Ragamuffin Man: The World of Syd Fischer

By David Salter and James Hardy

You either lie down and die, or you fight.

In 1938 a knockabout 11-year-old kid from Marrickville, Sydney, is suddenly confronted by mortality. His mother dies. His father has little time for him and at 14 he leaves school to learn a trade.

In 2016 that same boy is a multi-millionaire. He owns – and runs – the Australian Development Corporation, Sydney City Marine, a host of associated companies and countless office and housing blocks. He is also one of the world’s most successful sailors, having won Sydney–Hobart races in his Ragamuffin yachts and competed eight times for Australia in the Admiral’s Cup. He jointly holds the record for the most America’s Cup campaigns – all self-funded and managed personally.

He is Syd Fischer, the Ragamuffin man, and he's known as perhaps the toughest and most uncompromising Australian businessman and sportsman of the past half century. This is the story of Fischer’s remarkable life, and of his unrelenting quest to win the Sydney–Hobart Yacht Race one more time.

‘It’s as if Syd has suddenly decided that it’s time to shrug off his lifelong reluctance to talk about himself and let us all now see what really makes him tick.’ —Sir James Hardy

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Inc. Books
• Release date: Nov 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781925435306

David Salter

David Salter is a veteran independent journalist, author and television producer. He was Executive Producer of Media Watch and Editor-in-Chief of The Week. He has written books on Australian history, sport, and the media and is himself an experienced offshore racing sailor.

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dirty

FOREWORD

by Sir James Hardy, OBE

TO BE FRANK, I’m amazed this book was ever started, let alone finished. I’ve known Syd Fischer for the best part of 50 years and he’s about the most taciturn person in the world. You’re lucky to get a dozen words out of him on any subject. Yet somehow the author, David Salter, has managed here to assemble a wealth of substantial and revealing quotes from his subject. It’s as if Syd has suddenly decided that it’s time to shrug off his lifelong reluctance to talk about himself and let us all now see what really makes him tick.

Fischer has a persistent reputation for being pretty tough, both in business and sport, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying so. In fact, it’s likely that he quite enjoys that reputation. He’s certainly a very competitive bloke, but my experience has been that when the dust settles Syd has always respected the ideals of sportsmanship. He likes to win (don’t we all!) but he cops his defeats without complaint. We’ve had our little differences, some of which are detailed in this book, but he’s an old-fashioned, foursquare Australian and you can’t help but like him for that.

I’m glad that one of the lesser-known aspects of Syd’s character – his sense of humour – comes through strongly in this book. He’s quite a master of the funny put-down. I remember crewing on Ragamuffin in the 1976 Sydney–Hobart race and the Bass Strait crossing was pretty blustery that year. There was water everywhere. I was sitting on the rail when somebody asked if we wanted anything to eat. I said, ‘What have you got down there?’ and they replied, ‘Boiled eggs.’ So up came this boiled egg, and I took the shell off it. I’m doused with salt water and remember saying to myself, ‘I always like a bit of salt with my eggs.’ Syd said, ‘I think we might see that egg again.’ And sure enough, about half an hour later I had a big chuck. Syd still reckons that the egg came back up with the shell on it! He mentions it every time I see him.

More seriously, reading these pages allows us the first real look into the complex character of a self-made man who’s been immensely successful. He created an empire as a builder-developer, one of the hardest games in town. He’s had the courage to take risks. He’s had triumphs, both in business and sport, and the occasional hard loss. Syd’s five America’s Cup campaigns stand as a testament to his tenacity, and to his generous support of yachting and young sailing talent. I reckon he deserved the honour of being our defender or challenger at least once, but it was not to be.

One important approach to life and sport that I share with Syd is the value he places on physical fitness. He’s a stout champion of the ‘sound body, sound mind’ philosophy, and has led by personal example. From way back in the early Admiral’s Cup days to the later America’s Cup challenges, getting every member of the crew truly fit and ready for battle was always a top priority for Syd. He was my team captain in three Admiral’s Cup campaigns and would never ask us to do anything in the gym he wouldn’t do himself. That not only made us more competitive as sailors, but it was also a great way for us to forge ourselves into a unified team – another Fischer priority.

