Richard Matthews, 88

Stamford, Conn.

Richard Matthews, a noted world-class sailor who served as navigator for two significant America’s Cup crews, died May 11 in Fairfield, Conn.

Matthews served as navigator on America’s Cup challenger Vim in 1958, and in the same role with Weatherly in 1962. His brother Don Matthews was on both crews as well. Vim was runner-up in the challenger trials to the eventual winner Columbia, and Weatherly won the Cup over Australia’s Gretel.

“In those days, most of the world’s best sailors cut their teeth on Long Island Sound,” Matthews said. “We met Bus (Emil) Mosbacher (who skippered both Vim and Weatherly) racing dinghies out of Larchmont Yacht Club and were lucky enough to stay with him through both Cup campaigns in ’58 and ’62.”

Matthews sailed internationally in both the Star and Tempest classes. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s, and was part of an internationally noted local fleet that included noted sailmaker Lowell North and America’s Cup skipper and two-time world champion Tom Blackaller. He moved to Hawaii in the 1990s and eventually back to Newport, R.I., in 2005, always insisting on living near the water.

Matthews was also a licensed pilot who regularly flew a variety of Cessna and Piper aircraft models, and was part of the management team for family-owned Universal Airlines from 1966 to 1972.

Born in 1930 in Staten Island, New York, to Captain John Matthews and Elizabeth Barlow Matthews, he graduated from St. Joseph’s University in 1953, and served in the Army during the Korean War from 1950- 1952 as a company clerk in Seattle, Washington.

Matthews is survived by his three children: Richard Matthews Jr., Lynn Matthews-Douglass and Howard Bradley Matthews; and brother Don Matthews, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.