seawanhaka yacht club wedding

Seawanhaka Yacht Club Wedding

There is nothing more classic than a summer wedding by the sea!  It was such a pleasure to photograph this Seawanhaka wedding, so many great vendors were on hand.

The day starts at the bride’s family home in Oyster Bay. All 10 of her bridesmaids are on hand in matching PJ’s from Roller Rabbit. She dresses in her beautiful Lela Rose  gown and we take some fun and classic portraits in the backyard. (The fun ones include using leftover bachelorette party props featuring the groom’s face!)

The ceremony is held at St. Patrick’s Church in Huntington, New York and features a traditional Catholic ceremony with a receiving line and a bubble exit! The reception is at Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club, about 30 mins away. With a Sperry tent and flowers by Andrew Pascoe featuring blue hydrangeas, it is beautiful setting indeed.

A bright sunny day with gorgeous views of Oyster Bay, we take photos on the huge lawn and later on the dock near sunset. At sunset, the groom sets-off a small cannon when the  flag is taken down, an old yacht club tradition.

Dinner follows as the cooler breezes started to enter the tent. Speeches literally make everyone cry it seems and then dancing to the amazing Hank Lane Artie Stuart Band begins. Sadly, I didn’t get to try any of the delicious looking Lady M Confections  crepe cake. It looks so yummy!

• Ceremony: St. Patrick’s Church, Huntington, New York
• Reception: Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club
• Hair and Make-up: Adelyn’s Canvas
• Flowers: Andrew Pascoe
• Video: Bespoke Films
• Cake: Lady M Confections 
• Band:  Hank Lane – the Artie Stuart Band 
• Dress: Lela Rose
• Shoes: Sophia Webster
• Bridesmaid Dresses: Jenny Yoo
• Paper: Albertine Press
• Tents: Sperry tent
• Bridesmaids PJs: Roller Rabbit

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Kristy May is a former photojournalist who specializes in weddings and elopements. She is based in the NYC area and available for global destinations.. We welcome ALL couples, regardless of faith, gender or orientation. We value our clients' privacy and only share select images online. 

Oyster bay weddings

Seawanhaka Yacht Club

Seawanhaka is a private, member-owned yacht club in Oyster Bay, NY. We were able to capture the beauty of this venue for Christina and Aydar’s wedding. Their wedding video above shows the beauty of not only this amazing couple, but the venue as well.   Seawanhaka Yacht Club is located on Centre Island in Oyster Bay, Long Island. This stunning location provides amazing views of Oyster Bay Harbor and Long Island Sound. Whether you are having an outdoor ceremony or a cocktail hour on the veranda, you will be surrounded by stunning waterfront views that will take your breath away. Plus, it is also conveniently located nearby many hotels that provide accommodations for out-of-town guests. The staff at Seawanhaka Yacht Club takes great pride in providing their guests with everything they need for their event. From delicious cuisine to top-notch service and beyond—they have it all! The staff works closely with couples to ensure that every detail is taken care of and that each couple’s vision comes alive on their big day. Plus, they offer various packages that include services such as photography and transportation to make planning your wedding easier than ever before! Seawanhaka Yacht Club was established in 1871 and has been hosting events ever since! The club boasts classic architecture with modern amenities that blend together perfectly to create a timeless atmosphere of sophistication and elegance. And the best part? There’s no need to decorate—the venue speaks for itself! Plus, couples can choose from multiple rooms within the club for their ceremony or reception, allowing them to customize their event down to the last detail. If you’re looking for a nautical-themed wedding venue with breathtaking waterfront views and plenty of amenities all in one place, look no further than Seawanhaka Yacht Club! From its convenient location near many hotels for out-of-town guests to its elegant atmosphere filled with character, this historic club offers something truly special that couples won’t find anywhere else. So don’t wait any longer—start planning your dream wedding today at Seawanhaka Yacht Club!