David Salter is one of Australia’s most experienced journalists and broadcasters. We’ve sailed together since 1980. He tells me it took two years to write this book, and you can see why. He’s done a massive amount of research and spoken with dozens of people about Fischer – his family, shipmates, business associates, friends and enemies. As well, he’s written about the fascinating process of rebuilding Syd’s maxi-yacht Ragamuffin 100, and followed the last two Sydney–Hobart races in which they’ve competed. I believe those chapters will be as exciting to the general reader as they are to we sailing people. David writes about yachts and ocean racing from a position of strong firsthand knowledge. He campaigns his own yacht and has done many thousands of offshore miles, including nine Sydney–Hobart races.

But the star of this book is, of course, Syd Fischer himself. Those who dismiss him as little more than a harsh ruffian will be surprised. There’s much more to the man than that. This is certainly a ‘warts and all’ survey of his life, but it’s not all warts. The revelations about his childhood and early adult life are truly surprising, and provide insights into how such a strong character was formed. Syd’s offhand sayings are a delight, and his self-assessments and opinions about everyone else are disarming and often hilarious – peppered, of course, with the usual Fischer expletives.

We now have this fine account of the ‘Ragamuffin Man’ for posterity. It’s a unique life story, wonderfully well told. I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I have.

Sir James Hardy, OBE

AUTHOR’S NOTE

THIS IS NOT a conventional biography. It is neither authorised nor unauthorised. Syd Fischer is not the kind of person who seeks to exercise authority over things he does not already control.

He certainly co-operated in the preparation of this book – for which I am, of course, most grateful – but at the same time he did nothing to actively encourage the project. That is entirely consistent with his character. The impulse for self-disclosure that many of us share is not strong in Syd. He always plays with the cards very close to his chest. None of my sailing friends (or Fischer’s business associates) was confident he could ever be convinced to reveal enough, on the record, to support a biography. He is so naturally unforthcoming and judgmental that much of what he chooses to say, even on complex topics, he reduces to a single, short, acerbic sentence – usually delivered in juicy Australian colloquial style. He seems as reluctant to spend his words as his money. In short, Fischer is a writer’s nightmare.

So how did this book come into being? Some years ago, to enliven the otherwise rather dreary proceedings of the general meetings of the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club, it was suggested that I might like to provide a kind of ‘overture’ of entertainment to prevent my fellow club members nodding off into their beers before the procedural part of the evening got underway. To that end, I began a series of informal on-stage interviews with some of Australia’s most legendary yachtsmen.

Among them was Syd Fischer. I’d met him only once before – in 1983 when he was checking me over for a crew spot on his first big Ragamuffin yacht before that year’s Sydney–Hobart race. He struck me then as a cold, gruff, impatient, distrusting, dismissive and nakedly competitive type of man. Quite unpleasant, really. (As it happened, the boat ran late on its delivery from the US and I jumped ship to Apollo.)

So, my expectations weren’t exactly rosy when I went to see Syd more than 30 years later to invite him to do a sit-down interview with me at the club. But, yarning across the bar in the downstairs den of his boatshed home on Mosman Bay, I discovered a much-modified man. More at peace with the world (although not completely), still gruff, but ready to share a laugh or two and even prepared to tell the odd story against himself. Maybe our common lifetime involvement in offshore yacht racing helped ease any tensions, and it wasn’t long before Syd had agreed to join me in a relaxed chat for the members.

On the night itself he was sparky, surprisingly frank – and unexpectedly funny. At the end he received a huge ovation and then had trouble getting out of the room as people pressed forward to shake his hand, pose with him for photos, ask questions and congratulate him on his many sailing achievements. Fischer is not naturally gregarious, yet I could tell from the slight twinkle in his better eye that he’d enjoyed himself enormously. The owner-skipper who for years had commonly been known in the sailing community as a combative outsider – ‘Syd Vicious’ – had apparently mellowed into a decent sort of bloke. Interesting.

