The Passing of a Sailor

Ted Kennedy, who loved sailing and being at sea about as much as he loved anything else, passed away last night at Hyannis Port, MA. He was 77. Kennedy owned several sailboats over the years, the most recent being Mya, a blue-hulled Concordia 50 schooner that was built by the Duxbury Boat Yard in 1940.

Last May, a week after he was diagnosed with brain cancer, Kennedy raced Mya in the Figawi Regatta off Nantucket. He’d won the class several times in previous years, but took second. Then, the day after being released from the hospital following brain surgery, he went sailing again. He continued to sail frequently during the summer, sometimes many days in a row. Reportedly going against doctors orders, Kennedy continued to sail frequently as late as October, when the conditions were colder and often rougher. When it got too cold, he had Mya trucked to Florida so he could sail in warmer water. He sailed there until April, at which point Mya was trucked back to Hyannis Port so he could spend his last sailing days in his home waters.

Local sailors said they knew Kennedy wasn’t doing well when he missed the first day of this year’s Figawi, although he did sail the second day.

When he wasn’t communing with the sea on his schooner, Kennedy was a United States Senator.