A Measure of Success and Family Fun
Published: Thursday, January 5, 2023 12:00 pm
By: Mark Reid
There are many components that need to come together in creating and maintaining a successful team.
First and foremost is finding the right people who share a common goal and the means to collectively work towards that end in an environment of hard work, discipline, and fun while learning along the way, whether you win or not.
The owners who have stakes in the Great Lakes 52 Series and the 52 Super Series across the pond have that bond that has made sailing and racing in Transpac 52's fun to watch, exciting to sail, and has attracted the world's best sailors across multiple formulas and with spectacular ports of call have taken the concept of "stadium sailing" to new levels of excitement.
Here in the Great Lakes and especially in Michigan, owners Bob Hughes (Heartbreaker), Philip O'Neil 3rd (Natalie J), and Doug DeVos (Windquest and Quantum, more on that later) have nurtured that sailing Series here over the last several years to the point that next season may be the finest ever with the addition of new teams, crews both Professional and Corinthian as well as a few weekend warriors to add to the mix.
In Michigan, the GL 52's play off Holland, Harbor Springs, and Bay Harbor and compete in both Mackinac Races, plus the Queen's Cup.
Natalie J captured this year’s GL52 Series Championship, which was huge after having to drop out last year with a snapped mast, and their season-long battle was heightened by “tied at the hip” duos with Heartbreaker and great match racing in the final events with Windquest.
“The strength is obviously there's a great platform with the GL52 TP52 with great owners that are really committed to the group along with great sailors, excellent competition, and you pull that all together, and you have a wonderful series,” said DeVos. “We hope that some of the friends from other parts of the country come and play with us next year. I mean, we have a good core here, and a good mix of offshore and the inshore racing would make which makes it interesting we have tremendous support when you look at the race committees, the clubs, and you look at all the people who go behind the scenes to make it work. It's been really cool!”
Sailing on Lake Michigan with the big waves and a good breeze is very challenging, and you have to find your way through all that,” said DeVos. “You must make the right calls at the right time, and you must sail fast all the time. One little mistake, and you're done. When conditions are pretty strong, you get ahead of them and try to keep your elbows out and keep them back. You have to sail better and find any little advantage that you can get in this series!”
In Europe, the 52 Super Series can be found in beautiful Port cities from Mallorca and Barcelona, Spain, to Porto Cervo, Italy, and Cascais, Portugal.
It all started with the Transpac 52 "box rule" in 2001 and in their varies shapes and forms both newer models as well as older ones can be competitive on the same patches of water in a variety of different sailing conditions.
The class and boats can be moded for both inshore buoy races and offshore distances like the Chicago and Port Huron to Mackinac Races.
I was “tasked” with “family sailing” as a feature assignment and as I looked at different families and friends who sail together not only on small boats over our short summer weekends, I wanted to explore the best of both worlds, families along multiple generations who sail recreationally and competitively in places close to home and to the far reaches of our world.
As mentioned earlier, Doug DeVos and his family, be it his siblings, kids, or his parents when they were alive presents an exemplary example that has created not only success for his businesses on and off the water, but has made sailing fun, challenging, and rewarding for all to enjoy.
It has come with many successes, but also with challenges; none so more than last winter in New Zealand when all the hopes and dreams with his America’s Cup effort came capsizing down in less than a moment’s notice playing out in front of a world audience that led to a profound failure by the American Magic team. Though in that darkest moment came an enlightening spirit as all the other teams, organizers, and the event itself came together not only to save their lightning-fast AC 75 from sinking, but also helping to rebuild the boat in a miraculous two weeks to get back on the water and even in losing it was a winning effort.
For DeVos it is a veritable roller coaster sometimes to switch back and forth between continents to sail on Windquest here and then pop back to Europe to steer Quantum. In the last several years his skill as a skipper has grown exponentially as Quantum secured another title in the 52 Super Series (52SS) in Barcelona as many of the competitors look to head towards the warm waters of Florida in January to hook up in the Key West Race Week.
Quantum Racing has now won their fifth title on the world’s leading grand prix monohull circuit as it celebrates ten years by capturing their fourth regatta title of the five events this year and in so doing conclusively win the 2022 season championship.
As one of the four teams which inaugurated the 52SS Circuit on these same waters in ten years ago, theirs is a popular and well deserved 2022 title victory, not least as charismatic owner-driver DeVos is one of the founders of what remains the world’s leading grand prix monohull circuit and steered his team to their regatta wins in Baiona, Scarlino and now Barcelona as well as also taking the Rolex TP52 World Championship in Cascais, the second event of the season.
“You're always nervous in this fleet and especially when it's light air,” said DeVos on the eve before the last day of racing with the championship on the line. “I just hope it stays together and we can get the race finished, and it feels good to have a good race behind us, and yes, we are feeling nervous about tomorrow. Like always, we're going to shoot for and do the best we can.”
“You can't underestimate Doug's influence on the whole program. How cool is it that we sailed four out of the five regattas with him, and we won those!” said Quantum tactician and American Magic Team Manager Terry Hutchinson. “It tells you something about the whole team. It's one of those things in the sport that you race and how we do things, you know, when you're sailing with a good team, and you know how it all evolves and how everyone is together and how everyone balances each other, in itself that defines Quantum Racing.”
