NAME:  Bill Faude
CLASS:   Lightning
POSITION: Crew
BIRTHDATE: 12/25/60
BIRTHPLACE:  Davenport, Iowa
HOMETOWN:   Chicago, Ill.
YACHT CLUB:  Milwaukee Yacht Club, Chicago Corinthian Yacht Club
COLLEGE:  Southern Methodist University
YEAR GRADUATED: 1983
MAJOR:  Business/English
GRADUATE SCHOOL: Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
YEAR GRADUATED: 1986
DEGREE: MS Journalism
OCCUPATION:  Advertising Creative Director
MARITAL STATUS: Julie Michaelson
CHILDREN:  Camryn Paige Faude, 2
SAILING SINCE AGE:  9

HOW AND WHEN DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN SAILING?
Instead of taking a vacation to Mexico, my parents, who had no previous sailing background, bought a Columbia 22 in 1967. They took a Coast Guard auxiliary class and learned how to get the boat onto and off a mooring. They signed me up for a beginning sailing class at the Milwaukee Yacht Club. I loved it. It changed my life.

WHO HAS BEEN THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON IN YOUR SAILING CAREER AND WHY? There are two people who particularly influenced me. My neighbor Harry Schmidt lived two doors down from me growing up. He was the first person I’d ever met who raced sailboats. He’d qualified for the Sears Cup finals from the Milwaukee Yacht Club as a Junior and his two boys and I sailed together a great deal as juniors. We sat at his kitchen table for years rehashing every tack of every race of our junior regattas—even our club races. No race was too inconsequential. He took time to help us learn. His oldest son Steve ultimately had lots of success in the Finn, qualifying for the Gold Cup in 1980 and putting together the first real campaign I’d ever seen. He was part of the original laser generation. I was just old enough to lionize those guys.

The second guy who’s impacted me a lot is Bruce Goldsmith. When I started sailing the Lightning seriously, he took the time to help me understand how everything in sailing was empirical and everything you needed to know win a sailboat race was right there if you just knew how to look for it. Before a number of World Championships I’d go to his house for a weekend and he’d help me understand what I was likely to face and how no matter where the event or how big it was—it was fundamentally just a sailboat race.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOU?
After you get to be a certain age and you’ve had to earn a living, motivation is no problem. Sailing is what I love to do—it’s my release from everything else.  And it’s also the fundamental motivation for most of the other things I do.

WHAT IS YOUR TRAINING REGIMEN (on and off the water)?
I work out in the gym 3 mornings a week at 5am. It’s tough to find time to work out when you have a young child and both my wife and I work.

WHAT OTHER, NON-SAILING INTERESTS DO YOU HAVE?
I love to read. I love to kayak. I’m enjoying the process of learning to be a better parent to my daughter. I love craftsman architecture and mission furniture.

WHAT SETS YOU APART FROM OTHER ATHLETES? Probably nothing more important than arriving at the understanding of how many people have to make a sacrifice so that I can even get out and sail at all anymore. My wife sacrifices because she stays home with Camryn. We’ve also been married 8 years and we’ve taken only exactly one vacation as a couple that didn’t have some sailing component. My team at work has to pick up some of the slack when I blow through all my vacation time and there are still 5 days of sailing left to do in the year. My big boat teammates won’t admit it, but they miss having another helmsman on the Mackinaw races when I’m off sailing one-designs. As time goes by, the time gets more and more valuable. It’s harder to get out sailing, but the trade off is that every time you get out there it’s more and more fun. I can’t remember the last time I had a bad day out sailing. I still have unfortunate results, but I’m never bummed out getting back to the dock. Every tack is a gift and I just don’t take that for granted anymore.