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Yachting Monthly

• Digital edition

Cronkite was a passionate cruising man

• Dick Durham
• July 21, 2009

The American TV anchorman in full interview

The late, great American TV anchorman, Walter Cronkite, was a lifelong sailor who preferred the deck of a yacht to the glare of the TV studio. Author and journalist Pearl Duncan made a lenghty interview with the man which she sent to YM.

We have reproduced it in full here:

‘SAILBOATS, SAILING, AND THE SCIENCE OF THE SPORT: Twelve years ago, I had a 43 foot Wassail 42. It was a unique design, in that it was a yawl. It was built as a cutter, not a ketch, and my wife and I liked the cutter’s performance much better than the ketch’s, but I still wanted a split rig, so I worked with the designer, William Crealock, and we worked out the means whereby we could leave the cutter rig intact. And put a little spanker on the stern, which gave me the split rig and balanced the boat absolutely perfectly. It turned out to be a marvelous design for cruising.

The split rig, cutter rig, did very well under test. Like the cutter, the split rig of the cutter-yawl had greater facility to change sails, to adjust the amount of canvass we were going to carry to meet the conditions of the moment. It was built in 1976 and it was a delight. And it was very easy to handle. I replaced it three years ago. And now I sail a boat that is highly customized, a Sunward 48, built by Sunward Yachts of Wilmington, North Carolina. It is a 48-foot cruising ketch, designed by Al Mason, when he was at Sparkman & Stephens. It was built in 1986, and the performance is great.

It’s a heavy boat, 48,000 pounds. It lays nicely to a rough sea and yet makes good way in a light breeze. The interior, as with all Mason designs, makes maximum use of the space. We have four separate cabins: V-berths, forward, over-and-under bunks immediately aft, a single bunkroom for the crew, and the owner’s stateroom, aft. The saloon is still immense, with a table seating seven. It has all the goodies – air conditioning, microwave, plenty of cold storage space. And a near walk-in engine room.

I sail always with one other person. The boat can’t be handled alone and I hesitate to handle it alone. I’ve got a little bit of back problem and I worry about having to put too much strain on it. It doesn’t bother me so much that I don’t play a lot of singles tennis, but I am afraid of being out at sea by myself and having my back go out. So I have a full-time person aboard the boat. I call him my port captain.

When I’m at sea, I’m the captain. He’s the captain when we’re at the dock; but he takes care of the boat, handles maintenance, and delivers it. I have gotten to the point where I rather eschew the hard work, the foredeck work. I like navigation very much even on a day trip. I like to play with the loran, sepner, and the radar, and plot courses. This is what makes cruising so interesting to me. I like going to places, strange places, places where there are some navigational problems involved.

THE PLEASURES OF SAILING AND THE GIFTS OF THE COASTS AND WORLD ADVENTURES: It’s too bad that everybody can’t experience sailing. I think it is interesting seeing countries and getting down to the waterways of nations – the bays, inlets, rivers are a remarkable way to see countries. It gives a perspective you can’t get any other way. All countries come alive from the shore. I think you get a new feeling for people by being on a boat.

Every place has its own value, its own attraction as a cruising ground. I like almost anything — Long Island North, in the Northeast, on the Eastern Seaboard, has beautiful sailing. Of course we all know that lower Long Island has become less interesting in recent years because of the wind variance created by the heavy population on Long Island; winds from the east gets diverted by the heat of Long Island Sound.

From Stratford Shole on the northeast to the east, the winds are good, and sailing is marvelous and there are numerous places to go. I think it’s one of the great sailing grounds of all times. Maine of course is superb. Thousands and thousands of miles of sea islands and sea coast, marvelous bays, rivers and all the islands, just ideal, except for the fog and of course the season is short. It gets pretty cold in the winter, but otherwise, it’s good. Maybe fog is helpful in keeping down the total boating population and making it a little more comfortable for those of us who do use it.

Also of course the Caribbean; the Windward Islands have great sailing, primarily because of the prevailing winds, always out of the eastern quadrant. And since the islands are basically north and south, you can sail year-round on a beam reach. And it’s lovely getting there. It has also gotten crowded, but the world has gotten crowded.

Going down the East Coast’s Intercoastal Waterway is a beautiful experience. I did the book, South by Southeast, with 100 paintings by Ray Ellis and I described the many scenes of American life. This, my first art/coffee table book, covered the area from Baltimore to the Keys, particularly the marshlands, Georgia and South Carolina. These marshes are just gorgeous with wildlife.

The way the marshes awaken, when you are down there, you start a little before dawn. The first light. I like to do that anyway. The sawgrass rises to meet the day, standing straight up, the blades of sawgrass with dew on them sparkle. All through the marsh grass, the birds are rising, the cormorants, the seagulls, the pelicans and other marshland birds, and the egrets, stepping their way gently along the shore. As the day goes on, the marsh grass wilts a little under the evening sun. The sparkling dew forms. And a little fog rises, the morning fog, the haze, as the dew boils away. And through all of that the fishing boats: the superstructures, fishing boats, meandering through the marsh grass, captain of the sea.

It’s a scene you can’t duplicate in life. People inland enjoy the wildlife too. But the teaming wildlife along the seashore is available only to those who get out either on the seashore itself, or a boat. And this marsh area is one that is particularly interesting. You can only get there by boat. This is a land gap, an added attraction for cruising the coast.

It was preserved rather late; a lot of it has been destroyed. But we’re now preserving it fairly well. My book with Ray Ellis, North by Northeast, covered the area from Cape May to the Canadian border. Ray Ellis and I are now working on a book on the West Coast to be called, Westwind. It will be published in time for Christmas, 1990. My other book, Remembering the Moon are excerpts from my coverage of the first moon landing on the moon on July 20th, 1969.

Incidentally, the titles of the first two books, South by Southeast, and North by Northeast, are NOT compass points, as any sailor knows. I have had a lot of comment on this from my friends, but I tell them, the publisher just happens to like the ring of the names.

THE JOY OF PEOPLE AND PORTS, OF WOMEN, RELAXATION, OUTDOOR TRAVEL, AND SEEING THE WORLD: I haven’t sailed the North Coast of South America, though that’s my next major project, and I haven’t sailed Central America. I gather that’s quite fascinating. I have sailed the Swedish Archipelago and Norway, and that’s great sailing. I haven’t sailed it as much as I’d like. I have sailed the West Coast of Norway on an Iceland charter boat, a 12-meter boat, built in 1920. In the last three years we have sailed Wyntje from the Canadian border to Grenada. The summers primarily are spent in Martha’s Vineyard and the winters in the Caribbean.