Afterwards, Vanessa Dudley, a friend and former editor of Australian Sailing magazine, sidled up, poked me gently in the ribs and said, ‘I’ve always thought there was a good book in Syd, and I think you’re the bloke to do it.’ Too polite to just wave the suggestion away, I mumbled something vague about maybe mentioning the idea to a sympathetic publisher. Step forward Jeanne Ryckmans, who had patiently steered my frivolous collection of sailing essays and memoirs, All Piss & Wind, through to print a few years earlier. I half-heartedly pitched the notion of a Fischer biography to her over an extended coffee-and-croissants morning in a Paddington cafe. Jeanne has a strong sailing element in her family background. A contract arrived in the mail a fortnight later.

From the outset it was obvious to me that this book could not follow the strict chronological form of a standard biography. Not only don’t I have the training or aptitude (let alone the inclination) for that level of historical research, but the available sources – particularly on Syd’s business career – would also be inadequate. For example, New South Wales court records before 1993 can be very difficult to access, and Fischer has been involved in almost constant litigation – both as a plaintiff and defendant – for more than 50 years. Likewise, predigital newspaper records are getting much harder to search. In any case, it just isn’t possible to assemble a worthwhile biography based on a handful of press cuttings. In their haste to report, the press can often be unreliable, simplistic and can struggle to offer any useful guide to the real forces at play in a complex situation. To make the job even harder, Fischer himself has kept very little reference material from his long business and sporting careers.

So my solution has been to approach the book more like an extended magazine profile or television documentary (forms in which I’m professionally more comfortable anyway). Rather than tell Fischer’s story as a year-by-year narrative, I have approached the task via its big themes: childhood, sport, family, business, character and so on. The aim is to give an authentic impression of Syd’s essential substance and spirit – his ‘world’ – rather than to assemble a definitive dates-and-places account of his long life.

By happy coincidence, during the initial year it took to get this little tome properly underway, Syd’s world was dominated by the massive, multimillion-dollar rebuild of his super-maxi-yacht Ragamuffin 100 for the 2014 Sydney–Hobart Yacht Race. That project – and the race itself – provides a welcome extra dimension that unfolds in instalments through the book. The 2014 race was not a happy one for Team Ragamuffin, but they then sailed the boat halfway around the globe to contest the marathon Transpac Race from California to Hawaii, before returning for another tilt at line honours in the 2015 Sydney–Hobart. Offshore sailing still forms such a dominant part of Fischer’s persona that it would have been a distortion not to include substantial coverage of those campaigns.

It is frustratingly difficult to get Syd to speak at length about anything, particularly about Syd Fischer. He’s become a virtuoso at avoiding subjects he suspects might not reflect well on himself or his companies. No doubt we all share that reluctance to some extent. Nevertheless, direct quotes form a large part of the text. The bulk of these are taken from my interviews, but some are from other sources stretching back over the decades. Where relevant, those sources are identified within the text.

I dare to hope the combined effect is to give a fair picture of the man’s substance and character more through his own words than through paraphrase, or by documenting his every deed – or misdeed. That said, the text does include an occasional attempt at personality analysis and the odd timid speculation as to my subject’s motives. He’s such a tight-lipped old bugger that sometimes you just have to join the more obvious dots – or try to fill in the blanks.

Speaking of which, I must emphasise that any errors or omissions in what follows are entirely mine, as Syd will undoubtedly take great pleasure in pointing out.

I suspect he might also find some of the assessments of his character and actions quoted here rather harsh. But he’d also be the first to accept that as a bloke who expresses such strong opinions himself he has to cop the odd little salvo of return fire.

