Sailing Hall of Fame Inductees

August 16, 2012

San Francisco Bay Area sailors John Kostecki and Stan Honey have been named as two of the nine sailors in the class of 2012 to be inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame.

Kostecki of San Anselmo began sailing at age eight from Richmond Yacht Club. A graduate of Novato High School, he started accruing national sailing championships at age 17, and won his first world title in the Sunfish a year later. In 1988 he won both the world championship and an Olympic silver medal in the Soling class.

Kostecki made international headlines in 2002 when he skippered the yacht illbruck to win the Volvo Ocean Race, after nine months of intense around-the-world racing that included surviving a bad night 50 miles off Cape Town, South Africa, with a leak that threatened to sink the boat. The 32,700-mile race was punctuated by drastic weather and some of the closest racing in the history of the event. In addition to the overall victory, illbruck won four of the nine race legs, and, on the seventh leg, broke the world monohull speed record with a 484-mile 24-hour run. At the time, the team’s achievement was likened to “scaling Mt. Everest without oxygen while everyone else was hiking the Appalachian Trail."

Kostecki served as tactician on the winning Farr 40 at the 2002 Sailing World NOOD Regatta in San Francisco. Now an 11-time world champion in a range of one design classes, Kostecki's leadership and sailing talents are supported by a tremendous depth of experience. A professional sailor and two-time Rolex Yachtsman of the Year (’88 and ’02), his tactical call aboard BMW Oracle’s 110-ft trimaran in the second match of the 2010 America’s Cup (his fifth as tactician) propelled the team to victory. Recently, the 48-year old Kostecki won the 2011-2012 America’s Cup World Series raced in 45-ft catamarans as Oracle Racing prepares for a defense of its title in 2013 on San Francisco Bay.

Stan Honey of Palo Alto, the 2006 Volvo Ocean Race winning navigator, aboard ABN Amro One, is recognized as one of the most outstanding offshore sailors known world-wide. He received the 2010 Rolex Yachtsman of the Year award for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe when the trimaran Groupama 3, with Honey as navigator, set a new record of 48 days, seven hours and 45 minutes (which stood for two years), while eclipsing the existing record – by more than two days and eight hours – that had stood for five years. It has been observed that Groupama 3 would not have broken the record without Honey correctly calling the weather window when they had to re-start after the first attempt was thwarted after a breakdown in the South Atlantic forced them to retire to fix the boat. Later that year Honey would set his sights on another record – in the Newport-Bermuda Race as navigator aboard Speedboat. After leading the 183-boat fleet for most of the 635-mile race, Speedboat was the first boat to cross the line after racing for 59 hours.

Honey’s accomplishments do not end with sailing. After graduating from Yale with a degree in Engineering and Applied Science in 1978, and from Stanford with a Masters in Electrical Engineering in 1983, Honey, in 1998, co-founded Sportvision Inc., which evolved into the leading developer of live-tracking enhancements for sports TV broadcasts. Honey led the development of the yellow first-down line for televised football; the NASCAR racecar tracking and highlighting system; the red and blue tails attached to streaking hockey pucks; and the baseball K-Zone system, which highlights the pitch location and strike zone in televised baseball. He holds eight patents in navigational system design, 21 patents for TV special effects, is a member of the board of directors of KVH (a manufacturer of satellite communications and navigation sensors). Honey, married to Sally Lindsay Honey, herself a two-time Yachtswoman of the Year ('72 and '73), currently works for the America's Cup Event Authority on TV technology and has created the on-screen graphics that clarified the complexities of the fleet and match racing by the 45-ft catamarans competing in the America’s Cup World Series.

The other seven class of 2012 inductees include boat designer Bruce Kirby of Connecticut, most famous for the Laser, and three-time Star Olympic medalist and two-time Star world champion Mark Reynolds of San Diego. Posthumous inductees are Olympic gold and silver medalist Peter Barrett of Wisconsin, America’s Cup competitor and journalist Bob Bavier of New York, preeminent rules expert Gregg Bemis of Massachusetts, yacht designer and Medal of Freedom winner Rod Stephens of New York and the founder and first commodore of New York YC John Cox Stevens. The inductees will be honored on October 14 in an invitation-only ceremony at Southern YC in New Orleans, the second-oldest yacht club in the country.

Find out more about the National Sailing Center & Hall of Fame in Annapolis, MD, at www.nshof.org.