Frank Batten by Connie M. Sage

Author:Connie M. Sage [Sage, Connie M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Business, Editors; Journalists; Publishers, Business & Economics, Industries, Media & Communications
ISBN: 9780813931555
Google: 40wo_CGt51UC
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2011-01-15T15:56:53+00:00

11 A Good Race

YACHTING CAREER

ONE OF BATTEN’S legacies from his Aunt Fay Slover was a love of sailing. She kept a yacht on Smith Creek, later renamed the Hague, a sliver of water near the Colonel’s Norfolk home. Her first boat was a forty-foot cruiser, the Mary Anne. In about 1930, she traded up to the Shadow J, a fifty-five-footer bought for $35,000 from Miami Beach developer Carl G. Fisher.

George Purdy, whose family owned the Purdy Boat Company of Port Washington, New York, was captain of the Shadow J for the Slovers. In 1934, with the Depression in full swing, the Slovers commissioned Purdy Boat Company to build a sixty-foot replacement powered by four engines. The Purdys also crafted a twelve-foot knockabout sloop for young Frank and taught him to sail it.

When Fay Slover’s new luxury yacht was completed, seven-year-old Frank Batten, wearing white shorts, dark blazer, and high-top dark leather shoes, stood on a wooden box to christen the Shadow Fay. The yacht cruised the St. Lawrence River’s Thousand Islands for two summers, meandering along rivers and canals in New York and Quebec. Bound for home from one such excursion, Captain Purdy pulled the yacht into New York harbor so the Slovers could take in the World of Tomorrow, as envisioned by the 1939 World’s Fair. Batten, aged twelve, saw the first public demonstration of the futuristic invention called television.

As a teenager, he sailed one summer at Culver Military Academy but over the years did little boating until he married. Jane had a dinghy and was the couple’s avid sailor. They chartered a sailboat with friends Shirley and David Bradley for a week-long vacation on the Chesapeake Bay, and Frank was reinfected by the sailing bug.

Before long he ordered his own boat, a thirty-four-foot Tartan sloop with a pale blue hull. While that was being built in 1969, Batten sailed a loaner from the dealer, a twenty-seven-foot Tartan. Cruising quickly led to racing when a friend coached him on the finer points of competitive sailing. Jane went on a couple of races but preferred cruising—and had doubts about her husband’s sailing abilities that were “well placed,” Batten acknowledged. “I was a novice.”1 He won no points with his wife once he began competing in earnest: The races were always on weekends; he was rarely home.

Batten learned to sail competitively on the Tartan 34, which he christened Shadow after his aunt’s boats. Already eyeing faster boats, the following year he moved up to a C&C Redline forty-one-footer named Hallelujah and had it shipped from Miami to Virginia on a tractor-trailer. After a single day’s sail on the boat, renamed Shadow II, he signed up for a race in Hampton Roads. The Shadow II blew away the competition. For three years, Batten raced Shadow II, often crossing the finish line first. It was easy to spot the boat, which displayed a distinctive “7777” on the mainsail—numbers he kept for his next two boats. Shadow II took the second-place trophy in its

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