david griffiths yachtsman

Whisper win

Whisper makes noise with fully-crewed overall win and line honours in flinders islet race..

Photography by CYCA

09 November 2021

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David Griffith’s JV62 Whispe r set the early tone to open the 2021/22 Audi Centre Sydney Blue Water Pointscore, winning fully-crewed overall and line honours in the Flinders Islet Race.

A fleet of 40 boats was on the start line in Sydney Harbour on Saturday 6 November, greeted by a sunny sky and a 10-12 knot freshening breeze clocking NNE to NE.

Whisper  was first out of the Heads and hit speeds of 16 knots to slowly pull clear of Matt Allen’s Botin 52  Ichi Ban  and the chasing pack of TP52s.

She averaged 9.5 knots in varying conditions, crossing the line in a time of 9 hours, 28 minutes and 30 seconds.

Griffith is pleased to see the continued progress of the JV62.

“We had a wonderful run down the coast,” he said. “The boat is totally different to when I bought it a couple of years ago – new keel, longer bowsprit, all sorts of new sails and great people.

“I think we’ve transformed the boat from a point where, a couple of years ago, we couldn’t beat the TP52s to Flinders Islet, but this time we were in front of them and holding our own.

“With a lot of talented crew, we got home. It was a pretty good day all around.”

This was the second consecutive line honours win for Griffith and  Whisper  in the Flinders Islet Race, having edged out  No Limit  in a close battle in the 2019 edition.  Whisper  also claimed ORCi honours.

Ichi Ban  was second across the line and second overall, less than two minutes away on corrected time from backing up her 2019 overall win.

The six TP52s closely followed in the fully-crewed IRC standings, with David Doherty’s  Matado r third ahead of Matt Donald/Chris Townsend’s  Gweilo  (the 2020/21 Audi Centre Sydney Blue Water Pointscore champion), Gordon Ketelbey’s  Zen , Seb Bohm’s  Smuggler , Sam Haynes’  Celestial  and Craig Neil’s  Quest .

Rob Aldis’ DK46 Khaleesi, Mark Griffith’s DK46 Old School Racing and Mark Spring’s Beneteau 45 Highly Sprung were the nearest fully-crewed challengers on IRC. Highly Sprung claimed PHS honours.

The 2021/22 Audi Centre Sydney Blue Water Pointscore continues on Saturday 13 November, with the Bird Island Race, followed by the Cabbage Tree Island Race on Friday 3 December and the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race on Sunday 26 December. View race standings here .

bwps.cycaracing.com

Vale Christoph Rassy

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Lancaster county man charged with corruption of minors, child pornography.

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A Lancaster County man is facing charges that include corruption of minors and child pornography.

Pennsylvania State Police said they began investigating David Griffith, 28, of Strasburg Township, in October.

He allegedly offered sex acts multiple times to a juvenile male in exchange for benefits at their workplace — Village Greens Miniature Golf Course in Strasburg.

Griffith engaged in sexual acts with an underage girl when he was 22, and while both were working at Village Greens, state police said.

In addition, Griffith is accused of recording a 15-year-old girl naked in his bedroom without her knowledge.

According to state police, Griffith also has ties to schools and a church.

Troopers said Griffith is employed by Phoenix Academy and volunteers with Lampeter-Strasburg School District as a middle school musical director. The school and L-S have facilitated notifications to parents and interviews with students with whom Griffith had contact.

Griffith is a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Strasburg, where he has volunteered in the past for Vacation Bible School and participates in a Bible study group. State police said they are trying to determine whether Griffith has had any contact with children through the church.

Griffith is charged with multiple counts of the following:

• Unlawful contact with a minor
• Corruption of minors
• Manufacture and possession of child pornography
• Invasion of privacy
• Tampering with evidence

Anyone with information related to this case is asked to call Trooper Nicholas Reginella at 717-299-7650.

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On Board With Hal Griffith, Owner of 44 Metre Superyacht I Love This Boat

American Businessman Hal Griffith talks to Cecile Gauert about why he loves his 44-metre Christensen yacht.

