Here's Ted Kennedy single-handing a 60 foot schooner called the 'Mya.' He was an expert at doing this, and while he loved taking family and friends offshore for a sail, he basically did it all despite a crippling injury he had in 1996. I don't know if the Mya was an Alden design or some other racing schooner design, but she was a fast girl and Ted Kennedy was one of the fastest sailors. I could only drool about possessing such a boat down here on SPI.
You know, I don't care what in the cotton patch you think about Ted Kennedy and his brand of politics. Go tell it on the mountain. But anyone who could single-hand a two-masted sailboat with five sails, wow, this guy was good. I can almost see the man putting the autopilot on two points lee of the wind and cranking up the main, then the fore, then the staysail, and if it's not too windy, the jib. Ahhh, turn off the pooter diesel and set the lines just so.
Very few people can even attempt to do this, although I think I could give it a whirl because I grew up on sailboats. Not that I ever had a million dollar sailboat. You have to give credit to Ted Kennedy because he could handle 20 lines all by himself to win or place in a sailboat race.
Like a punk kid like me, Ted was always in the shadow of his brothers like John and Robert, who were both assassinated by retarded redneck assholes. But nobody shot poor Ted (although the hatred exists even today), and thus the legacy of the Mya continues today. Last I heard, one of the family hauled up the American flag halfway up the main halyard of the Mya, just as they would do a century ago. The poor Mya has nobody to love her anymore, something I find quite sad.
3 comments:
Saw him try to step off the dock onto the MYA one time here on BI. He missed 'cause he was DEAD DRUNK. fell in the water and would have drown,(a fitting end) if it were not for a couple of bystanders!
Hey Everett, you should have seen Dean Martin when he came to Great Salt Pond. This was after Frank Sinatra died but before Sammy Davis died. Gosh he was drunk. He sang at Champlins and he could only do a song and a half. But his handlers took care of Deano and bundled him back to his 100-foot yacht.
I know, Ted was just somebody you never did like, which is why I talked about his boat.
But if I can say something nice, at least he was careful to bridge the gap between the liberals and the hard-liners, always cutting deals with the GOP to get things done. Ted Kennedy was a master at that, no matter what you say.
Who is left to bridge those gaps? Ted is dead, man, no hope for the health care bill now. There are no statesmen left.
In a way I feel something with Ted, since I am a straight up moderate but sometimes you have to negotiate with the hard-liners. Heck I don't care, let's talk about it and work something out, I don't stand on no principles. The ability to be able to compromise and make everyone (sorta) happy is one of the greatest achievements you can get.
Come on Everett, you are Irish too and have much in common with old Ted, other than you hated the "dynasty," the stupid-arse things Ted did in his younger years, and so forth. I think about 30 percent of your island is officially drunk by 8 o'clock at night so let's not go there.
I prefer to talk about the Mya and how it takes a smart and capable person to run such a boat.
sammie
I helped to maintain Mya on Cape Cod for a number of years. While some of the boatyard's customers weren't particularly good sailors or especially knowledgable about boats, the senator certainly was. He didn't care much about formalities or spit and polish, he just wanted everything functional, and his boat to be ready whenever he had a chance to sail her. Once, after doing quite a bit of work on her, he invited all of us boatyard workers to go for a sail, which I did. We were out on Nantucket Sound for a good part of the day, and he never left the helm.
By the way, according to Wooden Boat magazine, Mya was designed by Concordia Company and is 50' overall.
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