The Shadow was a 55-foot Mark Soverel design, commissioned and owned by Richard Rogers, who was based in California and a newcomer to ocean racing. The Shadow was of the same era as Soverel’s smaller 43-foot design Locura and in general design terms she had some similar characteristics, featuring a broad stern and notable ‘S’-curve in her hull profile that minimised hull depth around the After Girth Station, to offset width in this area and reduce the likely after girth penalty measurement that she would have incurred. She also had a proportionally generous sail plan, set on a 15/16th fractional rig, and carried a reasonably high rating of 47.0ft. According to a Sports Illustrated article at the time, the yacht was named after a pulp magazine hero and 1930s-40s radio detective – she had a small tender named Margot Lane (The Shadow’s girlfriend), and the crew played tapes of The Shadow’s eerie laughter when coming in to dock. |
| The Shadow rounding a mark during the 1984 Clipper Cup, with the Farr 58-footer Orlanda close behind (photo Phil Uhl) |
The Shadow was launched in September 1983, just two weeks before the St Francis Yacht Club’s Big Boat Series of that year. She raced in the City of San Francisco Perpetual Class Trophy division, where she finished second to the Peterson 55 Bullfrog, with placings of 3/3/3/1/1. |
| The Shadow, seen here during the 1983 Big Boat Series (photo John Hooker) |
With that strong start she went on to race in the 1984 SORC, by now with a much more optimised rating of 45.8ft. Rogers had hoped that The Shadow would be able to compete in Class B in the SORC, but then Running Tide, a 12-year-old 60-footer with an age allowance that gave her a slightly lower rating than The Shadow's, also arrived. Running Tide's owner, Al Van Metre, asked to compete, as he had before, in Class A with the 70- and 80-foot Maxis. Race officials deferred to his wishes and so moved the similarly-rated The Shadow up, too.
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| The Shadow ghosts along in light airs (photographer unknown) |
With her favorable time allowance relative to the Maxis and weather conditions that benefited smaller boats, The Shadow dominated the results in Class A, finishing first on corrected time in five of the six races and taking overall class honours. She was a less impressive in the overall fleet results, placing 26th, but the top placings were dominated that year by yachts in the smaller divisions, and in particular the crack One Tonners in Class E (such as the German yacht Diva, the top boat in the 1983 Admiral’s Cup). "The maxis were intensely disappointed that we were in (Class) A", said Rogers in his interview with Sports Illustrated at the time, "and I agree with them. I think they should have their own class. I think it would've been more fair and more fun. It's hard to race a business against a boat like The Shadow".
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| The Shadow in or about 1984 (photographer unknown) |
"The business" Rogers referred to is that of maxi management. Running a Maxi yacht, with a crew of more than 22, with an elaborate shore-support system, a tender, a sail program, and much much more, and moving them from regatta to regatta around the world (because that's where the maxis race, everywhere) is a demanding business. The most visible of the Maxi owners was Jim Kilroy, the owner and campaigner of not one but two dominating maxi yachts— Kialoa IV, which finished second to The Shadow in Class A, and his older Kialoa III which was being readied to compete at Antigua Race Week.