All countries come alive from the shore. I think you get a new feeling for people by being on a boat. I distinguish boaters from other tourists. They recognize problems of tides and currents and winds, as they go from one shore to another, sharing a life that a lot of fishermen share. I think also, living aboard a boat, you’re resupplying, and sharing a life with the people. Clearing customs, doing things the average tourist doesn’t do. And, tourists don’t get into small fishing village and stores. Sailing is a way of getting to know people better than any other way.

I find having sailed around Scandinavia, the Pacific, Australia, Alaska, East Coast United States, and the Caribbean, I feel you really get to know the people far better. I’ve gotten spoiled. I don’t like a trip that isn’t on water.

SAILING, OUTDOORS, ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND LEADERSHIP: Cruising is total relaxation, even under stress, conditions which occur occasionally in sailing. The stress is of a vastly different sort from the business or communications world. And there is relaxing stress. The change, which is a form of stress, is relaxation. I like lying out in the open. I have no doubt I’ve gained from sailing. I’m sure it’s been physically very therapeutic. Some say the kind of sailing I do — cruising, is not active enough to set the muscles to work.

Sailing is a way to commune with nature. I hate the restriction of a house or office building. I am very happy camping out. I like the stars, sun, weather. Even when it’s raining, it is more comfortable to be outside than it is inside. So I like being on the deck of a boat. It gives me a sense that I can translate into the business world.

In sailing, there is obviously a command structure and a relationship of people at work, of persons; that is important on a boat. A lot of fun is made of the Captain Blygh syndrome, the guy who gets on a boat and starts giving orders to his wife and children. And obviously that can be vastly overdone. It has ruined a lot of good sailing, and a lot of good sailing relationships – probably a lot of good family relationships and relationships with friends. But, having said that, it is also just as true that it is necessary at times that one person’s word is law. The captain is the captain. People must respond to orders; when a crisis is on hand, there is no time to debate.

There are other moments in sailing to have a staff meeting and consider the course of action. I do that on my boat, when it’s a matter of deciding when one course might be less comfortable than another. I put that to a vote with my crew – which way they would like to do it. It doesn’t make any difference to me. And if we’re going to live on the boat, why not make everybody happy? So we sometimes have a democratic vote: the course to take, the route to take, or whether to sail at night or don’t.

But when the crisis comes, people have to respond to one single voice.

So you do learn something about how to handle people, how you can best give commands without creating offense. Not to be too overbearing. I think that’s all part of life and the experience is intensified when you’ve got a situation, which can be one of life or death.

A CALL FOR TEAMWORK: I put together a crew for offshore sailing. In the kind of critical sailing I’m talking about now, offshore gear can fail; this can be a tragic situation at sea at night. I’ve got a crew I’ve put together for long distance of offshore sailing, which consists of some regular stock players that I go to first. I know they can go and they are a fun crowd.

I’ve fallen into a good source of good sailors, airline pilots. And sort of my chief recruiting officer is Mike Ashford, an Eastern pilot who also owns McGarvey’s in Annapolis, the best sailors’ watering hole on the East Coast. He owns a skipjack, races in the Chesapeake Skipjack races. I sail down there every year. There’s also an explorer, a lawyer sometime restaurant operator, Brian Carey, Arctic explorer, adventurer.

LIFE ON BOARD, CRUISING WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS AND PLANNING: My wife Mary sails with me all the time when we’re sailing inshore. She doesn’t like the offshore passages. She loves cruises. We have a long list of friends who frequently join us aboard. Mr. and Mrs. Andy Rooney.

I’m the skipper. Depending on the size of the crew, that determines what life is like aboard. It we’re going on a long offshore passage, we set up watches so that everybody shares the onerous duties, the hours people don’t like. On offshore passages, life is very pleasant. There are hours in the day when everybody’s up; early in the morning and again late in the afternoon, and in the evening for dinner. The rest of the time, part of the crew is sleeping, or up and around.

The daytime gets a little messy, some sleep and some don’t when they’re supposed to, and those who haven’t slept during the day are not quite as efficient as they ought to be at night. It’s a normal way to live. If I have enough crew, normally 7, that leaves me free to not take a watch. Then I’m up frequently during the night to do navigational chores, and as captain, make decisions if we need any. There are always two persons on deck. We overlap watches, so there is a fresh man coming up every hour. We have three watches of two people each. The crew likes short watches of two to three hours, depending on the voyage. I think that’s a better way to do it.

At night, it’s very easy to become somber. With a fresh man every hour, I know the logs are kept properly. And the crew is alert.

Wyntje, my boat, is named after the first woman who married a Cronkite in the New Amsterdam colony, November 16, 1642. The boat is in honor of all the women who made Cronkite men happy in the New World. The first boat, built in 1976, and the second, built in 1986, have been a delight.

CONCERN FOR THE EVERYMAN-ADVENTURER AND YOUTH: People you meet sailing, cruising, are a wonderful cross-section of humanity. You know they are interested in the sea. You’ve got this common bond of the sea.

I am amazed at the people who cross oceans today. I don’t think the public has any knowledge, or a general feeling, of how many people are out there crossing the ocean. It’s a lot to me to be crossing the ocean in a small boat. I think I saw a figure of 2,300 boats or something like that checking through various islands in the Caribbean last year. The singlehanders I find very hard to understand. Thirty days is a long time to be out there and it’s quite a risk, very risky business.

There are a lot of young people today in the sailing scene, the cruising scene. A lot of them have been lured by the sea. A lot of them are very bright. There’s a lot to be learned from the experience at sea. There are some jobs, but not many good jobs. Captain of a boat is a fine marvelous career; I envy those who do it.

A MAN OF THE WORLD: As a sailor, I don’t have any problems. I have felt like one of the masses. Traveling to some of the islands of the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, with me, there is no recognition factor, and I enjoy that. I know that I’m not getting special treatment. And while in some places, I’d like to have special treatment, on the other hand, it’s nice to feel that I’m getting the common touch that everybody shares.’

