Sailing is Part of Hufnagel Family Portrait

SAN DIEGO —  Tell John Hufnagel all about sailing as a rich man’s sport, and he’ll tell you a story that will blow that theory right out of the water.

Actually, his mother told it by telephone from Marblehead, Mass., where she’s lived since 1960 and has raised six children. When this America 3 grinder was a wide-eyed 8-year-old, Hufnagel fell in love with a little wooden sailboat he saw in a local toy store.

“But with five other children, we just couldn’t afford it,” Audrey Hufnagel said. “We had to tell him no.”

The cost of that toy boat? $12.95.

Not long after the visit to the toy store, Hufnagel suffered a ruptured appendix. Doctors weren’t sure he would live.

“We almost lost him,” his mother said. “When he was in the hospital, the doctors asked us if there was anything that interested him, anything that would give him a spark.”

To speed his recovery, Hufnagel’s parents bought him that sailboat. The catch? He wouldn’t get it right away. Whenever their son--the youngest of three boys--would eat part of a meal, when his temperature dropped slightly, or when he took any step forward, the boat would progress in its imaginary journey from the shop to the hospital.

“If he ate a whole meal, it sailed faster. After two weeks, on the day he was released, he carried that sailboat home with him,” she said.

Hufnagel stayed at home, with the sailboat, two months before he fully recovered.

“Little did we know what we had started,” she said. “He’s loved the water all his life.”

Hufnagel, 32, now of Los Angeles, started sailing when he was 11. His resume includes four Maxi boat campaigns, with a world championship in 1988 with Il Moro di Venezia to his credit. In 1983 he was a member of Dennis Conner’s unsuccessful Liberty campaign in Newport, R.I., a heartbreaking affair his mother found so painful to watch that she couldn’t bear seeing America 3 wrestle Il Moro in the Cup finale nine years later.

“In Newport, I stood next to a man who had sailed in an America’s Cup and had lost. I watched the tears fall down. I could feel his pain. I don’t want to go through that again,” said Hufnagel’s mother, who managed a trip to San Diego with two of Hufnagel’s sisters to watch John, during the trials.

“Having gone through a loss, I’m so anxious for him, and America 3 to win. I’m a nervous wreck, but I handle myself better watching at home. I’m glued to the set.”

ESPN has gotten some good mileage out of its vignette of Hufnagel’s mother and her daily Cup Watch ritual. The station even got a big chunk of the story before she did.

Jane, the youngest and only sibling living at home, laughed when asked about the banner that now hangs over the Hufnagel household with care.

“It was so funny,” she said. “After we heard that we had a sign up on the house on TV, we decided we’d better make one in case anyone came by.”

So the daughter and mother painted a sign that reads: “‘Do Not Disturb During America’s Cup racing. Go America 3 .Go John.”

Said Jane Hufnagel: “We put it up about the middle of the race Saturday and sure enough, someone drove by after the race to see if it was there.”

Audrey Hufnagel said she jokingly told neighbors not to call, visit, pester, or otherwise disturb her during the three-hour race broadcasts.

“I have no idea why they thought we had a sign,” she said.

That any one Hufnagel would think to paint a sign in the first place is a running gag in the family. During one group house painting, her children wrote across, “We hate to paint,” in big, bold lettering.

“That stayed up about two weeks before someone painted over it,” Audrey Hufnagel said.