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Photographer: Dimitri Wedding Planner: Luisa Colon, Everything Fabulous Church: St Gertrude’s Church Venue: Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club Makeup: Ylenia Mazzei Hair: Dolce Puzo Spray tan: The Ultimate Glow Dress: Mikaella by Paloma Blanca Dress shop: J. Majors in Charlotte, NC Hairpiece: MyArtDeco on etsy Veil: MyArtDeco on etsy Shoes: Manolo Blahnik Groom’s Attire: Indochino Florist: Pedestals Floral Decorators String Trio: The Kende Trio Stationary: Minted Rings: Tiffany & Co. Flag cocktail stirrers: MaPaParties on etsy Rolls Royce: Camelot Limo Streamers on wands: Amazon 1504 drink sign: Lily & Rose Studio Cake: Dortoni Bakery

See our Ashley and Rick, The Williamsburg Hotel Wedding Photography here!

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The Yachtsmen of Seawanhaka Are Different From You and Me

By John Culhane

• Sept. 13, 1970

OYSTER BAY, L. I. BACK in West High School, in Rockford, III., reading F. Scott Fitzgerald behind my American Problems textbook, I drew a map of the United States in my imagination: it was bounded on the west by Holly wood, of course, and on the east by “that slender riotous island which ex tends itself due east of New York” into “the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound.” When I finally came East, therefore, I was as eager to write about a yacht club on Long Island as I had been to sneak into a movie studio, when I was 17.

Naturally, the yacht club I wanted to write about was the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club of Oyster Bay. Seawanhaka Corinthian is perhaps the richest, most prestigious, most exclusive of all yacht clubs—which, as a group, tend to be pretty rich, prestigious and exclusive. Through the years, its membership rolls have consistently read like Bolshevik lists of the first families to be liquidated in the event of a revolution: Goulds, Morgans and Whitneys, Roosevelts and Vanderbilts abound; Laurance Rockefeller belongs, and so does Pierre S. du Pont IV.

I had never been aboard a yacht —never even been to a yacht club; but, like so many earnest American boys, I was willing to learn. I knew what I knew about the very rich from Scott Fitzgerald. They are different from you and me and their weekends got rhythm—“The rhythm of the weekend, with its birth, its planned gaieties, and its announced end.” Even in the days when doormothers were stamping identification in ultra violet on the back of my hand so that I could get back into the Sock Hop without paying another 50 cents, I was dreaming Winter Dreams of dancing to the rhythm of a weekend at a yacht club like Seawanhaka.

The fact that Seawanhaka will be 100 years old in September, 1971, seemed to give me a good excuse to write about her. So I contacted the club's commodore, Charles G. Meyer, and made my request. Commodore Meyer told me that Seawanhaka wasn't really interested In having any publicity, though of course he couldn't stop me from writing about the club. So I told the commodore that I want ed to do a magazine piece about Sea wanhaka because it is one of the old est and most prestigious yacht clubs in the country. I'd tell something of the club's 99‐year history, and point to the club's centennial summer cele bration in 1971. I told him that I wanted to start by spending a week end at Seawanhaka, so that I could chronicle the various different activi ties of the club.

One day not long after, Commodore Meyer invited me to the New York Yacht Club to have lunch With him and ex‐Commodore Henry H. Ander son Jr. When I arrived, a servant asked me to go up to a room where John Parkinson Jr. was writing the third and final volume of Seawan haka's official club history (1941‐ 1970), which will be published dining the centennial year. Parkinson, a bushy‐browed old sea dog with a gray crew cut sprouting above his plump, ruddy face, loaned me three thick, privately printed volumes—“The Club Book,” with bylaws; a record of the first 25 years of the club by W. P. Stephens, naval architect and nautical historian; and Parkinson's own ac count of the years from 1896 to World War II.

As I have already indicated, my knowledge of yachting up to this point had been gleaned almost entire ly from F. Scott Fitzgerald. This was apparent at the lunch. My notes on the conversation are full of such faith fully recorded data as “The Seawan haka Rule—VERY IMP.!—this form ula, ??? since known through out the yachting world as the Sea wanhaka Rule, stood the test of time for 10 years (1883–1893), and was only discarded, or rather reconstruct ed, by the inclusion of a third factor after the introduction of the fin keel and the scow types opened way for its evasion.” My mentors may as well have been speaking Nova Sco tian. However, I promised to do my homework in the three white‐bound volumes, and before the lunch was over, I was told of a Seawanhaka ruling that I did understand: I was be ing invited to the club for a weekend.

