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The Regal Rolly Tasker - By Grenville Fordham,
"My mother told me: 'If you want something done, do it yourself',"
recalled Rolly Tasker, "and I've followed that rule all my life".
Most people know of Australian-born Rolly as the man who makes
sails. But how many know of this man's almost unbelievable number
of achievements? It would be possible to fill this column with
a list of his racing accomplishments alone - but there's more.
So much more, that a 20,000-sq ft sail loft in  Phuket
begins to seem like a sideline.
Following his mother's maxim, with help from his father he built
his first yacht (a 10-ft dinghy) when he was 10 years old. Demonstrating
by example her "if you want something done..." principle, his
mother sewed the sails. As a 16-year old schoolboy, he built
- and that means everything: hull, spars, rigging, fittings
and sails - his first racing yacht, an Australian Sharpie. The
Sharpie went on to become the most popular class in post-war
Australia. And Rolly Tasker went on to become a qualified accountant.
In 1948 he built his second Sharpie Falcon III, became Australian
Dinghy Champion several times, and was launched on his career
as a racing yachtsman. By now, too, he had orders to make masts
and sails for his competitors. His first export order, for a
Dragon class yacht, went to Singapore in 1949.
Just over 50 years later, the list of sail lofts that have borne
the name 'Rolly Tasker' is mind- boggling. The first was in
Perth in 1955, followed by Hong Kong (with 600 workers producing
700 sails per day) in 1960. Then it was 1964, Europe and the
third loft in La Rochelle, followed four years later in 1968,
Chicago. All this time, there was still Perth with expansions
- that meant new lofts - in 1965, 70, 80 and 90. The Phuket
loft opened its doors in 1994, following a less than successful
two-year period of sail making in Pattaya.
Asked why all this seemingly frantic expansion - at a rate many
entrepreneurs would relish, others would find exhausting - Rolly
Tasker says simply, "I suppose it's just that I needed something
to do." After just a few minutes talking to Rolly, this kind
of statement goes by unchallenged. You know it's the truth,
even though it comes from a man who has so much 'to do' in his
life that just hearing about it leaves you exhausted.
In 1957, after reading about a new Olympic class of Flying Dutchman,
Rolly sent to Holland for the plans and built one - the only
one in Australia. Racing against catamarans to 'tune' it, he
then shipped it to Europe to compete in the 1958 World Flying
Dutchman Championships - which, of course, he won against 48
entrants. Five years, and many wins later, he was a member of
Australia's first America's Cup team. In 1968 he became interested
in ocean racing which led him, in 1977 - after several 'Siska'
yachts for which he designed and built the spars, sails and
rigging himself - to record the fastest ever time under sail
over the 11,557 nautical miles from Plymouth (UK) to Fremantle.
That triumph was achieved in Siska IV, which Rolly sailed for
three years, winning races throughout the world - as well as
numerous long-distance sailing records. He competed in ocean
racing for 18 years, during which time he raced in most of the
world's significant events.
During a career such as this, there have to be some stunning
experiences - apart from winning races. Rolly agrees, and offers
a few examples. "The worst storms I've encountered were in the
Great Southern Ocean. You could be struck by continuous fronts,
the wind fishtailing between NE and SE. Sailing in the Tasman
Sea in 1981, we were struck by such a fierce storm that a nearby
yacht was lost with all crew. The previous year, sailing to
the start of the Sydney-Hobart race, we encountered a storm
in the Bass Strait and, again, a yacht sailing nearby went down
with all her crew."
Rolly goes on to describe the worst conditions he (and many
others) can remember - the Fastnet race of 1979 - where only
31 of the 330 entrants survived. "The first days were armchair
sailing. Then ominous clouds appeared from the southwest. Winds
reached 80 knots for 10 days, the worst storm ever recorded
in the Irish Sea. Many yachts hesitated, reduced too much sail
and lost steerageway. 73 yachts rolled over, 23 sank and 19
lives were lost." Rolly and his crew completed the event safely,
arriving in Plymouth in record time.
Another memory - this time not quite so fortunate - is of the
closing stages of a race where first place honours were in sight.
"To win on handicap we needed to reach the finish line in Fremantle
by midnight. 120 miles out we were sailing in strong winds with
a large quartering sea. We lost steering control and rolled
over, while under full sail with spinnaker and shooter. 15 crew
were thrown into the water, with one below." Rolly recalls being
in the water, looking at the keel pointing skywards and thinking,
"Shit! We're going to be late to the finish." In the event,
the yacht took 16 minutes ("...an eternity," remembers Rolly)
to right itself, the crew scrambled aboard and they made it
back to Fremantle - by midnight.
60 years of sailing, 50 of them racing (with not a single retirement
due to gear failure), as well as owning one of the world's most
renowned sail and gear manufacturers, must be enough - or even
too much - for anyone. For most, maybe, but not for Rolly Tasker.
Always interested in the history of the America's Cup, in 1983
he decided to build a model of every yacht that had competed
in the Cup since 1851. No doubt still recalling his mother's
advice, he didn't commission an artist to make the initial sketches
- he did it himself, piecing together what little information
there was on some of the earlier boats. His complete set of
59 models - the only complete set in the world, and on permanent
display in Auckland, New Zealand - was loaned to the United
States government in 1992 for display in San Diego. Complementing
the permanent display of models in Rolly's America's Cup Museum
are his original fine art drawings of each challenger and defender,
as well as a written history of each contest since 1851.
Surely enough for a man now in his 74th year? No way. The models
have been finished some time now, the drawings on display. But
that need for "something to do" remains. Now it's a waxworks
of every commodore of the America's Cup since its inception.
And again, "If you want something done..." From initial sketch
through to construction of the framework for his life-size models,
Rolly Tasker is yet again "doing it himself".
That's for fun, a hobby you might say. A guy who retires from
such an active career of yacht racing, needs something to keep
him occupied. But at least on the business front he MUST be
slowing down. Think again. When I first visited his Phuket loft,
a couple of weeks before meeting the man himself, Michael Tasker
(no relation - unless you go a long, long way back in genealogy),
the man who runs the day-to-day business of the Phuket loft,
showed me to an area behind the main building. It was full of
machines standing quietly idle. "These are the new machines
we'll be making our own rope on. We're waiting for Rolly to
get here to set them up and get the production going."
If you want something doing...
Nor does it stop there. Plans are afoot to build a new loft
- three times the size of the present one - by 2001; 55 years
after Rolly passed his accountancy exams.
This is one busy man. So surely he leaves the details to others.
Wrong again. We walk around the loft. He knows every single
one of the 100+ girls working there by name. "They're like family,"
he says. They obviously feel it. Rolly never has to advertise
for staff. When one leaves, there's a scramble among the remaining
workers to get her sister/friend/daughter/mother a job at Rolly
Tasker's. But they rarely leave.
The Regal Rolly Tasker
A New King of the Seas - Kingcat M270
The King's Cup Collision |
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