They Call Themselves Buddy’s Boys

An ESPN feature described Buddy Melges’ Heart of America crew as “a rag-tag team of refugees from other syndicates.”

But ESPN analyst Gary Jobson, a former member of that crew, also said that the group had shown “the smoothest crew work and boat handling” of any American outfit, and that “people from the Midwest can expect that they’ll be in the final four (challengers).”

Six of the 19 crew members, 10 of whom will be on the boat with Melges in the final selection, were with other syndicates, among them Dave Ketterer, Paolo Sheaffer, Wally Henry and Bill Chamberlain from Courageous’ struggling campaign.

Two others--Chip Parris from America II and Park Eddy from Dennis Conner’s Sail America--were considered expendable by those teams.

Michael Puestow, Heart’s director of crew development, responds to the obvious innuendo of having a bunch of rejects from other syndicates.

“They did a heck of a job training some of our guys,” he says.

Several of the crew are from the Midwest, which is not known for producing great seamen.

“We’ve got some good corn-fed people,” Puestow said, adding that winch grinder Lance Puccio from Wisconsin is “our cheese connection.”

The worst problem was finding a pair of deck shoes for grinder Pete Finnelly, whose feet are size 16.

“We found a pair of size 15 Docksiders for him, then we tested them,” Puestow said. “We found it takes 3 1/2 cans of beer to fill ‘em.”

The crew calls itself Buddy’s Boys. Puestow said they are “kind of like the Raiders: people that other people didn’t think had potential. What San Francisco and Canadian syndicates saw is that they’re second to none.”