M Y perusal of the three books disclosed some fascinating in formation. Seawanhaka,* I learned

could be called an offshoot of the New York Yacht Club, which was founded in 1844 by businessmen who were both affluent and fond of the sea. Originally, these men did sail their awn boats, but as membership increased, it became the practice to race schooner yachts with profession al crews and captains. In 1871, a younger group in the club decided they wanted to race small boats them selves as amateurs. It was in no way a disagreeable parting. Then, as now, some yachtsmen are members of both clubs. But the founders of Seawan haka wanted to be independent and run things their own way.

Specifically, Seawanhaka's founders were in rebellion against a situation in which more and more yacht races were being run for stakes of $500 or $1,000, with as much as $10, 000 in outside wagers; the yachts were sailed by pro fessional helmsmen and usu ally the owner wasn't even on board. It looked as though yacht racing might go the way of horse racing, which had started in the colonies as the sport of gentlemen, but had become a business in which no race horse owner would dream of riding his horse in a race.

So in September, 1871, William L. Swan, owner of a small seed store in Oyster Bay—and evidently a man of considerable means with a reputation as a free spender —invited 11 friends aboard his cabin sloop Glance, anchored opposite the present Oyster Bay landing slip. They had often gathered there to sing sea chanteys around a bottle on the table, but this night Swan proposed that they found a yacht club—a purely amateur organization in which the members would take great pride in scraping, painting, rigging and sailing their own boats, without professional help,‐ racing them against the boats of other yacht clubs as Corinthians.* Swan became the club's first commodore and Glance its first flagship. Among the founders were two Roosevelts — Cornelius and Alfred, kinsmen of Theodore. Today, no less than eight Roosevelts belong to Sea wanhaka. “One of the club's sources of strength,” says Parkinson, “is the numerous lines of family continuity in its history: sons, grandsons, and even great‐grandsons fol low their ancestors in Sea

That being the case, Sea wanhaka can afford to con sider candidates for member ship, not for the size of the bar bill they are willing to pay, but for the amount of Corinthian‐style yachting they are willing (and able) to do. Membership is strictly limited to 500 persons. Of the present 489 members, only those who own yachts can vote. How ever, Seawanhaka's “rocking chair fleet” has always been comparatively small, and is primarily composed of mem bers who did their share of

racing in their younger days.

But if taking sailing seri ously is an important quality in a candidate for member ship, the only written require ment is desirability. Each can didate must be proposed and seconded in writing to the nine trustees—five of whom must know the candidate per sonally. Supporting letters must come in from “at least” four other members. Then, the bylaws demand, ‘the trustees “shall inquire into the char acter and standing of can didates, and elect to member ship such as they consider desirable.” Acceptability does not come easily; the bylaws state that “two negative votes at a meeting of the Board shall be sufficient to exclude a Candidate except when less than eight Trustees are pres ent, when one negative vote shall be sufficient.”

To be sure, most of those that the trustees have found desirable have happened to be white, Anglo‐Saxon Protest ants; but Catholics and Jews have also been elected to membership. There are no members who are black, though a white member did bring a black guest once. Members can bring any friends they choose along for week ends, and this member chose to bring a black friend. “Some of the other members were very uptight,” said an eye witness, “because they went running up to the desk clerk to ask who the Negro was, but I didn't see anyone do anything to make him feel unwanted.”

Once accepted for member ship, men over 35 pay an initiation fee of $500 and an nual dues of $375. For this consideration, they are called “Class A” members. “Class B” members are under 35 but over 28; they pay an initiation fee of $100 and $225 annual dues. “Class C” members not only have the pleasure of be ing under 28, but they pay no initiation fee and only $120 annual dues. And if there is any such thing as “yachts women's lib,” be it known that Seawanhaka's bylaws provide that “any lady may be invited by unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees at a regular meeting to become an Asso ciate Member.” There is no initiation fee for associate members, but they pay the same dues as everybody else.

Even when they find a can didate desirable, the respon sibility of the trustees does not end. They continue to take seriously the “Objects of the Club,” as set forth in Article II of its constitution. They are charged with en couraging their members:

“1st: In becoming proficient in navigation

2d: In the personal manage ment, control and handling of their yachts

3d: In all other matters pertaining to seamanship.”

