Dick Matthews (1930 – 2019) was navigator aboard Weatherly US-17 when she defeated Gretel KA-1 in the 1962 America’s Cup, the second America’s Cup regatta to be sailed in 12 Metre yachts.
Richard “Dick” Matthews, a world-class sailor who served as navigator for two significant America’s Cup crews, died Saturday, May 11 in Fairfield, CT. He was 88.
Dick served as navigator on the New York Yacht Club’s America’s Cup Challenger Vim in 1958, and in the same role with Weatherly in 1962. His brother Don Matthews was on both crews as well. Vim was runner-up in the Challenger trials to the eventual winner Columbia, and Weatherly successfully defended the Cup over the Australian Challenger Gretel in 1962.
“In those days, most of the world’s best sailors cut their teeth on Long Island Sound,” Dick once said. “We met Bus (Emil) Mosbacher (who skippered both Vim and Weatherly) racing dinghies out of Larchmont Yacht Club and were lucky enough to stay with him through both Cup campaigns in ’58 and ’62.”
Dick sailed internationally in both the Star and Tempest classes. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s, and was part of an internationally noted local fleet that included sailmaker Lowell North and former America’s Cup skipper and two-time world champion Tom Blackaller. He moved to Hawaii in the 1990s and eventually back to Newport, Rhode Island in 2005, always insisting on living near the water.
Born in 1930 in Staten Island, New York, to Captain John Matthews and Elizabeth Barlow Matthews, Dick graduated from St. Joseph’s University in 1953, and served in the Army as a company clerk in Seattle, Washington, during the Korean War from 1950 to 1952. He was also a licensed pilot who regularly flew a variety of Cessna and Piper aircraft models, and was part of the management team for family-owned Universal Airlines from 1966 to 1972.
In addition to his three children, Richard Matthews, Jr., Lynn Matthews-Douglass, and Howard Bradley Matthews, Dick is survived by his brother, Don Matthews, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. The family asks that donations in his memory be made to the Alzheimer’s Association in Southington, Connecticut (860-828-2828).