Pearl Duncan

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CRONKITE SCALES DOWN A DREAM OF SAILING ROUND THE WORLD

By Roger Vaughan

• Jan. 18, 1981

WALTER CRONKITE'S wife, Betsy, once quipped that her sailing husband would like to retire on a 60-footer with a 20-year-old mistress, but that it was more likely he would end up on a 20-footer with a 60-year-old mistress.

Mr. Cronkite last May announced his retirement, effective March, 1981, as the most famous television news anchorman. At that time he began reviewing a dream, a heady and well-fondled fantasy upon which many a sailor has obtained a sublime night's rest: a voyage round the world.

He would go the northern route, following fair current and trade winds to England, then into the Scandanavian countries and the Baltic, down the coast to the Mediterranean and around Africa. Most of all there would be no schedule, and only the loosest of plans. Betsy, his wife of 40 years, is the only traveling companion he has in mind. The boat is the Wyntje, a Westsail 42 yawl that Mr. Cronkite acquired five years ago.

'Some Beautiful Place'

''The dream included the social freedom I would have,'' Mr. Cronkite said recently, surrounded by overstuffed bookshelves in his office at CBS. ''We would be tied up stern-to at Malaga, Ibezia - some beautiful place - and we would have met some good people and decided to stay forever. I always decide to stay forever in a new place I like.

'' Then three weeks later we would be at dinner with the same people, listening to the same stories, and I would think: these are the dullest people I have ever seen. The next day we would be absent from the dinner party. 'Where are the Cronkites?' The next night we would be absent again. And someone would say he had been at the dock and that the Cronkites' boat was gone.''

Mr. Cronkite's familiar smile is mischievous. ''We would have just slipped the lines and escaped.'' Alas, Walter Cronkite's retirement will not be compatible with a world voyage. Total abstinence from work would never suit him, and CBS considers him too valuable a commodity to lose. They have prepared an offer that Mr. Cronkite says is going to be difficult to refuse. It offers a light working schedule with huge chunks of time off that will take him, as he puts it, ''beyond mortality.'' It will give him time to pursue a scaled-down version of the dream, one that includes an Atlantic crossing.Loves to Navigate

''Maybe I won't enjoy it,'' Mr. Cronkite says. ''Maybe I'll be bored. But I've been offshore 10 days at a crack and have never been bored. I always take a lot of books along on the boat and never read them. I love to be at the helm. I love to navigate. At the end of each day I wonder where the time went. It reminds me of a writer I knew who retired. He said the first day he got up without anything to do. By noon he was behind.''

Mr. Cronkite does not get bored sailing because the work of the sport is his pleasure. A bothersome back has curtailed winch-grinding and sail-hoisting. Otherwise he does the sailing, tightens loose screws, oils the squeaks, lays out courses, and programs his favorite gadget - Micro Logic Loran-C - one of the new breed of digital electronic plodders that tells the skipper everything but what is for lunch.

Sailing also satisfies his gregarious need for people. Mr. Cronkite's vacation home on Martha's Vineyard should have a fulltime desk clerk. Most summer afternoons he herds the visitors down to the boat and charges around Vineyard Sound with the rail down, oblivious in his delight to the worried among his passengers.Wyntje's Maiden Summer

One such afternoon a few years ago, in the maiden summer of the Wyntje, named after the first woman to marry a Cronkite in the New Amsterdam Colony (1642), Mr. Cronkite wanted everything set. He roamed the boat like a kid marveling over the set of the big jib, delighted by the way the hull parted the rough water off West Chop. Entering Edgartown harbor he started the engine, then abruptly cut it. He sailed deftly between the kamikazi ferries dashing back and forth to Chappaquiddick Island, reached through the anchorage returning greetings from the folks, and shot a passable mooring.

For the last couple of years, Wyntje has had a paid hand aboard. Mr. Cronkite's gracious embarrassment over such a luxury is compensated by how much more he is able to use his boat. His time is tight, and the idea of being able to step aboard and have everything ready to go is pure heaven, he says. Now the boat keeps a more ambitious schedule.

After a summer on the Vineyard (and maybe a few weeks in Maine), Wintje goes to Stamford, Conn., where she is busy taking New York friends sailing. Then it is on the Chesapeake Bay for fall cruising, then Florida for the winter. Mr. Cronkite says he spends a weekend a month on the boat during the winter. After the flight from New York he arrives on the boat about 1 A.M. Saturday. He stays up into the wee hours just sitting on the deck under the stars, having a drink, letting relaxation set in.Hot Political Rumor

Mr. Cronkite enjoys moving the boat himself when time permits. In fact, last May he was off South Carolina in a Force 9 storm at the very moment that a hot political rumor had him running as a Vice Presidential candidate with John B. Anderson. ''I learned that a great way to float a political trial balloon was to be out of touch for 24 hours,'' Mr. Cronkite says with a chuckle.

It was not intentional. Mr. Cronkite did not even hear the rumor until it had passed. The storm lasted 36 hours and kept Wyntje's crew very busy. Plus, Mr. Cronkite was having too much fun to play the radio. ''It was a westerly storm so the seas weren't too big,'' he notes. '' And the wind was abeam. We were making great time.''

Mr. Cronkite's love for his Westsail 42 has not faltered. He acknowledges Westsail's general reputation for poor performance but contends his boat does just fine. ''I never made a major purchase in my life that has been so satisfactory,'' he says. ''The boat is stable, solid and fast. The yawl rig lends itself to a dozen possible combinations.''

It is only occasionally that Mr. Cronkite's head is turned by a prettier face, like this last summer when he laid eyes on Aria, a custom 87-foot sloop by Frank MacLear out of Sturgeon Bay, Wisc. His eyes shine as he describes the boat's all-electric wind system; the twin roller-furling headstays that make changing the huge genoas a snap; the 110-foot mast; the amount of room below decks; the great speed.Enthusiastic Sailor

''Maybe,'' Mr. Cronkite says, ''if my retirment was real, maybe I would want something bigger.'' One reason he is not boat-hunting is that racing does not interest him. Too ambitious a project, although he admits that unofficial racing is a serious hobby. ''When I win I acknowledge that I'm racing. When I lose, I don't.''

Mr. Cronkite is an enthusiastic sailor, a proud yachtsman. He is a man who keeps Lloyd's Register of North American Yachts on a handy office shelf next to his New York Yacht Club year book.

