Blaine Rorick
Blaine Rorick is the epitome of someone who lives to sail. His passion for sailboats started young, when at 12-years-old, he started his own yacht maintenance business. Years later, he became a salesman for Lancer Yachts, then Erickson Yachts, and worked as a yacht broker for a decade.
All the while, Rorick spent his weekends not just sailing, but racing; having developed a fascination with making fast boats go faster and to win more races. It’s safe to say he’s owned a dealership worth of sailboats that today are representative of racing’s heyday of the 70s and 80s.
He purchased the first Olson 30 – Hull Number 1 – owned a Henderson 30, a Viper 830, a Carrera 290, and the famed but short-lived Moore 30 which lead him to see Alan Andrews earlier this year. That boat was so far ahead of its time, with a hiking wing, it baffled the PHRF ratings committee who ultimately decided it could not fairly compete under local rules and would not let it race in sanctioned events.
After a move to Northern California, Rorick began a successful mortgage brokerage company that afforded him the pleasure of continuing to racing on bigger boats.
During the week he developed investment funds and secured private investor money for real estate development projects. Weekends were spent on the water, sailing almost all California-based races in a variety of boats, from ultra-lights, to maxi-sleds, on many Mexico adventures –NHYC’s Newport to Cabo, NOSA’s Newport to Ensenada, SDYC’s San Diego to Puerta Vallarta aboard boats like Shadow, a Soverel 55, and the famed Andrews 70, Alchemy, that introduced him to the celebrated designer.
He was an Oceanside Yacht Club’s Yachtsman of the Year honoree, and is currently a member of Dana Point Yacht Club.
Although he found great success sailing bigger boats, his passion for yacht racing took flight racing mid-side boats in the 30-foot range.
“Those are the boats that are really fast,” he said. “Fast in light air and can be sailed well with fewer people. It’s really about making it easy to have fast fun – they are really just a blast to sail.” And the trailerability, he said, was key for many years when he was getting into the sport. The size of the new Moore 33 will allow sailors to do more races, more competitively, from local regattas to Mexico races.
Sometimes, big boats are just more work, like getting the boat home after a distance race; hiring a skipper for the return from Mexico. With mid-sized boats, someone drives the trailer down and the boat comes back in two days rather than two weeks, he said.
Easy and fun is what people are looking for right now, and it’s why in the initial meeting with Andrew, the idea went from modernizing a 30-year old a fractional sloop to creating a modern-shaped hull that incorporates all aspects of new sailing technology from its core, not just added on or modified. It’s size, weight and rigging will make it easy, and with Andrews at the helm of the design, there’s no doubt it is going to be fast.