“It’s such a great name because it just says exactly the way you feel. You know, I Love This Boat ,” says Hal Griffith, speaking about his 44.2- metre Christensen . A raconteur and affable host, Griffith is generous with his time as he delves into his family business and his extensive experience with boats. We’ve settled into wide chairs on his terrace that overlooks the water, rock music from a yacht (not his) docked next door ricocheting off the water.

Griffith is most often described as a developer, but he has been involved in a variety of business ventures in his lifetime. “You win some, you lose some and at the end of it, you hope to come out ahead,” he says. It looks as if he’s been able to come out ahead. He splits his life between homes on the East and West Coasts of the US and enjoys boating on both sides of the continent. One of his investments is within eyesight of his newly finished waterfront terrace in South Florida. He points to a row of boats across the water, all neatly docked in the slips he’s acquired. But it is several thousand kilometres away that he may have made his biggest mark. In 2012, Seattle magazine voted him one of the city’s most influential people.

What earned him that distinction was the opening of one of the area’s most popular attractions. We’re not talking about the Space Needle, but a 53-metre Ferris wheel with air-conditioned gondolas that allows visitors to get a bird’s-eye view of the city, Elliott Bay and the Olympic Mountains on a clear day. It’s not quite the London Eye, but it is one of the biggest Ferris wheels in the American West. He tried for 30 years to get it built and had all but given up when one of his three sons lit a spark under the whole idea again. “Kyle was a real inspiration. He did a lot of the legwork and we were finally able to pull that together and get it open.”

They reformulated the idea, measured up the space they needed and finally got approval to build the wheel at the very end of a pier that the family owns. Pier 57 is a fun family place with souvenir shops, eateries and a tourist attraction, known as Miners Landing. “It’s a festival mall so to speak and we have everything on it from retail gift shops, a merry-go-round and the wheel. There’s also fine dining, moderate dining, fast food and a bakery; we bake our own breads and make our own ice cream,” Griffith says.

Seattle has no shortage of attractive neighbourhoods, but its waterfront needed some attention a few years back and the wheel helped kick-start a change. “It’s helped revitalise the waterfront,” he says. At the time, Seattle was in the midst of a major infrastructure project that cut off the city from its shore and Griffith believed this eye-catching attraction could help draw people back.

His life is very much tied to that particular area, which is where he began his career in the mid-1960s. He was born in California but moved to Seattle with his family when he was very young. He began work early – “I struggled through high school,” he says. His first job was in sales for a chemical company, but he had an entrepreneurial streak and started an advertising agency.

Then, from a mentor who took a liking to the inquisitive young man, Griffith learned he could make money selling salvaged cargo and opened a store named Salvage Mart (Mart standing for marine, air, rail and truck). Very early on, he figured out that “in order to be successful you need to diversify”. Griffith began supplementing the cargo salvage with other merchandise and the store became known as Pirates Plunder.

The wives of local halibut fishermen and the way they prepared and cooked fish gave him another idea. “They put this big steel box on the sidewalk, filled it with sand and built an alder fire in it with a grate on top. They laid the halibut on top in foil and smoked it over alder,” he recalls. “And I thought, ‘That’s a great idea.’”

Pretty soon he was in the restaurant business as well. Additional concepts were inspired by his boating experiences in the Pacific Northwest, where he regularly met up with friends. They would set traps or lines and share crab, mussels, clams, oysters, salmon or whatever bounty they’d have collected. At the end of the day, they often had a “big pot of clams going and a big pile of shrimp going”, he says, “all very rustic and very fun”. A couple of the restaurants on Pier 57 recreate that experience, minus the fishing . “That’s the fun thing about doing what we do. You see something that is different and then you put your own imagination to that. I’ve always felt you didn’t have to go buy a franchise or something that’s all laid up for you. Creating for yourself is just as easy,” he says.