For example, the trustees continue to resist suggestions that the club build a swim ming pool. They argue that a pool would be a pleasure island where children would turn into bikini‐clad land lubbers instead of learning navigation. But the pro swimming pool faction isn't too hopeful, anyway. Not even strong‐willed Teddy Roose velt could bully the trustees of Seawanhaka, though he certainly tried. In 1905, Park inson's history relates, “Pres ident Roosevelt, club member, brought pressure on the trustees to write an official letter in the club's name to Congress demanding preser vation of the American bison. This demand was resisted as [the trustees] felt Seawan haka had no connection with bison.”

O N Saturday afternoon, my Volkswagen sputtered past signs that said PRIVATE and MEMBERS ONLY and TENNIS COURTS — SLOW, and came to a stop among cars I recognized only from ads in The New Yorker. We were in the parking lot of the big white building with the gray shutters that has been the club's station since 1892. “Certainly the Seawanhaka Yacht Club's greatest blessing is its site and anchorage,” wrote Jack Parkinson, “and the modernistic functional yacht clubs of today will never equal the charm of the old world clubhouse.” I sup pose that by modernistic and functional he means club houses whose rooms have baths, so I agree with him. During my weekend at Sea wanhaka, I was charmed to share with members the single shower room marked “Gentlemen.”

I dropped my bags in No. 7, a faded green room with pic tures of sailing ships on the wall; as I hung up my bor rowed tuxedo I could hear the endless whop … pawk, whop … pawk from the tennis courts underneath my win dow. The curtains rose and fell with the all‐important breeze; races in July and Au gust, I had been told, some times failed for lack of wind.

I went downstairs and happened to see the bulletin board. “Lost/Mink Cape” said one notice. Oh, well. I made friends with the desk clerk. My knowledge of the hiring practices of yacht clubs is too limited for me to say that K. Bhaskara Rao is an unusual yacht‐club desk clerk but nothing in my research had quite prepared me for K. B., as the members call him. Born in Bangalore, India, he was educated at the Uni versity of Mysore (B.A., Honors), the University of Nagpur (M.A.) and the Uni versity of Iowa (his Ph.D. thesis, on Kipling, was pub lished by the University of Oklahoma Press). K. B., with a play about Gandhi, finished ahead of 183 others last year in winning a playwriting com petition sponsored by South ern Illinois University. He has also written a humorous book called “Yachts, Hamburgers and a Hindu,” (Samyukta Karnatak Press, Bangalore, 1962), which deals with life in a fictional American yacht club called Stormy Bay. In K. B.'s story (“A fine book,” wrote P. G. Wodehouse), the foreign student‐hero, who has secured a job at a yacht club, asks the veteran desk clerk the question everyone visiting a yacht club for the first time wants to ask: “Is there any way you can tell who is really rich and who is not?” There is, answers the veteran desk clerk: “The rich don't show it.”

My research had prepared me to believe that. Bill Roeder, who writes News week's “Newsmakers” sec tion, was a Seawanhaka desk clerk in the summer of 1942 when he was a college stu dent; he has never forgotten his first lesson in recognizing the rich.

“Harry was the name of the head desk clerk then,” Roeder recalls, “and he had me watch him run the desk for an hour or two. He explained to me that this was a club—no cash transactions, the members just sign chits, and if they forget to sign a chit, you make it your business to know their names and you sign for them. And when a gentleman asks for some cigars, you don't take them out of the cigar box, take the whole box out of the case and let him choose. ‘Now,’ said Harry, ‘Let's see you do it’

“In comes this doddering guy with a white walrus mus tache, and he gestures at the Corona‐Coronas and he says, ‘Let me have three of those, sonny’ Without thinking, I reached in and grabbed three cigars, but Harry, who was standing over my shoulder, slapped my arm down before any harm was done. So I took out the whole box as if noth ing had happened, and the old guy took out three cigars, then started to walk away. ‘Hey, that's three dollars!’ I blurted before I could think, and the man turned around. He didn't look indignant — he looked amazed. “S all right, sir, 's all right,’ Harry was saying in a hurried, humiliated voice, so the man kept on going. ‘Now, look,’ Harry said to me, trying to be patient, ‘I just told you —when a member doesn't sign a chit, you sign it for him— like this Harry took a chit and wrote: ’3 Corona Coronas at $1 apiece. Total— $3 (Signed) J. P. Morgan.”