When a friend recently purchased the Waterway Guide publication and offered Mr. Cronkite an interest in it, he quickly bought in. It was irresistible to have sailing and publishing in exposure all in one package.

''Introduction by Walter Cronkite,'' it says on the cover of the new Guide. Inside is a salty picture of Mr. Cronkite seated at Wyntje's helm. He writes of ''the panapoly of joys awaiting the cruising yachtsman making the passage'' through the Guide. And you can almost see him look up from his notes and give us that warm, reassuring, Evening News smile as he concludes, ''We wish you happy voyaging.''

The same to you, Walter.

Sailing with legendary anchorman Walter Cronkite

One windy afternoon I was leaning into a shaky ladder, scraping blistered paint off a second-story window frame in Orleans, when the kitchen phone rang.

“He says it’s Walter Cronkite.”

This meant my friend Tom, who would say he was anyone — Jerry Garcia, Muhammad Ali, Mother Theresa. I backpedaled down.

“Wally, is this the way it is?” I asked, riffing off Cronkite’s famous sign-off, ‘And that’s the way it is…’

Then came the sonorous cadence Americans trusted more than any other. “I’m trying to reach Seth Rolbein. Have I done so?”

“Uhh, yes, Mr. Cronkite. I thought you were a friend playing a practical joke.”

He guffawed, explained he was calling from his Martha’s Vineyard home, he’d seen a magazine expose I had written and appreciated its execution.

“Huge compliment,” I stammered. “I think the fellow did think I was trying to execute him, actually.”

He guffawed again. “I am inquiring as to whether you might have the inclination to voyage over to the Vineyard on Saturday and spend the day sailing, should wind and weather allow.”

“Wind and weather be damned, I’ll be there,” I told him.

He opened the door to his handsome home, blue eyes twinkling under the bushiest of eyebrows, gray hair askew, jowls sagging in a comfortable way, the person who had kept American families company for decades, who told us JFK had been shot, who narrated as we set foot on the moon.

“We picked a good day for a sail,” he intoned. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was reporting, not just making small talk, and would identify his meteorological sources next.

“I believe you,” I said.

Before long we were gunk-holing around the island aboard his 48-foot, custom sailboat “Wyntje” (named after a Dutch ancestor). I supplied brawn while reveling in the world’s best anchorman and narrator at the helm; Edgartown Harbor wide shot, slow pan to Walter, tight shot of eyes bluer than the water, slow pull back for the latest brief.

“Since I’ve stopped doing the news, it’s been quite interesting to pick and choose my projects,” he said. “There is one major remaining goal I have — go into outer space.”

“The final frontier!”

“I am not Captain Kirk,” he smiled.

There was a moment I much wanted to ask him about, so did. Early 1968, after a visit to Vietnam, as our military leaders and President Johnson were insisting that victory was just around the corner, he read this commentary to the nation:

“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.”

“No self-respecting reporter could have come back with any other conclusion,” he said. “I certainly wasn’t the only one who saw what was happening.”

But he was the only one who could prompt President Johnson to turn to an aide and say, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election a few weeks later.

Our day ended well. On my way home I mused about how fitting it was for a sailor to be an “anchorman.” He wasn’t “talent”; that cynical word wouldn’t surface for years. He was a grapple in hard bottom, hooking us in place. He held the national line taut.

Attributing such importance to a guy on TV sounds ridiculous now. Then again, had Walter Cronkite still been at the national desk, it never would have become possible to accuse the press of being “enemies of the people,” or that journalists trying to seek out and explain facts are “fake.”

He didn’t live to offer perspective on this, passing in 2009, proof yet again that no one gets out of here alive, not even Walter Cronkite.

As for the Wyntje, Cronkite donated her to a nonprofit that teaches young people teamwork, discipline, and mutual respect, from the decks of a beautiful sailing ship.

And that’s the way it was.

https://sethrolbein.substack.com/

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Walter Cronkite

Award Year: 1991, 1998, 2000

American Ship Trust Award/Karl Kortum American Ship Trust Award

The American Ship Trust Award, awarded beginning in 1968, is given for leadership in building or restoring historic ships. In 1997, the award was renamed the Karl Kortum American Ship Trust Award in honor of Karl Kortum (1917–1996), a founder of the National Maritime Historical Society and the San Francisco Maritime Museum who was instrumental in saving numerous historic vessels.

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The NMHS Distinguished Service Award has been presented each year since 1993 to recognize individuals who, through their personal effort and creativity, have made outstanding contributions to the maritime field.

Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)

History’s the most exciting story we can know. It’s our own story, after all, and bringing that story to life for people is our job. We in this society must do more to meet that challenge. – Walter Cronkite

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr., broadcast journalist and American icon, loved sailing and the lessons of the sea and used his fame and good name to help NMHS gain new members, strength, and funding so that Sea History and its stories would have ever greater reach and importance. As a National Maritime Historical Society Overseer, he signed on as chairman of the NMHS Education Initiative and helped brainstorm ideas for the future of our organization. Recipients of the NMHS Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Maritime Education benefit from the prestige and recognition his name confers. We are greatly honored that this American treasure and icon became a significant leader in the National Maritime Historical Society.

Cronkite reported many historical events from 1937 to 1981, including bombings in World War II; the Nuremberg trials; combat in the Vietnam War; the Dawson’s Field hijackings; Watergate; the Iran Hostage Crisis; and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King Jr., and Beatles musician John Lennon. He was also known for his extensive coverage of the U.S. space program, from Project Mercury to the Moon landings to the Space Shuttle. He was the only non-NASA recipient of an Ambassador of Exploration award.

Cronkite, born in St. Joseph, Missouri, began writing news for his high school paper, worked as an intern at the Houston Post , and attended journalism school at the University of Texas while working as state capitol reporter for the Houston Press and Scripps-Howard. He dropped out of journalism school to report full time, joining United Press in 1937 and becoming a war correspondent a few years later.

