Red sky at morning

Niña

The 1928 Starling Burgess sloop schooner (my bad) Niña is missing and overdue bewteen New Zealand and Australia. “Overdue”, is not necessarily “sunk”, of course, and ships often lose their communication capabilities during storms, only to come breezing into port unscathed. But the ocean’s large, and ships are small.

Anyone who grew up sailing on Long Island Sound knew of Niña, and one didn’t have to be a member of the New York Yacht Club (I certainly wasn’t) to know her glorious racing history.

Here’s a brief part of that: 

In 1934, New York banker, DeCoursey Fales bought Niña, and each year of his life he became more and more devoted to her. He would talk for hours about the “old girl”. The rest of Niña’s career was probably fore-ordained as she won the New York Yacht Club Astor Cup in 1939 and 1940. Just before WWII, she won for the first time an event that was to become her specialty, the 233 mile Stanford-Vineyard Race on Long Island Sound. Afterward, she was laid up for the duration of the war. Niña was not allowed to rot, however, and she came out after the war in better shape than ever for a three year stint as flag ship for the New York Yacht Club. Mr. Fales became the NYYC commodore in 1949, and Niña earned her honors by taking first place in ¾ of the yacht club’s squadron races as well as winning the Cygnet Cup in 1949. She made such a habit of winning races that Commodore Fales put the trophies back in competition. It became almost a stock joke that Niña would proceed to win back her own trophies! In 1962 to thunderous cheers, Niña, became the oldest yacht at 34 years to win the Newport to Bermuda Race, under 72 year old Commodore Fales. In 1966, then 78 year old Commodore Fales passed away while his crew was attempting to repeat the Bermuda win. Niña had five owners after Fales, one being Kings Point Academy.