Over lunch, a member described the rhythm of the morning. The zealots had been at work since 10 A.M.: men of finance, men of ac counts, men of law, all going overboard to scrub the marine growth off the bottoms of their boats, as they do every week when they're racing. (“Even the finest fuzz of algae on the bottom of a boat will perceptibly slow it down,” said one sailor.) Then the yachtsmen started changing the rigging in preparation for the day's wind—in this case, a sort of medium‐light breeze was expected. Those whose boats had suffered damage from the previous weekend had already gone to Seawan haka's boatyards, which have a good machine shop, to re tool and refit. By 12:30 or 1:00 P.M., they had all come ashore to have hamburgers and beer at communal tables while looking anxiously for a breeze to spring up. Right there, I discovered the strongest ele ment in the rhythm of a yacht club weekend. It is the recur rent wish for wind: “Give us this day our daily breeze,” the prayer of men who have

A T 2 P.M., the racers put on their sails. On the wide, white porch facing Oyster Bay, their children watched them through the powerful glasses that Admiral O. C. Badger, club member, took from the Japanese battleship Nagato, when that ship surrendered to U.S. naval forces in Tokyo Bay, August 30, 1945. Some body had lost a shackle—a pin used to fasten the sails to the halyards — and there was a last‐minute scramble to get a spare. Then everyone hoisted sail, and the symbols of the classes of their boats sprang to life against the sky: red shields emblazoned with a black S on the mainsails of the 12 Shields Class boats (the largest boats racing that day); the silhouettes of wild birds flying on the sails of the five 24‐foot Seabird sloops (the smallest boats in the race); and black Omegas on the mainsails of the eight Solings (the newest Olympic Class). Later, Bruce Lee, who repre sents the Soling Class on Sea wanhaka's race committee, gave me an accurate descrip tion of that beautiful boat—“a Fiberglas, three‐man sloop, 27 feet over‐all, with a fin keel [a keel with a stabilizing fin projecting downward] and a spade rudder [one that is sup ported only on its upper part], that carries an exceptionally large, 570‐foot spinnaker [a triangular headsail].” But to me, borrowing the high‐pow ered lenses of the war trophy from the children, the Solings, dose‐up, looked like rare birds preening themselves on the wind. At 3 P.M.‐1500 hours, Seawanhaka sailing time — a cannon boomed on the deck of the race committee boat; 25 helmsmen looked up to see Jim McCurdy, who was run ning the race that day, hoist the code flag that signaled, “Follow me!”; and 25 yachts moved out of their moorings and sailed off to the starting line.

At exactly 1520 hours— wind west, weather clear— the cannon boomed again, and McCurdy's race began. By that time I had managed to get on the deck of the committee boat and, once McCurdy had started all three classes of yachts, he served cold beer from the refrigerator in the cabin and patiently answered questions that showed I was as familiar with sailing vessels as, say, with prairie schooners. “Which one of these boats did you say is a spinnaker?” I asked, as Enrico Ferorelli, the photographer who accompa nied me, tore around the deck like a salt‐water papa razzo, photographing every thing from all angles.

S OON it was time to des ignate the finish line. McCurdy dropped anchor and explained to me that the finishing point would be an imaginary line drawn between the white flag on the committee boat and a red buoy, No. 3, which I could see bobbing in the water not far away.

For James Arrison McCurdy, yachtsman and naval archi tect, 1970 has ‐been a very good year—but this was not to be one of its better days. McCurdy co‐designed the alu minum‐hulled sloop, Carina, which captured the Bermuda Trophy for over‐all winner in this year's Bermuda Race. Yet this was cold comfort as he stood on the deck of the com mittee boat at the finish line and heard a barechested fel low member sail by snarling, “I'm afraid I don't understand your course—and neither did anybody else!”

“Well,” said McCurdy mo rosely, “this will be remem bered. I made a mistake.”

