Winging It
Designed by Bob Perry and Jim Antrim, the 52-foot Little Wing is an absolute blast to sail.
Laurens Morel/ saltycolours.com
There are folks who like a casual sail from time to time. There are sailors who own boats who enjoy them frequently, but who are not necessarily deeply committed to the sport or lifestyle. And then there are flat-out maniac mariners, guys who’ve sailed since they were kids, and who live and breathe every facet of it: cruising, racing and chartering. And everything in between.
Dudes like Californian Ron Boehm, the skipper and owner of the twin-hulled 52-footer Little Wing, one of the cooler vintage catamarans you’ll ever see.
I first crossed wakes with Boehm and Little Wing during the 2016 Conch Republic Cup, a memorable regatta from Key West, Florida, to Cuba and back. It included a trio of inshore races, and a pair of wild-and-woolly Gulf Stream crossings of the Straits of Florida. I was sailing a pretty flash 60-foot offshore cat myself, but Little Wing cleaned our clock, winning all five races in the series to completely dominate the multihull division. Let’s just say that it made an impression.
Happily, however, in this past February’s Caribbean Multihull Challenge in St. Maarten, I had the chance to hop aboard Little Wing on a sweet sail from Simpson Bay to Orient Bay while it participated in the rally portion of the annual event. From the perspective of the boat and its rather fervent but laid-back captain—a potent combo—I now have a much better understanding of exactly how we got waxed in Cuba.
Boehm has enjoyed a successful career in business and publishing, but in essence, first and foremost, he’s a sailor. He got his start racing prams as a junior sailor in Santa Barbara, California; graduated to skiff sailing as a teen in the highly technical and competitive International Fourteen class, in which he still campaigns; eventually took up more one-design racing in Santa Cruz 27s, where he became a national champ; and got into catamaran sailing with the purchase of a couple of charter boats from Leopard and Fountaine Pajot. When he decided to buy a dedicated cruising boat that he could still occasionally race, he knew he wanted a cat. “No heeling, which my wife likes, and so much more room,” he says.
He found what he was looking for in Little Wing, a story in and of itself. In 1994, a young Microsoft exec commissioned the cat from, of all people, renowned naval architect Bob Perry. He was not exactly known for multihulls, but he was ably assisted by someone who was: engineer Jim Antrim. The Perry/Antrim 52 was built in the Pacific Northwest by Shaw Boats with generous helpings of surplus carbon sourced from another local manufacturer by the name of Boeing. The cat changed hands several times in the ensuing years before Boehm bought it in 2015.
Since then, it’s been driven hard and fast, from the United States to the Caribbean, and is now based in St. Croix, in the US Virgin Islands. There, Boehm’s mate, Steve Sargent, often stacks up the trampoline with prams and sails local kids over to St. Thomas for regattas. Little Wing is nothing if not well-sailed and cared for.
“It’s not a light boat, but it’s rock-solid and so safe to sail offshore,” Boehm says. “There’s no flexing whatsoever. We hit 18 knots coming down the back side of a wave off St. John’s. It’s a lot of fun to sail.”
The breeze started light on the day I sailed Little Wing—its original name, after the Jimi Hendrix song—and even though we were in a rally, Boehm had us tweaking things as if we were in the America’s Cup. As the day progressed, the breeze filled into the low teens, and we sliced along at an easy 8 knots jibing downwind with the code zero. The sailing was absolutely delightful.
At day’s end, as we approached the anchorage, I snapped a picture of Boehm at the wheel and said, “Now there’s a man in his element.”
And while he loves his cat, he laughed me off. “No,” he said with a smile. “I’d rather have a tiller.”
Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.
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