Cronkite cultivated a taste for adventure and in the late 1950s, competed as an amateur race car driver with the Lotus team at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Conn., and for the Lancia team at Sebring, Fla. Once he became an anchorman, CBS persuaded him to give up car racing, so he took up a new sport, sailing: Cronkite was an adventurous sailor who helmed a succession of sailboats named Wyntje (pronounced WIN-tee) and named for the first woman to marry a Cronkite in the New Amsterdam colony in 1642, according to Cronkite lore. Cronkite enjoyed day-sailing offshore all along the East Coast; sailed winters in the Caribbean; and visited some exotic sailing locales, including Scandinavia, Australia, and Alaska.

Cronkite was presented with numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President Jimmy Carter in 1981. He received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, four Peabody awards for excellence in broadcasting, and the Paul White Award for lifetime achievement from the Radio Television Digital News Association. He was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame and received the Four Freedoms Award for the Freedom of Speech. He received the Ischia International Journalism Award, and the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement’s Corona Award in recognition of a lifetime of achievement in space exploration. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and became the first non-astronaut to receive NASA’s Ambassador of Exploration Award.

I first met Walter Cronkite on July 3, 1976, when Operation Sail was in New York Harbor in its full glory, preparing for the Fourth of July Parade of Sail. Later, in 1989, I spent two weeks with Walter and Betsy Cronkite as guests aboard the US Coast Guard Barque Eagle , sailing from London to Leningrad. While crossing the Baltic Sea, one of the officers asked Walter if he would address the cadets. He replied that he didn’t believe these young people would know who he was anymore, since he had been retired for ten years, but he was, of course, willing. As it turned out, he ended up doing four sessions because they all wanted a chance to hear him speak. Walter Cronkite was always very human and accessible to everyone. He never considered himself a celebrity… What you saw on television was who he was in real life. – Howard Slotnick, NMHS Chairman Emeritus and Trustee

Categories: Broadcaster/Film Producer

CRONKITE LOVED TO GO DOWN TO THE SEA IN BOATS

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He wrote in his 1996 autobiography, A Reporter’s Life, that sailing was a more “family-oriented sport that I should substitute for racing,” but “there has never been anything as exhilarating as driving at speed in competition.”

Cronkite, who acknowledged that he had read plenty of books about the sea, didn’t know the first thing about sailing when he began on a Sunfish in the late 1940s. But he was hooked.

“Sailing for me, though, has satisfied many urges. For one thing, it feeds the Walter Mitty in me, the inner heroism with which James Thurber endowed his unforgettable character,” he wrote.

“I never sail from harbor without either a load of tea for Southampton or orders from the admiral to pursue that villain Long John Silver and his rapacious crew,” he wrote. “I love the challenge of the open sea, the business of confronting Mother Nature and learning to live compatibly with her, avoiding if possible her excesses but always being prepared to weather them.”

Cronkite, who became an accomplished ocean sailor, told a B altimore Sun reporter in a 2006 interview that he didn’t consider any boat that he owned christened “until it fully toured up and down the Chesapeake Bay.”

His last boat, the two-masted 64-foot Hinckley sailing yacht Wyntje (pronounced win-tee) was named for the first woman to marry a Cronkite in 1642 in the New Amsterdam colony. It had a full-time crew of two.

During summers, the Wyntje was docked off Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, where the broadcaster had a summer home for more than 30 years.

Summer sailing day trips, with Cronkite at the helm, were to Nantucket or Newport, R.I., while longer voyages explored the rocky coast of Maine, with Camden Harbor a favorite destination.

In the fall and spring, he enjoyed sailing between New York City and Annapolis. Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, was the vessel’s winter home, before returning in the spring to northern waters.

Locally, one of Cronkite’s favorite ports was Annapolis, where he became friends with Mike Ashford, a former Eastern Airlines pilot and sailor who opened McGarvey’s Saloon and Oyster Bar in 1975.

In an interview some years ago, Cronkite told a reporter that McGarvey’s was the “best sailors’ watering hole on the East Coast.”

“We met at a fundraiser years ago. Walter and Betsy were the celebrity couple, and we just hit it off. We discovered we had a lot of the same interests in boats, books and drinks,” Ashford said in an interview the other day.

“And we’ve sailed together for more than 35 years, and it’s been lots of fun. When he signed the contract for his last boat, he did it on my dining room table,” said Ashford, who traveled to New York City on Thursday to attend Cronkite’s funeral and say a few words at the invitation of his family.

“Walter loved sharing the experience of sailing. He loved getting cold and wet and knocked about at times. He could never understand why people didn’t see the fun in that,” Ashford said, laughing.

“I remember one time in an Annapolis-Bermuda race, we went through one of the biggest storms I had ever been in. One of the boats went down, but we made it through,” he said.

Ashford said his friend loved autumn sailing on the Chesapeake, when the Eastern Shore was dressed in fall colors and flocks of geese and ducks wheeled overhead on their southern migrations.

“Walter loved being at the helm or below navigating, calling out headings or listening to bells,” Ashford said.

Once back on land, Cronkite set sail for his friend’s saloon, where he sat on his favorite corner stool sipping a Scotch and water or a frosty glass of beer while eating a burger and talking sailing.

“He liked the crowd at McGarvey’s and talking about sailing. People treated him just as another sailor, and I was proud of that,” Ashford said. “He really was hard to get to sit still for very long. He had lots of energy and wanted to either be sailing or out in boatyards looking at boats.”

He recounts the often-told tale about the broadcaster’s menu dilemma, when he wasn’t sure whether he wanted a steak or a bowl of chili, so he ordered both.

“He dumped the chili on the steak, and for a while we had the Cronkite chili steak on the menu. Only one person ever ordered it, so we quietly dropped it,” he said, laughing.

Cronkite often stayed with Ashford. The two friends would swap sea tales while enjoying bourbon and puffing on cigars.

“He always loved sharing good fellowship,” Ashford said.

“There is nothing more satisfying than dropping anchor in an otherwise deserted cove just before sunset, of pouring that evening libation and, with a freshly roasted bowl of popcorn, lying back as the geese and ducks and loons make your acquaintance and the darkness slowly descends to complement the silence,” Cronkite wrote.

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Walter Cronkite reflects on sailing, news, history

• By Keith J. Henderson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

October 5, 1983 | Edgartown, Mass.

When Walter Cronkite retired in 1981 from 19 years of anchoring the CBS Evening News, he commented that he'd had little time for contemplation over the years. He thought he might sit out on his boat and think for a bit.