“Ten years later, here we are. It's an amazing tribute to the owners of this class. Without them, this does not exist. How lucky are we as sailors and as professionals and it's a true testament to the success of this class. It's a testament to the owners,” said Hutchinson.
With that, American Magic and Quantum Racing announced that they are to join forces and form a high-performance partnership for the 2023 season, the first time both teams have formally collaborated.
Quantum Racing will evolve and rebrand as “Quantum Racing, powered by American Magic,” building on the success of winning this year's TP52 World Championship and the 52 Super Series title, will seek to enhance the skill and experience of young American sailors to be given a platform to progress.
“We want to bring the America's Cup back home to the United States, to be successful in the 52 Super Series, and to allow our sailors to grow and thrive on a clear development pathway,” said DeVos. “I'm excited about this new chapter and looking forward to staying personally connected to the 52 Super Series and further involvement with the America's Cup. American Magic is striving to be a unified sailing franchise that will bring the best young American sailing talent together to develop their skills and knowledge on different classes of boats. The best way to maintain a winning team is to nurture our homegrown talent.”
“The big picture goal in the America’s Cup is to gain teams, raise visibility, improve racing, create more diversity, include female sailors and increase sustainability,” said DeVos.
DeVos is an American businessman and sailing champion from Ada, Michigan. He serves as co-chairman of Amway's board of directors with Steve Van Andel. DeVos serves as the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Constitutional Center.
Doug is the youngest son of Helen June and Amway co-founder Rich DeVos, who, with Steve Van Adel's father, Jay Van Andel, started Amway in Ada, Michigan, in 1959.
His father, Richard "Rich" Marvin DeVos Sr., who passed away in 2018, was an American billionaire businessman, co-founder of Amway with Jay Van Andel (company restructured as Alticor in 2000), and owner of the Orlando Magic basketball team.
In international yacht racing, the senior DeVos brought Amway into a sponsorship with Newsweek and Cadillac of the America 2 America’s Cup team representing the NYYC in 1984. A year and a half later were in charge of the team’s syndicate, and though the team acquitted itself well, they certainly didn’t lose because of their lack of the work DeVos put into the syndicate.
This brings us to Doug’s involvement in American Magic and the America’s Cup.
“Why am I doing this?” recalled Doug DeVos as we sat down in his office at Amway’s International Headquarters in Ada, Michigan. “I must have a screw loose somewhere and I'm very passionate about sailing. My dad did it. My brothers did it. I wanted to do it with my family. I was the little brother. I was the youngest one.”
“I was told when we first did the Queen's Cup (to Milwaukee) that I couldn't do it, because I was too young. I was also too young to compete in the Mackinac Race. But I wanted to participate. I have the desire to participate and that's why we are doing this. I want to become part of it because we have this passion about something and we want to do it.”.
DeVos played quarterback at Purdue University as an undergraduate student and is a graduate of Purdue University. No, he didn’t back up Drew Brees!
Doug and his wife Maria established the Doug & Maria DeVos Foundation, which is committed to helping youth, families, and the community in the greater Grand Rapids area.
“With my family, I was the little brother and sailing was the coolest thing going,” recalled DeVos. “That's what got me into it. In the early 70’s we were going to do the Queens Cup Race, to get our boat over there we did the Trans Michigan from Holland to Milwaukee.”
“Huge storms came across the Lake Michigan and it was my mom, my dad me and my sister. We thought we were just going to sail across the lake on an adventure and the storms came in,” said DeVos. “We just got beat up and we were really unprepared to race by any means. I got sick along the way. But our story was just trying to figure it out. We loved sailing! We love trying to get better. Most of our fun stories were and are, when we were scared to death and because we didn't know what we were doing.”
“My passion developed from there and I couldn't think of anything else other than sailing in the Saturday races on the weekend and it's become a lifelong passion since,” said DeVos. “I think my first sailboat was a Sunfish out on Lake Macatawa in Holland, Michigan. Sailing was my route to hang out with the older kids and my brothers. My sister sailed with us for a while and then she said this is stupid and that was it for the most part. My son Dalton sails and Dick’s kids, Ryan and Rich are active sailors as well.”
For Dalton DeVos’s part, after steering Windquest from behind in the penultimate race in the Ugotta Regatta this past summer while his dad was over in Europe driving Quantum, it’s coming full circle for the family.
“In my first Mackinac race I was just trying to hang on and not get in the way and I was young enough and I really enjoyed getting out on the water with my dad you know,” remembered Dalton. “We were 48 hours out in that boat and it was it was a great father and son bonding! It means everything to me and from there I just got an itch for sailing and the focus for us me and my dad is just to do it together I mean there's a lot of things we're able to do together.”
“But sailing just takes the cake because when you're out there there's nothing else going on and you're fully focused on the race, you're fully focused on the guys around you and I think a lot of people just seem to forget that it's such a team sport,” said Dalton DeVos. “You just can't do it with one person you have to have a full team that's working together top notch that's what's so much fun you know when you can't play baseball or you can't play football anymore but you can sail for a long time!”
And that is a largely DeVos wrap on the true meanings of sailing together as a family team, with faith and friends onboard; it can be a wonderful adventure together!
A version of this article appeared in the Winter 2023 issue of Great Lakes Scuttlebutt magazine.
tags: Feel Good Story, Racing, Sailing