Bearded, wearing a yachting cap and clenching a cigar tightly in his teeth, he was a dead ringer for Joseph Con rad—though at the moment he probably felt more like Lord Jim. As the member of the club's race committee solely responsible for the di rection and control of that Saturday's race, he had sta tioned the committee boat where he thought the finish line was to be—yet the skip pers of nearly every boat shouted questions or com plaints at him as they breezed past his starboard side.

And when a girl with green eyes sailed by on his port side, at the helm of a Soling Class boat called The Teal, it was painfully apparent that the race had gone awry. “Jim, we're finishing on the wrong side of the committee boat,” she called over the troubled waters of Cold Spring Harbor. “We're finishing here, and I protest this.”

Wordlessly, McCurdy stud ied the latest race committee notice, which began, “In an effort to diversify courses available to the Race Com mittee, and to open up the entire harbor for tactical ma neuvers, the finish line for Regular Weekend Races has been relocated this year. The new finish line will be between a white flag on the Commit tee Boat and a new Seawan haka marker (Mark J)….”

McCurdy had dropped his anchor in the wrong place. One of the functions of the committee boat is to position one end of the finish line, but McCurdy had made the com mittee boat part of a finish line that extended from his boat's white flag to the red buoy, whereas the race committee notice put the finish line between the white flag and a marker called Mark J. The girl with green eyes crossed the imaginary line set up in the notice, then turned about and crossed the finish line set up by McCurdy. One way, she was the winner; the other way, she was next to last.

“Is there a quiet cove you can let me off on?” McCurdy asked the hands. Awkwardly, I started to say that if he hadn't been pestered by all my questions he would have had time to read his race circular more carefully and would have seen where the new fin ish line was—but he cut me short: “It's my responsibility.”

McCurdy took one last puff on his cigar, then started the engines. “Well,” he said, “let's go back and face the music.”

A S McCurdy headed the committee boat back toward Seawanhaka's dock, I remem bered everything ‐I'd read in the big white volumes about how serious‐y—and personally — Seawanhaka members took yacht racing. I began to wish I'd left my Winter Dreams in Rockford.

All too soon, we were back on the dock.

“What happened?” asked the barechested member.

“The only honest answer I can give you,” said McCurdy, “is that I made a mistake.”

Silence from the yachtsman.

“You know, they say, ‘Read your race circular,’” McCurdy said, breaking a painful silence, “but I guess I didn't read it well enough.”

More silence from the yachtsman.

“All I can say is,” McCurdy added, with an apologetic smile, “I hope I didn't ruin your afternoon.”

Still more silence.

“I guess I did,” said Mc Curdy bleakly.

By now, the girl with green eyes had docked and McCurdy was explaining all over again. Her voice, as she protestea coolly to poor McCurdy, was full of Seawanhaka. At last, McCurdy excused himself from the gathering storm of skip pers and went inside the club house. Not long afterwards, a tennis — anyone type bounded out on the porch. “Jim Mc Curdy has posted the race results,” he said, “and he's written across them, ‘NO RACE — COMMITTEE BOAT NOT ON STATION AT FIN ISH — WITH APOLOGIES, J. A. McCURDY, RACE COM MITTEE.’”

I wasn't looking forward to the dinner. Enrico and I were going to be seated at the race committee table, so was Mc Curdy, and so were many of the protesters who had sailed in the race that afternoon. I feared an evening of “Let's all pick on Jim,” particularly since I felt guilty about ply ing him with questions when he might have been studying the race circular. So I tarried in my room, swallowing nerv ously, while Enrico struggled to tie my black tie.

The dinner started: Mc Curdy sat on the left of the girl with green eyes—and the girl with green eyes sat on my left. She turned out to be Mrs. W. Perry Neff, and she had just won the Syce Cup—the women's sailing championship of western Long Island Sotind, sailed this year in Lightning Class boats. Her husband, a bluff, hearty man who had crewed for her that afternoon and didn't look rich at all, was W. Perry Neff, senior vice president of the Chemical Bank. Perry told me that Mimi had been an assistant sailing instructor at the junior club when they met.

