Salty Goes for It

by Deirdre Mahar  

1994

On Saturday, October 22, the hearty crew of the good ship Salty sailed toward Manhasset Bay and their last race of 1994. The crew cast their eyes on the competition that was swarming in the seas around them. Maybe those other sailboats did look smug and sure with their fancy doo-dads and technical thing-a-ma-bobs. Maybe the crew of rival ship Hi-Q did look smart in their matching sweatshirts, but Sally, with her rich history that spanned over 50 years, had heart, drive, music, and rhythm, and who could ask for anything more.

It had been an exciting racing season for Sally. Captain Skip "Fred Astaire In a Past Life" Bartley entered more races than he had ever before, sailing his trim ship through Newport, Manhattan, and all along the Long Island shore. He had picked his mates carefully, screening each and sorting out the weak ones, the ones who could not carry a tune, and the ones with two left feet. Crew members Michael "Mammy" Mansfield, Jonathan "I Feel Like Singing" McLaughlin, Cheryl "Lounge Lizard" Lange, Carole "Broadway Bound" Bartley, and Thor "Python" Paulsen, along with the landlubbers they could convince to set sail with them, coaxed the boat to victory in the Mayor's Cup, and had strong performances in the Newport Regatta. The 45'New York Thirty-two was ably handled by her crew through windy and windless courses alike without the advantage of newfangled equipment but with the advantage of some pretty good singers and one helluva dancer in their skipper.

That following Saturday, as the wind rose and died down, the different sailboats sized each other up. Salty, a seafaring relic compared to most of the boats in the fleet, sailed past cocked eyebrows and smirks that seemed to question the sailability of the old girl. But when the cannon sounded, Salty sailed with the best of them, passed the worst of them, avoided the most dangerous of them, and finished ahead of half of them. Not bad for a vessel whose cast and crew wasn't so sure what to do when the high spinnaker came down but could divert the attention of competitors by bursting into opera. It may not have been a pretty sight at the finish line, but my, what a chorus line.