But he's had sparse time for it. ''The Great Nuclear Arms Debate,'' ''I, Leonardo: A Journey of the Mind,'' and the short-lived science series ''Universe'' are only a few of his recent television projects. This past summer was the first since leaving his anchor post that Mr. Cronkite hasn't had a TV documentary on the burner.

Even with these continuing commitments, however, Cronkite's 42-foot yacht, Wyntje, hasn't been wanting for a skipper. Sailing - grabbed in one- or two-week snatches - has been part of his life for better than 20 years. It has now provided the inspiration for his latest project - this one in print.

''South by Southwest'' (Birmingham, Ala.: Oxmoor House, $39.95; $50 after Jan. 1) fits into the category of coffeetable books. It blends Cronkite's narrative of a cruise down the Atlantic's Intracoastal Waterway with artist Ray Ellis's masterful watercolors, drawings, and oils. The blend works. Fishermen's shanties and colonial towns, places like the Great Dismal Swamp and Daufuskie Island, S.C., take on tangibility and life.

Why is a man who still fervently complains about the intrusion of feature stories into the evening news writing what he calls a ''travel book of sorts''?

In a leisurely interview at his Martha's Vineyard home, Cronkite was quick to say that he doesn't consider the book a very serious endeavor. But he made it clear that this book, like most Cronkite undertakings, has its weightier aspect. And he offered a few thoughts about his ''old'' line of work as well.

When I arrived at the weathered shingle dwelling on the shore of Katama Bay, Cronkite was upstairs on the phone. Even in this placid setting, the bustling world of deadlines and production schedules is never far away. The next day Barbara Walters and her crew would be here to film a segment for ABC. But today's interview was to be on the water; and as Wyntje's engine pushed us gently toward the narrow passage between Martha's Vineyard and Chappaquiddick Island, I asked what he hoped to accomplish with ''South by Southwest.''

''I wanted to show, primarily, how important the water is to us,'' he said. Not just the commerce and the fisheries, he explains, but the attitudes that go with coastal living. It's his conviction that ''people who live on the edge of the water are pretty much alike'' - that they share a common culture based on the activities associated with the sea and, beyond that, an outlook. Cronkite speaks of the ''fierce independence of people on water'' and their ''territoriality, which brands as a foreigner anyone who comes from more than 50 miles away.'' You can see this in Maine, he says, or on the coast of Georgia. Region doesn't matter.

He also describes the spirit of cooperation that marks those who dwell near the shore, where rich and poor have a common involvement with the ocean. He recalls a scene from the Carolina coast - Mercedes backing huge power boats into the water alongside beat-up Fords towing handmade dinghies, and everyone lending a hand. They were all ''brothers on the water,'' he says.

This scene, and others from his cruise, bring to mind something dear to Cronkite as a journalist: ''It's very important to get out into the country and see what people's concerns really are, the concerns of the little guy.'' He says he rediscovered a different concept of America as he sailed the 1,245 miles of the Intracoastal Waterway from Baltimore to Key West - a concept, in his words, both ''homely and homey.''

Contact with the average man and woman is why he always liked politics, he continues. Covering it gave him a chance to get out and gauge what people are thinking. It takes a while to break through the ''taciturnity'' of small-town America, he says, but get to the right subject and ''you're home free.''

Along the Southern coast, he found, one right subject is local history. ''You may never have heard of Civil War hero Jeb Jones, but boy they have! And they're anxious to show you where he was born.'' This awareness of history is part of the thread tying coastal life together. That, along with independence and a sense of place, form an outlook that helped shape us as a nation, he says.

And therein lies the serious side of Cronkite's and Ellis's collaboration. The text is packed with historical anecdotes - about George Washington's slaves digging the first portions of what would become today's lengthy waterway, about the infamous Edward Teach (better known as Blackbeard), about the battles, fabled and forgotten, fought up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

History, you find, is something Walter Cronkite feels strongly about. Americans generally are losing their sense of history, he says. He quotes Santayana's famous line: ''Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.''

''It's unfortunate that history is not well taught in our schools,'' he says. ''The teaching of history ought to be done in such a way that kids can't wait to get the lesson done each day. It's the story of people, problems, and compromises, of winning and losing, the courage of combat in daily living.''

The perspective of history was crucial to his work as a television journalist , he says. ''If I brought anything to the job, that's what it was - an effort to put things in their proper place.''

And how is TV journalism doing these days, in the view of one of its deans? Are the networks heeding Cronkite's longstanding call for serious reporting undiluted by material that ''panders'' to popular tastes?

''I don't see any inclination to take the gamble to do it,'' he says. The ready-made audience for serious news coverage is ''tremendously smaller'' than what the network executives aim for, he recognizes. But to Cronkite, ever the committed newsman, that's irrelevant.

''TV has this monkey on its back of making sure the people are being adequately informed,'' he says. After all, he notes, it is the medium through which most Americans get their news.

His ideal is an hour-long newscast concentrated on stories of import, with the items ''that don't illuminate our times'' weeded out. But, he adds, he's had too many opportunities to compare what's left on the cutting-room floor with what actually appears to harbor hopes of quick improvements. He says PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour may be a step in the right direction. But the problem there, in his view, is that public TV is limited in the resources it can bring to a news operation.

CBS's failure to move to the hour-long format was ''the major disappointment'' of his years there, he says. He pauses a moment to comment on how a distant boat is doing a good job of ''sailing close to the wind.''

As Cronkite turns Wyntje toward home, the conversation switches to sailing. What part has it played in his busy life? In the late '50s, he begins, he started looking for some kind of recreation his growing family could do together. He'd been racing cars, he says, but realized that ''was not much of a family sport.'' Then he happened on sailing one summer in upstate New York. ''I loved it from the start,'' he recalls.

As it developed, the family togetherness didn't quite pan out. His two daughters were entering their teens, and their interests were definitely shoreside. ''We'd barely leave the dock and head into the Atlantic,'' he remembers, ''before the girls would be asking when we'd be going home.''

His younger son, Chip, however, grew up with the sport and became ''quite adept'' at it. But Chip's career as a film editor precludes much sailing now, Cronkite adds with a note of regret.

What about racing - had he ever tried that form of sailing? A few times, he said, but it had some of the same drawbacks as auto racing. The commitment of time and energy involved in organizing a crew and its gear was hardly worth it, he explained, when you might have to rush off to cover a breaking news story. But he still follows racing, and had recently sailed down the coast to view some of the preliminary America's Cup races.