David Salter

Sydney, August 2016

A NOTE ON DIMENSIONS, DISTANCES, SPEEDS AND TIMES

Despite the fact that almost everyone in the world except the British and Americans now adhere to metric weights and measures, the world of yachting remains stubbornly imperial. The main dimensions of yachts – length, beam, waterline length, mast height, sail area etc. – are therefore usually cited in feet rather than metres. For those unfamiliar with these ‘old money’ measures, I have occasionally given the metric equivalents.

But, with a perversity typical of the sport, there is a type of classic yacht raced internationally designed to what is known as the ‘Metre Rule’. This gathers a variety of dimensions (waterline length, sail area, girth etc.) into a dividing formula, the quotient of which is usually a whole number expressed in metres. Even more perversely, that number of metres is never the actual length of the yacht. The 12-metres which contested the America’s Cup from 1958 to 1987 were anywhere between 60 to 70 feet overall.

For ease of navigational calculation, distances at sea are universally stated in nautical miles, not kilometres, and any references in this book to ‘miles’ are the nautical kind. A nautical mile is defined as the distance spanned by one minute of arc along the Earth’s meridian. One nautical mile is exactly 1852 metres, and around 15 per cent longer than the old land (or ‘statute’) mile. Wind speed and boat speed are also both given in ‘knots’ – nautical miles per hour.

As distance ocean races are non-stop events, time is noted on the 24-hour clock (‘military’ or ‘naval’ time). Midnight is 00:00, midday is 12:00.

PRELUDE

HE WAS ONCE almost six feet tall but is somehow a smaller man now. Silver haired and slightly stooped, with the stiff-necked, shuffling gait that marks someone no longer quite sure of their balance. His moist, grey-blue eyes are dimmed by the beginnings of glaucoma, but still constantly darting about like a boxer’s, wary he might be blindsided by an unexpected quick left cross.

Every working day, with minor variations, he dresses the same way: boating shoes, cotton trousers, neatly pressed check shirt and one of those navy blue windcheaters lined with polar fleece sailors like to call a ‘snug’. He looks like any moderately prosperous urban Australian proud to have outlived the average male life expectancy and enjoying a quiet retirement. But this is Syd Fischer, 88 years old and – as ever – chasing a deadline.

There’s unmistakable urgency as he walks in small steps, head down, diagonally across the huge concrete forecourt of Sydney City Marine, the boatyard he owns beneath the Anzac Bridge in the inner-Sydney waterfront suburb of Rozelle. Around him, hauled out on wooden blocks for maintenance or repairs, are half a dozen massive motor cruisers – the glinting, gin-palace playthings of the city’s multi-millionaires. These are ostentatious luxury craft designed to catch the eye, but Fischer doesn’t look up once. He’s headed directly for the far corner of the first shed where something long and large is hidden behind a makeshift wall of paint-smeared plywood and tarpaulins. Temporary lighting leaks out at odd angles. The air is thick with dust and the heavy, acrid smell of epoxy chemicals.

Fischer ducks inside the enclosed space. It is filled with the powerful hull of a 100-foot racing yacht, the maximum permissible size under the prevailing international rules for offshore racing. This is Ragamuffin 100, the biggest of the eleven yachts bearing that name Fischer has owned over the past 47 years. Yet there’s something very odd going on here. An ugly, jagged cut line snakes right around the boat just below the gunnel, the point at which the deck joins the hull. Someone with a power saw has decapitated Ragamuffin – sliced the top off Fischer’s $4 million maxi-yacht like they were opening a tin of baked beans with a can opener.

He walks over towards the shipwrights working inside the boat. David Witt, the professional sailing master on Ragamuffin, breaks away from the group to greet his boss and answer the first question he knows is coming, and has come almost every morning for the past two months. ‘Everything going OK, Witty?’ ‘No worries, Syd. The job’s on schedule.’

Fischer smiles faintly, but his eyes betray an almost cheeky delight in the audacity of this whole endeavour. After a lifetime competing offshore he’s having what may be his last shot at winning line honours in the Sydney–Hobart race.