“Mimi is the best,” said Bill Moore, who sat on my right (That is, William Talman Moore Jr., a 34‐year‐old direc tor of the Moore‐McCormack Lines.) We were discussing the club's lady sailors. “I'd say Miss Roosevelt and Pammie are tied for second.” Miss Roosevelt is Elizabeth Roose velt, daughter of John Kean Roosevelt; she crewed for Mimi when Mimi won the Syce Cup. Pammie is Mrs. William Platt Kellett III, who was down the table sitting near Enrico.

T HE table talk, naturally enough, centered around the events of the upcoming 1971 centennial summer — and zeroed in on Solings, and the 34th match for the Seawan haka Corinthian Yacht Club International Challenge Cup. This cup for small yachts is often compared to the Amer ica's Cup for large yachts, and has always been the club's big event. The next match will probably be raced in Solings.

“But the biggest thing next year,” maintained Bruce Lee, “will be the world's champion ship for the Solings. This is the year before the Olympics. Seawanhaka will be a major testing ground for those who go to the Olympics, and for the skipper whd will be the Olympic champion.” The Sol ing class is only four years old as an Olympic Class; while the world's championships in Solings have been held every year, this is the first time they'll be held in the United States. Seawanhaka will run the regatta for the 1971 world's championships around the end of September.

“As a class,” Bruce said, “Solings have attracted more good sailors—keener, younger, more aggressive—than any other class. They've meant a resurgence of this kind of small racing boats that you sail for yourself. And the price is reasonable.”

Bill Moore agreed: “Fitted out and on the starting line, a Soling will cost you, on the average, $5,500. A Shields new is about $8,500, then there's another $1,000 for a set of sails.” Some younger sailors deride Shields yachts as “old men's boats,” since they are four feet longer than Solings, and about a ton heavier. “Getting Seawanhaka into Solings was a great step forward,” said Bill. “That's the coming class—not just in this club, but universally.”

Borne up by such rhapsodic talk of boats and racing, we sailed through the courses and the wines (from a cellar per sonally selected by Hermann C. Schwab, club member and wine expert) … and, sudden ly, as brandy and cigars were passed, I realized that no one had mentioned McCurdy's mis take. In fact, as we joined the planned gaiety of the dance, he seemed to be en joying himself, too.

Certainly, I was having a good time—a private time, but a good time. It was like being allowed to move freely on a movie set while a film is being shot. Watching the members dance, I had the feeling that few of them would have gone to Gatsby's parties. Seawan haka's tone seemed to be set by the solid, old quiet ele ment, the established rich—by the blue‐haired dowagers and their conservative daughters and daughters in law—and by the men who appreciated them. The dancers ranged in age from Class C (under 28) to Class A (over 35), but even the younger ones would prob ably have looked upon Gats by's bashes as a waste of money. Not that they don't spend money: “Sydney is real ly nice,” said a yachtswoman, fixing her partner with a sun burned squint and bracing her self for the turn in the dance as if she were standing on a pitching deck. “Brisbane is sort of dull … Canberra is one of those cities designed to be a capital….” She spoke, as many of the women did, in a tongue called Locust Valley Lockjaw, a passionless man ner of speaking that can flatten a superlative against the roof of the mouth until it comes out sounding like un derstatement—which might be the reason for speaking that way. Maybe it's a way of guarding against throwing away anything—money, pos sessions or emotion—on en thusiasms, not to mention obsessions. No, such people would never go to Gatsby; Gatsby would have to find a to to them.

W HEN the band took a break, the dancers drifted to the porch, where beautiful girls with bare shoulders leaned back against the rail ing, and shadows called to them from the lawn. I began inventing a plot for my pri vate movie, based on a true story I had read in Parkin son's history. It seems that in 1900, and again in 1904, chal lenges for — the Seawanhaka International Cup were mount ed by the White Bear Yacht Club on White Bear Lake in Minnesota (where Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived in the summer of 1922 until they were kicked out for making too much of a rumpus). The cup eluded the White Bear Club both times—but more hurtful than that, a Seawan haka member insulted the Minnesota club by telling the press that no foreign club would ever offer a challenge if the cup disappeared into the wilderness of the Western Lakes. The White Bear Yacht Club never challenged for the Seawanhaka Cup again.