Kilroy, too, didn't think The Shadow should have raced in Class A, but his complaint, like Rogers', was with the race officials. "A 23-foot racing spread is a lot for one class", was all he would say publicly, but as spokesman for the Maxi owners, the men who spend the most on the sport, he had much to say behind closed doors to the SORC officials. Not unreasonably, the Maxi owners felt that if they go to the trouble of showing up for an event, lending it glamour, prestige and publicity it wouldn't otherwise have, they should be treated with greater consideration. |
| The wide and powerful stern sections of The Shadow are visible here in this image from the 1984 Clipper Cup |
It is likely that The Shadow would have done pretty well in Class B. Her wide stern sections, which Rogers calls 'Soverel training wheels' because they prevent the boat from heeling excessively, ran counter to the current thinking in new boats, most of which have moderately tapered sterns. "I wouldn't call Soverel a radical departure, but he's certainly different", says Rogers. Because she resists heeling, The Shadow was never reefed in the whole of the SORC series. Her greatest sail reduction was during the big winds of the St. Petersburg to Fort Lauderdale race, and that was to change down to a No. 3 jib. "If The Shadow had had a masthead rig, I would have had to shift down to the #2 genoa as the wind came up", Soverel explained. "But with a fractional rig like this one, you have the flexibility to power the mainsail up or down. With a fixed foretriangle area you have no flexibility. You've got to change your headsails”. The power inherent in The Shadow's length and overall stability resulted in the reported need for extensions to be welded to her winch handles to ensure enough runner tension could be applied to her lofty rig. |
| The Shadow sets off on a reaching leg during the 1984 Clipper Cup with Swiftsure to the right (photo Yachting magazine) |
The Shadow then went on to compete in the 1984 Clipper Cup in Hawaii. At this regatta she raced in Class B, with a slightly increased rating of 46.2ft, alongside such yachts as the Frers 51 Tomahawk (ex-Margaret Rintoull III), the Peterson 55 Checkmate (ex-Bullfrog), the Farr 58 Orlanda and the Frers 50 Carat (ex-Retaliation). She ended up a surprise winner of this class, with results of 4/4/4/6/1. Although she had a very capable crew, she was out-performed by Checkmate and Tomahawk in the first four races. |
The Shadow leads (just) Checkmate in power reaching conditions during the 1984 Clipper Cup (photo Charles P. LeMieux III | Yacht Racing & Cruising magazine)
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Adequate righting moment in the typically breezy conditions had proved to be an essential ingredient for the top boats in the fleet, as witnessed by the performance of Checkmate and Tomahawk, which were two of the stiffest boats there. Soverel said later that The Shadow was ballasted to give a minimum Centre of Gravity Factor (0.968), to minimise her rating, which in hindsight proved to a mistake.
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| Breezy conditions during the 1984 Clipper Cup put a premium on crew-work, here the foredeck crew prepare for a gybe aboard The Shadow (Bruce C. Brown | Yacht Racing & Cruising magazine) |
However, in the final race, the Round the State, points were heavily weighted (three times that of the Olympic tracks). During that race, Soverel noted that they started to feel disturbed wind as far as 200 miles out from the Big Island, possibly from other smaller islands up to windward. Later the wind really started to act strangely, “The Shadow would be doing a steady eight knots, just about on the wind, in a nice 20-22 knot trade wind, when suddenly, boom, we’d run into a light spot – maybe 8-10 knots of wind – that would last five or ten minutes, then we’d be back in the breeze. That happened a few times, then we hit a big hole and the breeze went from NNW into the south, so we tacked over onto the starboard tack layline. From here, maybe 60 miles out from the island, the air was light and fluky – sometimes we used a spinnaker – all the way to South Point. Once around the point it turned back into another nice race. The trades just collapse on the back sides of those islands. You get all kinds of different things – thermals, back-eddies and so on”.
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The Shadow, seen here leading Checkmate and Jubilation during the 1984 Big Boat Series (photo Sharon Green | Ultimate Sailing)
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While Soverel and his team managed to keep The Shadow to the fore in the tricky breezes, Checkmate’s long beat out to South Point knocked her out of the running, opening the door for The Shadow to earn class honours for the race and, by a single point over Tomahawk, for the series. She also finished fifth in the overall fleet standings (with placings of 11/10/14/8/7). The Shadow also formed part of the New York YC team, alongside Nirvana and Artemis, which beat the Royal Akarana YC team from New Zealand (Anticipation, Exador and Shockwave) in the club teams competition.  |
| The Shadow (on port) in a close race with Orlanda during the 1984 Big Boat Series (photo L Gee | Facebook) |
The Shadow then returned to San Franciso for the 1984 Big Boat Series, where Tomahawk managed to prevail for Class B honours, with The Shadow finishing second. She competed again in 1985, but did not feature in the top places.  |
The Shadow races alongside Checkmate during the 1985 Big Boat Series (photographer unknown)
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Her racing career after that is not known, and she didn’t compete in the large Class B fleet that assembled for the 1985 SORC, and did not compete in the 1986 Clipper Cup. However, she has been sighted more recently in Greece, and is understood to be in good sailing condition.  |
| The Shadow, as seen in Lefkas, Greece in 2023 (photo Bohumil Kafka | Facebook) |
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