What he was trying to build in Seattle caught the attention of others further down the Pacific coast. He was invited to San Francisco to look at a pier there. “Pier 39 at that time was nothing but a great big empty shed. They offered that to me if I wanted to do it.” He was too busy with his Seattle project and a bit strapped for cash. “I was having trouble rubbing two nickels to get there, so I never really could follow through and do it.” But he does not seem to have too many regrets about passing on the now famous landmark.

Born in 1937, he is at a stage of life where he travelling with his growing family. But he is still very much involved in the family business. “I try to keep the kids thinking, doing things that are adventurous and different,” he says. “That’s what keeps anybody going.”

A couple of current projects include a chain of Italian restaurants called Enzo’s opening in California – seafood doesn’t really work in the desert, he points out – and a marina for transient yachts near Dent Island in British Columbia , one of his favourite cruising grounds. The marina has a clever energy-management system with generators and a solar inverter, which adjusts to power demand. “By doing that, we can save thousands of gallons of fuel.”

Growing up on the water, Griffith always played around in boats. One of the first vessels he remembers owning was a Willits sailing canoe, handmade in Tacoma, Washington, which he wishes he had kept as they are now regarded as valuable antiques.

When they married, Hal and his wife, Joan, took a nine-metre sailboat to the San Juan Islands, having never sailed or spent the night on the boat before. They continued sailing for a few years, but grew tired of being the last ones to arrive when they met up with friends who had powerboats. Eventually they switched to motor yachts (starting with a Pacific Northwest-made Tollycraft 44) and never looked back. Little by little, the boats got bigger. Many years on, there was a 23.7-metre Hargrave , named Crab Pot after one of their restaurants, and then they built a 30.7-metre Hargrave named Sea Venture .

The couple split up the tasks, with Hal doing the driving and mechanics and Joan cleaning and cooking. “I grew up in an area and a time when you needed to know how to do things,” he says. “I maintain that, unless you have a mechanical aptitude, you shouldn’t own a boat.”

When it became a bit harder for them to handle the lines and run up and down the decks, they started to warm to the idea of a bigger boat with a couple of crew. An offer he made on a 39.6-metre yacht he saw at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show didn’t work out, but then the Christensen became available and they were interested.

He appreciates that the yacht is very special. One of the most expensive yachts Christensen has built (as Primadonna in 2002 and later Aghassi), she has a custom interior by the late Italian-American designer Paola Smith, an ex-model and singer who forged a brilliant career as an award-winning designer. It needed some work, and after Hal and Joan bought I Love This Boat more than two years ago, they invested time and effort in restoring the mechanics, upgrading all electronics and refreshing the interior, which includes lovely hand-carved furniture handles made of crystal. Griffith only discovered that after he sought to replace a broken one. They had in mind to offer the yacht for charter when they are not using it. “We put on all the toys, all the stuff that people want,” he says. And charter , he says, “is the priority”.

They are, of course, enjoying the yacht themselves and adjusting to a different way of boating. “We have a very fine crew and like getting on the boat and not worrying about things,” says Griffith, who routinely lost nine kilograms during a summer of running his previous boats. “It’s really hard work, and the crew deserves a lot of credit. We just had four couples on the boat in the BVIs . We spent a week on board, and they thought they were in heaven.”

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Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2024

Chinese Whisper

Rupert Henry skippered Chinese Whisper to ninth on line and ninth overall in the 2016 race. In 2018 he opted to do the 5500nm Melbourne Osaka double-handed race with Greg O’Shea and took line honours and smashed the 1995 record by over five days, the same year the 60-66 footers prevailed in the Rolex Sydney Hobart. Now Chinese Whisper returns to the Hobart with David Griffith. They won Division 0 in the 2019 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast race, took line honours in September’s Flinders Islet Race and October’s Newcastle Bass Island Race. Henry purchased the former Jethou from Europe and finished fifth overall for first in Division 0 in the 2015 Rolex Sydney Hobart and finished runner-up in the BWPS on countback to Balance after the latter won the Sydney Hobart. The hope for these guys will be for similar conditions to last year’s race.

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