Musician turned America’s Cup novelist

by Craig Leweck, Scuttlebutt Sailing News
When I received an email from the English musician Thomas Dolby, I was teleported back to the 1980s when MTV provided music videos and not bad reality shows (and now it’s gone altogether). Dolby was an icon during the era with hits like ‘She Blinded Me With Science’ and ‘Europa and the Pirate Twins’.

I was the right age, and his music filled the dance floor during the new wave movement of the time, delivering a form of pop music incorporating electronic instruments. Dolby was the man!

But his email wasn’t promoting his latest tour dates but rather his novel, Prevailing Winds, which is based on the America’s Cup in the early 1900s. It turns out Dolby is also a sailor, historian, and big fan of the Cup, and his book provides a revealing tale of New York Yacht Club, the power brokers, yacht designs, and sailors of the time.

He said the story was about half true, but I found it all plausible with great characters, plus Dolby was clever in reconnecting events along the way. I don’t finish every book I start, but was bummed when I was done with his. To learn more about Prevailing Wind, click here.