What I remember was if you had a really good day in first grade, the teacher would put a stick-on Gold Star on your forehead. I ended up about 8 years later chasing a different Gold Star: a Star Class World's Championship.
The boat was Star #3497, HOLIDAY TOO, a Skip Etchell's built beauty. #3497, then named MENEHUNE, had literally landed at my feet one day as I was following a local Star class race while walking the shoreline of Newport beach. A bigger than normal southerly swell picked up MENEHUNE as her crew short tacked the beach and deposited the boat stern first into the sand. The stern was splintered forward to the cockpit, but the rest of the boat, except for the owner's pride, was undamaged. We bought the boat for a song from the insurance company, who had declared it a total loss, and set about making repairs, scarfing in new planks of mahogany.
Note the wood mast. Over several months I managed to gently plane 6 pounds off the leading edge of the spruce mast, getting the spar from 40 pounds down to 32 without ill effect. Lowell North, a master at keeping noodles up, got his lightened to 28 pounds using a red cedar core.
In those days, hiking straps were not legal. My pants had pads sewn in the inseam.
Winning the Star World's was and still is one of the toughest things in one design sailing. Southern California Gold Star winners were legendary and really good sailors. Lowell North (4), Malin Burnham, Bill Ficker, Don Edler, Don Bever all had won at least one Gold Star. They were all in our local fleet and we raced against them most every weekend with a combined crew weight of 220 pounds for myself and best friend as crew. Needless to say, we were fast in light conditions but suffered when the breeze got above 12 knots against the likes of Edler, who with 460 combined pounds on the rail had a quarter knot more speed up wind. To gain weight, we'd wear 4 or 5 sets of sweat pants and wool sweaters, and get them good and wet if we thought the breeze was going to be up, as it usually did after 1 pm on a Southern California afternoon.
I wasn't alone on the steep learning curve. Tom Blackaller, a future Star Class World's Champ himself, could barely break out of the back half of the fleet with his all varnished Star GOOD GRIEF!
We never won a Gold Star ...came close one year with a 3rd in Cascais, Portugal... Thanks for posting the 5 Gold Stars. Brought back good memories.
And here's 3 minutes of modern day, professional Star Class Racing. 40 years after HOLIDAY III the winner gets $40,000. Check out the plethora of Gold Stars in this fleet. Even the best can break their mast in the storm that hits the last race. Yiii Doggies. Pretty competitive for a boat designed 119 years ago http://finals.starsailors.com/portfo...l-finals-2018/