Far from a contemplative pastime, Cronkite finds that ''most of the time aboard I'm thinking about sailing. It's the kind of avocation or sport that requires concentration - thinking about the set of the sails, navigation, a change in the weather. I don't get a lot of contemplation done and no reading at all.

''I would imagine that in a long ocean passage you could settle down to a routine in which you'd have more time to yourself,'' he muses. But it seems unlikely that his schedule will allow for such an excursion any time soon. He mentions an upcoming trip to France to attend a conference on freedom of the press. He also notes that his respite from production schedules will end this fall as another documentary special gets under way. The subject? He's not at liberty to divulge that yet, he says. ''You try to keep it from the opposition, you know.''

As we come about to tie up Wyntje again, Cronkite peers back at Edgartown, now silhouetted against a luminous evening sky. ''A beautiful village,'' he comments. Clearly, this town and the sailing it affords have a cherished spot in his life - a life largely spent before cameras and in the presence of heads of state and lesser dignitaries. You get the distinct feeling that Walter Cronkite, apart from all that, may himself be one of those ''people of the water'' he chronicles in ''South by Southwest'' - the same independence of mind, the strong sense of place, made more expansive, perhaps, but not lost through a career tied to the wider world.

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clock This article was published more than  25 years ago

THE RELIABLE SOURCE

The Shipping News on Martha's Vineyard

The man who reigned for decades as "the most trusted man in America" played host yesterday afternoon to the man who will not be vying for that title anytime soon. The setting was the Wyntje, a sailboat that is the pride and joy of Walter Cronkite. The retired news anchor took President Clinton for a ride in the blustery waters off Martha's Vineyard. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton joined the president, and everyone was looking chipper as they waved at the press upon leaving Cronkite's dock at Edgartown harbor. It was the first time the president and first lady had been seen together in public since they began what has been described as a decidedly chilly summer vacation a week ago -- one day after Clinton went on national television to acknowledge an inappropriate relationship with former intern Monica Lewinsky. Also on board the Wyntje, a ketch with two big masts, was Cronkite's wife of nearly 60 years, Betsy Cronkite, and their young grandson Walter Cronkite IV.

Strong winds had the boat really cooking for the hour-long ride, reports The Post's John Harris. When it was over, the group stayed talking in the boat, tied up at the dock, for another hour.

Word of the outing quickly swirled around Edgartown. By the time the Clintons left the Cronkites, a crowd of people lined the road to wave at the presidential motorcade. After returning to their borrowed estate, the Clintons stayed shut in for the evening. NOW YOU KNOW...

Three divas and a grande dame will come together when TV's Oprah Winfrey, soprano Jessye Norman and poet Maya Angelou headline a gala for civil rights giant Dorothy Height on Sept. 15.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the honorary patron of the musical salute to Height, 86, the former chairman and president emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women. The first lady is a longtime friend of Height's and is expected to attend the gala.

The black-tie event at Washington's Grand Hyatt Hotel, which bears the somewhat immodest title "Uncommon Height: The Legends Celebrate the Legend," benefits the NCNW.

Yes, that man in dark glasses with long braids, sitting alone in the Occidental Grill in the Willard Hotel Monday night, swaying and singing softly to himself, was indeed Stevie Wonder. How else do musicians work out their new material if not by bursting into song?

There are two people who continue to defy all those polls saying Americans are tired of President Clinton's sex life: Independent counsel Ken Starr and New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin.

Toobin and Random House have agreed on a book covering the effect on Clinton and the nation of Monica Lewinsky's affair and Paula Jones's lawsuit.

Won't people be tawdried out by the time his book comes out?

No, says Toobin. "Every time you think {the Clinton story} can't get any more bizarre or horrible, there is something that makes you pine for the good old days of distinguishing characteristics." And finally, in this age of lurid relationships, we bring you a tale of purity. Priscilla Presley has always said she was a virgin when she married Elvis in 1967. A judge agrees, and has ordered a man who said he had an affair with her before she married the King to pay her $75,000.

The actress had sued Lavern Currie Grant for $10 million for claims he made that were later used as a source for the book "Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley," according to the Associated Press.

Presley declared in a statement that she was "very pleased" by last week's judgment against Grant, a former Army buddy of Elvis. CAPTION: And that's the way it is: The Clintons breezed through their first public appearance in Martha's Vineyard aboard a sailboat skippered by Walter Cronkite. CAPTION: Oprah, right, co-hosts a gala honoring civil rights legend Dorothy Height. CAPTION: Priscilla Presley's virginity victory.

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The Cronkites Aboard 'Wyntje'

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The summer of cronkite, legendary network news anchor loved sailing in penobscot bay.

Walter Cronkite was known as “The Most Trusted Man in America” when he was the anchor of CBS’s network news in the 1960s and ‘70s. His sign-off “and that’s the way it was” was recognizable to millions. Cronkite refused to allow his personal beliefs to affect his job of reporting accurate news. It was his integrity and commitment to fair reporting that made him the most trusted man in America.

For me, his most endearing quality was that he loved Maine and sailing around Penobscot Bay.

If there is such a thing as an unassuming 64-foot yacht, the two-masted vessel owned by Walter Cronkite was it. While some owners turn their boats into floating palaces, Cronkite’s Wyntje was the kind of boat on which you could spill your wine and not worry about being thrown overboard.

In 1989, the year of Vinalhaven’s centennial celebration, Cronkite was asked to grand marshal of the parad. With delight, he accepted our small town’s request.

The parade consisted of fire engines, floats, vintage cars, and most of all, the proud islands residents. The marching band was made up of musicians old and young, experienced and novice, but what they lacked in harmony they made up for with heart.

Many of my family members attended the celebration. Our large gaggle gathered in front of the Star of Hope building. Cronkite as grand marshall sat high on the horse-drawn steam-powered fire pump (used between 1900-1920).

Being that our town is so small we got to enjoy the parade twice as once going through it quickly makes a U-turn at the town’s gazebo, repeating it all.

As Cronkite came by on the parade’s first pass, all 50 of our friends and family around us, in unison, waved and cheered: “Hi, Walter!” Minutes later,

on his return leg, again in unison, we waved and with warmth cried out, “Bye Walter!”