And for once he doesn’t seem to mind how much money he’ll have to spend in the attempt.

BEGINNINGS

‘You’re not a real son’

WHAT KIND OF home does a millionaire developer build for himself? How does he choose to live when any imaginable lifestyle is possible? For most of the past 30 years Syd Fischer has been the sole occupant of a converted boatshed. The location is extraordinary – his three-storey weatherboard house is the only absolute waterfront dwelling on Mosman Bay, one of the most picturesque and exclusive small inlets on Sydney’s stunning harbour. Flanked by the type of home unit blocks that made Fischer his first fortune, the house is at the protected far end of the bay, just a few steps from the ferry wharf.

How Syd came to acquire and develop this unique site is a tale of typical Fischer opportunism. From the early 1960s he’d kept his racing yacht in Mosman Bay. ‘I had a boat called Malohi here on the marina,’ he remembers. ‘Three blokes from South Australia bought the marina, and I said, If you ever want to sell that house, put me down for it. They rang me up later and said, One of the partners wants out and we’re going to get rid of it. Do you want to buy it? And within an hour I owned it.’

At the time the structure was little more than a neglected boatshed with a simple living area above. Fischer, already a successful builder-developer, then used the tricks of his trade to improve the property without having to seek council approval for every detail. ‘Let’s say I changed it a bit. I wanted to renovate, so I put big tarpaulins right over the top and every two or three weeks I’d jack it up.’ Hidden behind the scaffolding and tarpaulins the boatshed magically grew another, entirely undeclared, storey. By the time the completed building was revealed it was, of course, too late for the authorities to object. Such ‘swifties’ – the cunning little deceptions and loophole exploits of a natural lurk merchant – have been the lifelong trademark of Fischer’s business style.

True to its traditional late-19th-century maritime origins, the front of the house still sits directly above the shoreline, fringed by a hardwood deck supported on sturdy turpentine log piles. The single garage space, which Fischer doesn’t use, is the enclosed top portion of the slipway that served the old boatshed business. (Naval architect Warwick Hood once rented this space from Fischer as a design studio – a commercial use that was also in contravention of council regulations.)

There is deep water directly off the deck and room to moor three or four large yachts. Only one of Syd’s fleet is there now, but not long ago he could look down from the bedroom windows onto his 50-foot ocean racer Ragamuffin, the cruising yacht Ragamuffin Cruza, and Steak ’n’ Kidney, his 12-metre from the 1987 America’s Cup campaign. Keeping his yachts privately moored alongside each other outside his front door was not just a convenient and economic arrangement. It was a silent reminder to everyone who passed by on the water of his wealth and status within the world of competitive sailing.

Like most homes occupied by ageing single men, Fischer’s house has a faintly neglected air. Everything works, but the windows need cleaning and some of the dark beige exterior paintwork is on the point of letting go. The roll-down canvas window shades obviously haven’t been used in years. There’s the odd cobweb and a hint of moss and mould in the darker corners. The pot plants look uncared for and thirsty. Overall, the exterior impression is of a place lacking a houseproud woman’s touch.

Nevertheless, approaching the front door, there are a few small clues to Syd’s personality and interests. The doormat is decorated with the simple silhouette of a traditional Admiralty pattern ship’s anchor. Beside the bell-ring is a large brass ship’s stern light (British made, Seahorse brand), a nautical antique of considerable value. The front door itself is of solid timber planking, expertly varnished – an echo of the handsome teak deck details of the first Ragamuffin. But high on the right, screwed under the eaves and pointing directly at any arrivals, is the telltale lens of a security surveillance camera. One of Syd’s favourite aphorisms is, ‘Trust is good, checking is better.’

