Remembering Bob Fisher – Mr America’s Cup
Bob Fisher, winner of successive championship titles in Hornet and Fireball class dinghies, Little America’s Cup, & 2-man Round Britain Race winner, Journalist, photographer and award-winning author has died at home in Lymington.
He was 85.
Fisher was the author of 30 books on all aspects of the sport, including eight covering The Whitbread/Volvo round the world race and 1986 Book of the Sea award winning tome – Greatest Race: Official Story of the Whitbread Round the World Race, 1985-86 – and seven on the America’s Cup.
He grew up in Brightlingsea, Essex he first made a name as a top crew, winning seven national and world titles in the National Hornet and Fireball high performance dinghy classes, according to Sail World. He also won the International Yacht Racing Union trials to select a 2-man trapeze catamaran trials with his Brightlingsea friend Reg White which led to the Tornado being chosen as the first Olympic multihull class.
Fisher gained an international reputation, winning the 1967 Little America’s Cup in C-Class catamarans, racing the British defender Lady Helmsman with Peter Schneidau against the Australian challenger Quest III, winning the series in dominant style 4:1. Fisher’s prize was an all- expenses paid trip to Newport Rhode Island to watch the American 12m yacht Intrepid beat the Australian challenger Dame Pattie in the real America’s Cup. It led to a life-long obsession with him covering all the matches since, bar the current racing off Auckland.
In 1992, Fisher set out to write the definite history of the America’s Cup, supported by that year’s Cup winner, American philanthropist Bill Koch. The 2-volume An Absorbing Interest took 15 years to research and write and has become the go-to opus to answer any question about the cup. His latest work An Absorbing Interest Vol III covering the past two decades of cup races is due to be published in the Autumn.
Fisher’s greatest hope had been to see Britain finally win back the famous ewer first competed for in 1851 in a race around the Isle of Wight. That has not happened in his lifetime, but he did follow the Ineos team come-back from oblivion in preliminary races in Auckland before Christmas to win a place in the finals of the Prada Cup challenge trials 5:0, and was cheered even more by Sir Ben’s last race dedication to our Mr America’s Cup The final chapter of Bob’s last book may yet record his greatest wish fulfilled.
Bob Fisher is survived by his wife Dee, two children Alice and Carolyne, three grandchildren and four great grandchildren.
Donations in Bob Fisher’s memory are welcomed to be sent to the Sir Thomas Lipton Foundation.
Messages and condolences are welcome on Bob Fisher’s Facebook page.
Read a list of Fisher’s accomplishments on Sail World.
Main image of Bob Fisher enjoying an MAA press lunch.
In the early 90s, a bunch of us used my father’s cottage in Cowes for the annual week of yacht racing and prodigious drinking. Most days we’d have a barbecue in the street. Bob Fisher once stole a sausage, we were so proud to have aided the nutrition of a legend.