This is the Tempest, a 68’ motor yacht built for singer and actress Julie Andrews, which she later sold to Hal Hallikainen, who created industrial and scientific instruments for the medical, petroleum and chemical fields, including one of the first heart-lung machines, which was used in open heart surgeries. Broadcasters will recognize that name, as his son Harold developed the first fully user programmable digital (and network capable) transmitter remote control system in 1980, the DRC-190.
Why am I posting a picture of a yacht that unfortunately sank over fifteen years ago?
Because an offer from Harold, for me and a local radio DJ who worked part time for me, to stay onboard for a week during an NAB Radio show at Moscone Center in 1992 - at which point I was so broke I couldn’t afford a hotel room - an offer that saved my company from bankruptcy and dissolution and made that DJ More money in a couple of years than a lifetime in radio
How?
Well, that DJ, who like all radio talent despised sales, salesmen, selling … it’s a thing you had to be in radio back in the day to understand, perhaps, but there was a “Chinese Wall” of sorts between the sales department and the production side of the business … he helped out in our booth - for free, just a trip to San Francisco and a stay on the yacht - and unbeknownst to him (and everyone else) he was a true, natural born salesman! Some here will remember the late Kelly Hethcote, who single-handedly averaged $10 million a year in gross sales at NSN. Out of the gate! It was stunning …
Harold and I were catching up the other day and he sent me this photo of “that damned boat,” as Kelly always called it. “I never wanted to be a salesman. Don’t like them. But a week on that damned boat changed my entire life and now, I can’t go back!”
Sadly, like the Tempest, Kelly is no longer with us, succumbing far too soon to pancreatic cancer 8 years ago.
We still think of you, Kelly.
You - and that damned boat.
