FAST IS FUN
The Santa Cruz Offshore Racing Revolution
FAST IS FUN: JOIN THE PROJECT
The FAST IS FUN production is seeking philanthropic partners, individual donors and community supporters to help preserve this uniquely Santa Cruz story and bring it to audiences beyond the sailing world.
The project is an independently produced documentary and its completion is dependent on philanthropic support, grants, sponsorships and individual contributions.
Funding will directly enable the research, interviews, archival acquisition and preservation, production, offshore cinematography, 2027 Transpac coverage, editing and post-production required to tell this story at a professional level. Support may fund individual phases of production or contribute toward the film's full production budget.
Every contribution helps preserve this chapter of Santa Cruz history while the people who created it are still here to tell the story.
Film Distribution: The film is intended for festival exhibition beginning in 2028, including submission to the Santa Cruz Film Festival, with a community screening planned in conjunction with the Santa Cruz Yacht Club's 100th anniversary in 2028.
Contributors will have options for film credits and sponsor placement at two tiers.
Tiers 1: Contributions of $5,000 or more include the option of a sponsorship mention in the film’s credits.
Tier 2: Contributions of $10,000 or more include the option of a special message and logo placement in the credits, with details agreed upon in advance.
When donating at either tier, please reach out via email about your specific interests in credits or sponsorship placement.
Contributions are received directly by the film production house and are not tax-deductible charitable donations.
Archival Film Scanning: Preserving Santa Cruz’s sailing history means returning to original archival film reels and professionally scanning them into high-quality digital masters, recovering detail that older video transfers may have lost. A portion of our fundraising will support this essential archival work, bringing rare footage into Fast Is Fun and preserving it for future generations.
The Story
In 1970s Santa Cruz, a loose community of engineers, surfers, sailors, craftspeople and boatbuilders began questioning one of offshore sailing's most established assumptions: that an ocean-racing yacht needed to be heavy.
At the center of this movement was designer and mechanical engineer Bill Lee, whose philosophy was remarkably simple: “Fast is Fun.”
Working within a larger community that included builders and innovators such as George Olson, Ron Moore, Homer Lighthall, and Buzz Ballenger, Lee helped pioneer a generation of radically lightweight boats designed not simply to endure the Pacific, but to to surf it—and ultimately break the elapsed-time record in the world-famous Transpacific Yacht Race.
What began as experimentation in a small California coastal town became part of a transformation in offshore sailing.
FAST IS FUN is more than a film about sailboats. It is an oral history of a remarkable period in Santa Cruz cultural and maritime history—when surf culture, engineering, fiberglass fabrication, craftsmanship, counterculture and ocean racing converged in one place.
Many of the people who experienced this era firsthand are now aging. Their memories, photographs, films, drawings and personal archives contain stories that have never been formally documented. There is a finite opportunity to preserve this history through the people who lived it.
Production will continue through the 2027 Transpacific Yacht Race, nearly fifty years after Merlin's historic 1977 crossing. The race gives the film a contemporary destination— connecting the pioneers of Santa Cruz's ultralight movement with today's continuing pursuit of offshore speed.
The result will be a cinematic 25–50 minute documentary combining intimate oral histories, archival footage, sailing cinematography, boatbuilding culture and the extraordinary landscape of Monterey Bay and the Pacific.