Fischer’s car, a gunmetal-grey Mercedes B200 four-door compact, is parked outside. It is always washed and immaculately clean and uncluttered inside. Still, there’s a minor scrape in the duco on the right rear side, possible evidence of a parking inaccuracy caused by Fischer’s failing eyesight. The cost of repairing the damage would be less than the insurance excess, and Syd has never been too concerned with cosmetic issues. There were times when he drove larger, more expensive cars, but the modest Mercedes suits his current needs: practical, efficient, economic, easy to drive and unostentatious.

Through the front door and the immediate sensation is of a slightly musty atmosphere that’s also common to wooden boats. There is no entrance lobby and a narrow staircase rises to the left. Ahead, the ground floor opens out into a space that feels more like a casual men’s den than a private home. The area is crammed with yachting memorabilia and framed pictures of Fischer’s long line of racing yachts. An adjoining kitchenette and bar face out through full-width glass sliding doors to the deck. Until he bought the Sydney City Marine boatyard business in 2011 this was the centre of Syd’s sailing operations – the working base for the paid hands who maintained his yachts, and where the crews assembled before every race.

The first floor is the main living area, a practical layout with no pretensions to luxury or the passing fashions of interior design. The dominant texture is provided by the floor-to-ceiling panelled walls of western red cedar – a soft, warm timber that has been left unvarnished, just lightly oiled. The complex carpentry required to fit this panelling into the awkward overhead angles has been beautifully executed. No doubt Fischer, as a former chippie himself, took some delight in having that work done to the highest standard.

The top storey, commanding splendid views into the bay, is essentially a trophy room. Furnished with comfortable lounges and elegant low tables, the space echoes the self-satisfied assurance of an elite gentleman’s club. Again, the walls are dominated by trophy cases, pictures and memorabilia. Particularly striking is a large oil painting of America’s Cup racing in the 1930s by Ian Hansen, Australia’s premier marine artist. We are left in no doubt that Syd Fischer wants us to measure his worth in terms of his yachting achievements.

Maybe it is too easy to ascribe significance to physical surroundings, or to draw glib parallels between how a person chooses to live and their intrinsic character, but the inescapable impression of Fischer’s waterfront home is that it is the dream bachelor pad of a keen sailor. He lives simply, beside the water he loves, surrounded by reminders of a half-century of yachting success. Yet despite the expensive furniture, wonderful views and impressive collection of trophies and artwork, it is a rather lonely place. It does not quite have that ‘time-stood-still’ feel of Miss Havisham’s house in Dickens’ Great Expectations, but there’s a distinct sense of a life that has now passed its peak.

• • •

Marrickville, population 25,000, is a small, quiet suburb seven kilometres south-west of Sydney’s central business district. A municipality since 1861, its modest brick homes have housed generations of the city’s working and lower-middle class families. Marrickville grew in that haphazard, unstructured way that gives so many of Sydney’s inner suburbs their almost improvised appearance. The main streets follow the region’s gentle gullies and hill contours; the smaller byways were once pony tracks or the back alleys used by overnight dunny carters before the sewerage arrived.

For more than a century this was classic ‘middle Australia’: a stable, non-aspirational community based on its schools, pubs, churches and sporting teams. Within the federal electorate of Grayndler since 1949, Marrickville formed part of the safest Labor seat in the Commonwealth. But migration and Sydney’s relentless population pressures have changed the area markedly. Today, only slightly more than half of Marrickville’s residents were born in Australia. There are significant Greek and Vietnamese groups. Over the past 15 years its proximity to the CBD has also seen the suburb gradually become gentrified. Property values doubled as many of the old bungalows and semi-detached houses were renovated and expanded. There is now a choice of ten different ethnic restaurants, and as many bakeries and coffee houses.

Among the most sought-after streets in the district is Riverside Crescent, West Marrickville. Its dwellings occupy the north side of the street only. Well-established trees provide plenty of shade and there is little through traffic. Directly across the road, what were once open sporting fields have become the narrow fairways of the Marrickville Golf Club. Beyond them is the slow-moving Cooks River, a tributary of Botany Bay. Syd Fischer grew up at Number 37 Riverside Crescent, an address he still remembers with obvious affection. To the