History of a Winner... Bernida Won 1925 Inaugural Bayview-Mackinac Sailboat Race
By Toby Murray

The R-Class Ruweida III designed by George Owen, undergoing sea trails off Marblehead, Massachucetts in 1922. The boat was renamed Bernida by Russ Pouliot when he brought the boat to Detroit. (Photograph courtesy of Hart Maritime Museum, MIT)

This is the story of an unusual boat and its "spirit." It’s about a boat that is a true survivor, one that refuses to fade into the past nor rest on its laurels, one that would like to return to its glory days of racing in the 1920s.

It’s all about the spirit of survivorship, a great history, and the boat's desire to sail again. It’s the story of the Bernida.

Russ Pouliot wearing his skipper’s cap in a painting that hangs at the Bayview Yacht Club in Detroit. (Photograph courtesy of Bayview Yacht Club)

The story begins in the world of academia, in the halls of one of the great naval engineering schools in the east, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It begins with a professor there who had a dream.

George Owen, a professor of marine architecture at MIT, had a vision of creating a very fast racing boat, somewhat similar in design to the huge "J" boats being raced in the early America Cup races, but one smaller in scale, one that might be affordable to a greater number of racing sailors. Professor Owen designed the boat for speed with lots of sail to drive her forward.

Professor Owen was a true innovator and one of the leading yacht designers of his day. Many of the most successful R, Q, and P boats, all built to the Universal Rule as racing yachts, came from his drawing board.

The Bernida , originally named Ruweida III , was built in 1921 at the George Lawley and Son yard in Boston. Her length overall was 32' 2", with a beam of 8 feet and a draft of 6 feet. An earlier version, Ruweida II, was larger than III, being 38 feet long with a huge 70-foot spar rigged as a cat boat.

To save weight, most of the R’s were designed with deep open cockpits, making them vulnerable in rough seas. Ruweida III was double planked, the inside skin of white cedar and the outside of Honduras mahogany with white oak frames and keel. Her finish was natural and a true beauty.

To get the full grasp and significance of this boat and its place in history, one must return to its earliest racing days. It was in 1924 that the Bermuda race had just been revived after being dormant during World War I.

The Bayview Club in Detroit, with all of its experience as a fresh water sailing club, was beginning to feel its oats as a newly formed club and decided to try its luck in ocean racing. The club chartered the Lloyd W. Berry, a heavy 62 foot, two-masted schooner without a motor.

The boat was entered in the Bermuda race, more for the experience than with the idea of winning, thenunexpectedly won in its class "B" andthe crew returned home heroes to the local yachting community.

Soon after the Bermuda race, at a Fourth of July regatta with the Port Huron Yacht Club, one of the BYC members announced he had just bought the Lakewood , an R boat, from the Bay City Yacht Club.

Soon to follow were some match races with the Port Huron club, one involving the Lakewood , the Grayhaven , and the Detroit , owned by Russ Pouliot, the crusty blue-collar superintendent at the Belle Isle Boat & Engine Company.

It was at these match race gatherings, in the Fall of 1924, that the talk of a jointly sponsored yacht race to Mackinac Island began to be discussed. In the Spring of 1925, details for the race were planned and training began. At the same time, Russ Pouliot, having been impressed by the speed of the Lakewood , sold his sailboat, Detroit, to Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford.

He thenbought the R boat Rueida III in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Shortly after that, Neil Lynch, also of Bayview, bought Lightning , the champion R in Marblehead. When Russ saw the speed of Lightning compared to his Ruweida III , he began to make some changes to his boat to build up her speed.

Both boats had an open cockpit, as designed by George Owen, but Russ’s boat was also carrying 500 pounds of inside ballast. To prepare his boat for the inaugural Mackinac race, Russ made two changes: he built a watertight cockpit and designed a special lead shoe for the bottom of the boat’s keel.

It wasn’t long before Bernida, with her new ballast ratio, was beating the Marblehead champion, Lightning . Russ had also renamed the boat Bernida, which was his wife's maiden name.

It was at this moment in the history of the Bernida that another famous sailor enters the picture. That summer, while preparing the boat for the upcoming Mackinac race, Russ told his younger brother Carl and a 17-year-old friend of Carl’s by the name of Bob Roadstrom that if they helped him get the boat ready, they could sail with him in the race to Mackinac.

Russ had also lined up three of the best crewmen in the area, Joe Snay, Fred Merz, and Bill Petz. A few days before the race, Carl Pouliot and Bob Roadstrom learned that Russ had been stringing them along and that there was not enough room in the cockpit for two extra kids.

Totally brokenhearted, but with classic teenage determination, the two paddled across the Detroit River to the Detroit Yacht Club and talked the owner of Calypso ,Dr. Gmeiner, into taking them on as crew members.

As history will have it, sometimes by a simple twist of fate, Bob Roadstrum would play a crucial role many years later in the history of Bernida . But let’s not jump ahead to that point just yet.

So, on a damp and murkyday Saturday, July 25, 1925, yachting history was established with the start of the first Bayview to Mackinac sailboat race, a race of 251 miles. The Class A boats started at 4 p.m. with the B class, which included all the R boats, starting 20 minutes later.

With rain and a slight chop, the yachts began on a starboard reach in a slight southeasterly, which was soon to change. A Southeast thunder squall with strong wind ripped through the fleet with plenty of wind, and by10 p.m., the fleet was scattered hither and yon over Lake Huron.

Leading the pack were the three R boats, Bernida, Neagha, and Rascal , followed by the cruising class. A half-hour later, with the building wind shiftingto the northeast, the seas started to pile up and the fleet began a hard beat.

By dawn Sunday, mother nature had taken her toll: three of the cruising class boats had returned to Port Huron, while the remainder of the class was slugging it out off Harbor Beach. Meanwhile, the three R’s were in their element well to the north and screaming toward Mackinac Island.

Russ Pouliot’s sloop Bernida crossed the finish line first at 6:50 p.m. Monday to etch itself in yachting history forever by becoming the first Bayview-Mackinac winner with an overall time of 48 hours.

Of the 12 boats that started the race, only four finished. Three of those finishers were R boats and all finished on Monday night with Neagha coming is second, three hours later, and then Rascal finishing third, three hours after Neagha.

Bernida did not race in 1926, but raced again in 1927, once again placing first in her class and thus establishing herself as one of the premier sailing boats of this period.

And then Bernida disappeared from our history books, only to be found again by chance. And this is where the current story begins.

(To be continued)

Editor’s Note: The author is the Mackinac Island resident who rediscovered the Bernida, hidden away in a Frankfort, Michigan, warehouse. Mr. Murray is also Secretary of the Mackinac Boating Heritage Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving Mackinac area maritime history. The Foundation is raising funds to restore and race again the Bernida, winner of the first Bayview Mackinac race in 1925. This is the first in a series of articles about this famous sailboat.

The Bernida is now in St. Ignace at Restorations by Maverick. The goal is to restore the boat to racing condition in time for the 2007 Mackinac Bayview race. For information on the restoration and how to contribute, contact the Mackinac Boating Heritage Foundation, (906) 847-6094.