Luxe Beat Magazine April 2014 | Page 81

Once they became parents they used sailing to connect with their children… Older Kennedys taught younger ones. They grounded once sprung a leak and started sinking beneath Ted’s their boat on sandbars, at least once crashing into a aging and none-too-small size, as the senator resignedly buoy. They thought nothing of jumping into the water if watched boats in the race pass him by until he could get necessary to lighten the load and speed the boat. They a tow. After they gave Victura to a museum, they bought yelled when mistakes were made, punched one another a new Wianno Senior, called it Victura too and sail it to even, laughed about it afterward. The stronger the Cape this day. winds, the whiter the whitecaps, the better. They took friends out who became lifelong pals after passing tests Now, when a Kennedy dies and his or her loved ones of seaworthiness or camaraderie. stand to speak words of consolation, they often turn to the imagery of sailing and to their stories of Victura. At Once they became parents they used sailing to connect Ted’s death in 2009, four eulogists told stories of being with their children, including nephews and nieces whose fathers were lost. They learned seamanship and survival with him on Victura. Less than two years later, when skills, which they swear saved Jack’s life in World War II. Ted’s daughter, Kara, died of cancer at age fifty-one, her Sailing, they said, gave their lives perspective and helped brother Patrick said, “Dad now has his first mate, his them explore how to cope with the complexity that crew with him, as they set sail,” and quoted Eugene comes with being a Kennedy—the privileges, the O’Neill, “I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and attention, and the “buzz saws of life.” They sailed at night flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became too, quietly taking in the infinite stars, distance, space, moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky!” and horizon and said it gave them insights into life’s mysteries. “Sailing, for me, has always been a metaphor Jack did not know his stay at the Rice Hotel was his last for life,” wrote Ted in his memoir, True Compass, written day on earth, but his thoughts went back to the Cape eighty years after the family first summered in Hyannis and the sea that night because that is where Kennedy Port. minds always drift. All through his life Jack was sick with one illness or another, but sailing freed him, filled his The family had many sailboats, but the favorite was lungs, tanned his skin when it was ashen or yellow, Victura. They kept it the longest and sailed it most, over separated him from worries ashore, and gave him almost fifty years. It was wooden and modest in size, seclusion with family and friends. twenty-five feet in length, spare of accommodation, and gaff rigged, a sail configuration thought quaint today even Robert, a less accomplished sailor who married young though folks still say the shorter mast height prevents a and had less time for racing, still loved taking his children knockdown in a gale. About two hundred one-design out on the water. Before he died at forty-two, after Wianno Seniors identical to Victura have been built for fathering eleven children, he bought a “sister boat” to families like the Kennedys who summer or live on Cape Victura and called it Resolute. For years following Cod’s South Shore. Thus they fairly compete on boats of Robert’s death, when the weather was warm enough, equal specifications in races around Nantucket Sound. and even when it was not, his surviving family sailed Resolute almost every day. Brothers, sisters, and That Victura survived so long, a small boat in such big nephews of Jack bought Wianno Seniors, so Victura and seas, is surprising itself. Acquired in 1932, struck by Resolute begat Headstart, another Victura, and lightning in 1936, dragged onto the beach by war-injured Ptarmigan. These begat Santa Maria and Dingle. Jack during a hurricane in 1944, and nearly lost in a 2003 harbor fire that took twenty other sailboats like it, Victura Ted, perhaps the most dedicated—some might say 89 MARCH 2014 •LUXE BEAT MAGAZINE