{"id":82965,"date":"2026-02-16T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/?p=82965"},"modified":"2026-02-16T15:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T20:01:07","slug":"tony-parker-golden-packet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/racing\/tony-parker-golden-packet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long Haul of Tony Parker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Tony <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n Annapolis octogenarian Tony Parker, a lifer of the J\/24 with his Bangor Packet<\/i>, enjoyed the challenge of fresh breeze at the J\/24 Worlds in Plymouth, England, finishing second.<\/span>\n Paul Gibbins<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n

\u201cLove the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content there with.\u201d \u2014 Marcus Aurelius<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was hardly a little trade Tony Parker was practicing at the helm of an America\u2019s Cup 12 Metre in the summer of 1978 off Newport, R.I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019d been asked by Baron Marcel Bich to skipper the French trial horse in training for the next Cup, and was doing so well against the A team, by his own account, that its helmsman Bruno Troubl\u00e9 took him aside at one point and beseeched him to lighten up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cup was on the verge of taking the sports world by storm with Dennis Conner, Australia II<\/em>, the winged keel, ESPN and Fremantle in the wings. Parker, having finished second in three straight Congressional Cups and with a gold-plated resume from Harvard sailing, was a match-racing star in position to play a big role on yachting\u2019s biggest stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But something little caught his eye across the dappled waters of Rhode Island Sound that day and changed the arc of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI saw fifty J\/24s out there racing in their first national championships,\u201d Parker says. \u201cThe class was brand new and it was exploding. All the best sailors were there. It was so competitive they couldn\u2019t get a start off. There were no black flags or U flags back then. Everyone was over early.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parker couldn\u2019t wait to get a piece of that mayhem. \u201cI\u2019m really, really good at infighting,\u201d he says. So off he went to buy his first J\/24 and set the stage for the next 47 years, when he\u2019d get his jollies banging away at the top of the fleet in the quirky turtle boats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of it came to fruition this fall in a gutsy performance in another fleet of 50, this time at the J\/24 World Championships in Plymouth, U.K., where the wind blew the oysters off the rocks. When they sorted out the wreckage after five days at 20-plus knots, Parker\u2019s Bangor Packet<\/em> stood a stunning second. It marked the fourth time he\u2019d made the podium at the Worlds over the decades, with two thirds and two seconds, but not yet the gold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dean of the class, however, was able to mount the stage and accept his trophy just three days shy of his 80th birthday. Parker and his teammates on Bangor Packet<\/em> finished 7 points behind Headcase<\/em>, whose Irish skipper Cillian Dickson is Parker\u2019s junior by 47 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely remarkable that he\u2019s stuck with it and does that well at his age,\u201d says one of Parker\u2019s contemporaries, Scott Allen, an ex-Olympian who raced with and against him for years and now lives across the creek from his old rival in Annapolis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think he just really likes the boat, he knows it and he\u2019s comfortable with it,\u201d says Will Welles, of North Sails, who sailed with Parker in all the major events leading up to the Plymouth worlds. \u201cHe\u2019s been at it so long, and at the top the fleet, that he does a bit of a legend status. He keeps a young crew to keep him excited, he just loves the sport\u2014he loves to talk about it and thinks about it all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut what\u2019s really amazing is that he has this drive to keep getting better, and he has no ego whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the J\/24 Worlds no longer attracts the hottest sailors on the planet. Still, Parker\u2019s achievement had the racing crowd back home on edge, monitoring the internet as the regatta wound to a windy conclusion. He was in range of winning till the very end, 4 points back on the last day, when he finished 3-2 to Dickson\u2019s 2-1, with a Japanese team 20 points back in third overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By all accounts the regatta was a daily grind, with winds of 20 to 30 and foaming grey seas breaking all around. In one race, Dickson\u2019s boat, well ahead, broached so badly on the last downwind run that the spreaders hit the water, yet the crew managed to get the mess cleared up before the fleet caught up, and they still won the race. \u201cHow often do you see that in a world championship?\u201d Parker marvels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He, by contrast, is a light-to-moderate air specialist, as befits a denizen of the Chesapeake. He attributes his success at Plymouth to a young, athletic crew of sailing pros and a week of practice onsite before the festivities began. \u201cWe were lucky that it blew just as hard for practice as it did for the racing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had a veteran team\u2014Emmett Todd, James Niblock and Will Bomar working the front half of the boat and Welles calling tactics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, it was unfamiliar territory. \u201cSometimes I was steering with both hands on the tiller,\u201d he says. \u201cSix of the (nine) races we had to use the little jib, which we hadn\u2019t had out in five years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least the boat is familiar. He\u2019s had the same Bangor Packet<\/em>, J\/24, Hull No. 58, since 2003 when he bought a steady winner from Andy Horton. Even in one-design racing, he says, some boats come off the factory line inherently faster. He\u2019d been through two that didn\u2019t make the cut before he got his current steed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welles, a two-time J\/24 world champion himself, acknowledges that Parker has always been committed to having the boat immaculately race-ready. \u201cHe puts money into the boat, and that\u2019s why he ships it to the worlds instead of chartering. He values his boat. It\u2019s top notch, the sails are top-notch sails and he treats his crew well so they want to be there and work hard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To keep the boat current, Parker sends it \u201cto the spa\u201d at great expense every couple of years for a full treatment at the best boatyard he can find, and lets the experts do their thing. \u201cI\u2019m not the guy you\u2019ll find under the boat sanding the keel,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that he couldn\u2019t. His father owned and ran the marina at the mouth of the Harraseeket River in Maine that\u2019s still in business as Brewers South Freeport Marine. He and his two brothers and sister grew up there, and all were Maine junior champions in one class or another. But by the time his shot at the America\u2019s Cup and sailing\u2019s big tent came along, he says, \u201clife had intervened.\u201d Marriage, a child, law school, a successful business career and eight years in politics as treasurer of the Republican National Committee were to follow, and it all kept him busy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the elusive gold medal he has yet to claim, Parker seems none too bothered. The next J\/24 Worlds are in Australia, but \u201cI\u2019m not going to Melbourne,\u201d he said. \u201cThat would take a month.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, his next shot is October 2027, in Rochester, New York, just down the road. He\u2019ll be 82. Don\u2019t bet against it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a talented and experienced sailor who\u2019s been racing and winning in J\/24s almost as long as they\u2019ve been around, Tony Parker is the full package.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":82966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"BS_author_type":"BS_author_is_guest","BS_guest_author_name":"Angus Phillips","BS_guest_author_url":"","hydra_display_date":"","hydra_display_updated":false,"_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":"","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","arc_story_id":"","arc_website_url":"","custom_permalink":"","arc_subtype":"","arc_exclude_from_feeds":false,"sponsored":false,"sponsored_label":"Sponsored Content","sponsored_display_label":false,"sponsored_image":false,"post_right_rail":true,"post_right_rail_ad_1":true,"post_right_rail_ad_2":true,"post_right_rail_ad_3":false,"post_right_rail_ad_4":false,"post_right_rail_recirc":true,"fixed_anchor_ad":true,"post_top_ad":true,"post_off_ramp":true,"post_taboola":false,"labels":true,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":"","sponsored_url":"","social_share":true,"ad_targeting":"","ad_settings_ads_on_this_page":true,"ad_settings_automatic_ad_injection_into_the_content":true,"alternate_title_newsletter":"","alternate_content_newsletter":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[325,177,267,3069],"class_list":["post-82965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","tag-j-24","tag-racing","tag-starting-line","tag-winter-2026"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}