In my fantasy scenario, a Midwesterner with a fast Soling called Green Eyes came out of the wilderness of the Western Lakes, challenged for the cup representing the White Bear Yacht Club, and won, forcing Seawanljaka's

best sailors to go out to the Middle West to try and win it back.

“On the occasion of the Club dances,” says the club house rules, “the bar will re main open until the music stops, but not later than 3 A.M.” At 3 A.M., the music stopped, the bar closed and good‐bys between members could be heard from the park ing lot over the crunch of good tires on gravel. I sat down in the Alexander P. Morgan Model Room, beneath models of a fleet of sailing yachts beyond the dreams of Odysseus; a bellboy served me black coffee, and I thought back over the evening. This was the dream I had dreamed over “Gatsby,” which I first discovered in the paperback rack at Nihan & Martin's Drug Store back in Illinois, and read surreptitiously behind the cigar counter when I was a soda jerk by midsummer night after digging graves at Greenwood Cemetery all day. The possibilities for a grander life style than I had ever known beckoned from those resonant pages by another middle‐class, Middle Western, Irish Catholic romantic like

“I'll bet they'll be relieved when you've gone,” said the bellboy.

“The members.”

“Why should they be re lieved?”

“Because they've been up tight ever since they found out you wanted to do a story about them. What are you going to say? Are you going to expose them?”

“What is there to expose?” I asked.

T HE announced end of every weekend at Sea wanhaka is the lighting of the night signal on Sunday. First, the club hands take down the club burgee and the American flag, then the night signal is lighted—three lanterns hung vertically from the pert yard arm, burning white, burning red, burning white….

As the bellboy served a final round of drinks to mem bers and their guests, I thought of all the dreams that had at tached themselves like bar nacles to this club in 99 years. A yacht club invites romantic dreams. Bill Roeder told me that when he was the desk clerk, he and the bellboy used to take Cokes back to their bleak quarters in highball glasses at the end of their shifts, “and after we had drunk the Cokes, we would smash the glasses against the wall.” And in K. B.'s book, his Indian hero planned to use the lavish tips from millionaire yachtsmen to launch himself on a political career (“I dreamt of shaking hands, making speeches and getting into the Parliament at New Delhi”)— until he learned that there was no tipping at the yacht club.

Even the current bellboy had revealed his own roman tic illusions the night before, as he served me coffee. He said that on Mondays, the barman's day off, the bellboy makes the drinks. One Mon day, the daughter of a club member came into the bar and ordered a drink. Al though ladies, as has been noted, are not permitted in the bar, the bellboy served her, and they had a long talk with good vibes. Later, he put his name up for a date, as it were, but her mother found his candidacy undesirable.

Fitzgerald once told a friend that “the whole idea of `Gatsby’ is the unfairness of a poor, young man not being able to marry a girl with money.” Of course, the last thing a dreamer should ex pect—or want—is fairness. Still, I was musing about how much it hurts to have some one tread on your dreams, when Bruce Lee came over to me and asked for my im pressions of the weekend at Seawanhaka.

I thought quickly, and real ized that I had survived the weekend with my romantic il lusions reasonably intact. I told him that I had been pleas antly surprised when no one picked on Jim McCurdy at dinner. That, he said, was why, despite all the emphasis on sailing ability, desirability remained the only require ment for membership. “The important thing is, after you've sailed your race, and gone for every last inch; after you've filed your protest, after you've done all the legal ma neuvering at the protest meeting—well, then, if you've lost, you've lost, and you've got to be a gentleman. As Conrad said, ‘It's not the ships, but the men who sail them.”

And I nodded, because I wanted to believe in his dream of sailing with the kind of gentlemen for whom they built those old shower rooms. Bruce Lee had once been a writer for Newsweek, as it turned out, and it was while covering an America's Cup race that he fell in love with yachting. So I could certainly put myself in his place. But at the same time, I knew what it felt like to be carrying the drink trays and handing out the cigars. (“Take the whole box out of the case,” Mr. Nihan used to tell me. “At Nihan and Martin's Drug Store, we let the customer choose.”) No one appreciates a yacht club like a young man from the provinces.