Frers 46, then a Santa Cruz 70 that, for a while, was the biggest
active race boat on the Chesapeake. Now comes the new
Santa Cruz 73, homeported in Annapolis. Why so big "My ego
and my backside are too big for anything
else," Muldoon said.
Donnybrook refers not to the famous
battle in which Irish forces were routed by
the British but to the annual Donnybrook
Fair outside Dublin, where the Irish come, in
Muldoon's words, "to dance, make music,
drink and fight. We are celebrating the Irish
capacity for drinking and fighting."
14 THE SCROLL FALL 1998