With a huge smile, Cronkite laughed, slapped his thigh, and waved back his goodbye.

It’s the small things that make up life!

—Richard Flagg

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• Sailboat Guide

1983 Sparkman & Stephens Sunward 48

• Description

Seller's Description

MUST SEE TO APPRECIATE!

KARMA was designed by Sparkman & Stephens for safe and comfortable bluewater cruising. Her hand laid solid fiberglass hull is over 1 thick below the waterline. Karma also has integrated and baffled fiberglass tanks which eliminates the problems associated with older metal tanks. With 400 gallons of water and 400 gallons of fuel, Karma is well suited for off shore passages. The skeg supported rudder and cut away front full keel make her very safe, stable and comfortable at sea. The center cockpit design allows for generous headroom below. The cockpit itself is very large and comfortable with deep seating and high back rests. Add to that the water tight bimini and full enclosure, you are not only comfortable at sea you are protected from the elements.

The cutter ketch combination allows easy set up for all weather conditions for a crew of two. There is plenty of room on deck to store cruising gear and the tender.

Her accommodations include a large salon with 7’ headroom, L-shaped galley with abundant storage and three refrigerator/freezer units, three staterooms and two heads. Her solid teak, mahogany and ash joinery is stunning and has been well cared for.

This particular boat is sistership to Walter Cronkite’s beloved Sunward 48, WYNTJE and was featured in the TV series Dawson’s Creek. This hull was built and completed at the Sunward Yacht facility in Wilmington, NC.

KARMA has been cruising for the past 9.5 years and her seller’s are ready for their next adventure. She set sail from Florida in 2011, and cruised approximately 20,000 miles before her arrival in San Diego, CA.

Many spare parts for all systems are included. Maintenance records are available.

Call Dea Allen, CPYB at 619-708-3287 or [email protected] for more information.

Equipment: *100 hp Westerbeke FWC engine *Westerbeke 7.7 k5 FWC generator *Winslow 6-person liferaft (needs service) *Refleks hydronic diesel heater model 2000KV with 5 gallon s/s day tank *7’ Headroom in salon *Air conditioning in salon and master cabin (needs service) *Outback FM-80 3 stage solar charge controller *Kiss high output wind generator *Bow thruster *Xantrex Freedom Marine 3000 watt inverter *Village Marine No Frills 120v watermaker, 27 gph capacity *Radar, (2) Chart Plotter displays, ComNav autopilot display, ComNav oversized hydraulic autopilot with Octopus reversing pump, ComNav multi display in salon and in cockpit for all other functions, (2) Raymarine 125 GOS antennas, Standard Horizon VHF with AIS receiver, Standard Horizon VJHF with remote mic, ICOM SSB, Pactor 3 modem. *3-Blade Luke feathering bronze prop. *Center cockpit with closing cockpit door *Topsides of deck painted with Awlgrip in 2012 *Cutaway full keep with fully encapsulated ballast in the keel and skeg hung rudder *Petit Ultima SR-40 bottom paint 3/2021 *Bronze thru hulls are arranged in two sea chests in the engine room *Nilsson electric windlass *75# Spade anchor *Secondary Plow anchor *Fortress hurricane anchor (4) 300’ 5/8” floating 3-strand shore tie lines, stored in Sunbrella bags *Jordan series drogue with dedicated chain plates on the transom *A&H adjustable dinghy davits on transom *Achilles 9’2” Hypalon ROB dinghy with Sunbrekllla cover *Yamaha 15hp 2-stroke OB *Standing rigging new in 2006 *Spinnaker *Chainplates new in 2006 *Located in San Diego near the airport and easy to see.

Additional photos and information upon request.

*MUST SEE TO APPRECIATE THE CONDITION!

Rig and Sails

Auxilary power, accomodations, calculations.

The theoretical maximum speed that a displacement hull can move efficiently through the water is determined by it's waterline length and displacement. It may be unable to reach this speed if the boat is underpowered or heavily loaded, though it may exceed this speed given enough power. Read more.

Classic hull speed formula:

Hull Speed = 1.34 x √LWL

Max Speed/Length ratio = 8.26 ÷ Displacement/Length ratio .311 Hull Speed = Max Speed/Length ratio x √LWL

Sail Area / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the power of the sails relative to the weight of the boat. The higher the number, the higher the performance, but the harder the boat will be to handle. This ratio is a "non-dimensional" value that facilitates comparisons between boats of different types and sizes. Read more.

SA/D = SA ÷ (D ÷ 64) 2/3

• SA : Sail area in square feet, derived by adding the mainsail area to 100% of the foretriangle area (the lateral area above the deck between the mast and the forestay).
• D : Displacement in pounds.

Ballast / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the stability of a boat's hull that suggests how well a monohull will stand up to its sails. The ballast displacement ratio indicates how much of the weight of a boat is placed for maximum stability against capsizing and is an indicator of stiffness and resistance to capsize.

Ballast / Displacement * 100

Displacement / Length Ratio

A measure of the weight of the boat relative to it's length at the waterline. The higher a boat’s D/L ratio, the more easily it will carry a load and the more comfortable its motion will be. The lower a boat's ratio is, the less power it takes to drive the boat to its nominal hull speed or beyond. Read more.

D/L = (D ÷ 2240) ÷ (0.01 x LWL)³

• D: Displacement of the boat in pounds.
• LWL: Waterline length in feet

Comfort Ratio

This ratio assess how quickly and abruptly a boat’s hull reacts to waves in a significant seaway, these being the elements of a boat’s motion most likely to cause seasickness. Read more.

Comfort ratio = D ÷ (.65 x (.7 LWL + .3 LOA) x Beam 1.33 )

• D: Displacement of the boat in pounds
• LOA: Length overall in feet
• Beam: Width of boat at the widest point in feet

Capsize Screening Formula

This formula attempts to indicate whether a given boat might be too wide and light to readily right itself after being overturned in extreme conditions. Read more.

CSV = Beam ÷ ³√(D / 64)

S&S design #1674.2. Based on an earlier production model called the MARLOW 48.

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Operation Sail, Inc.

Remarks by Walter Cronkite

Sailors always have been pioneers of change. For centuries, they were the lead agents in bringing the world closer together. Until the last century, we traveled by ship, and we traveled everywhere on the sea’s broad highway.

My own life as a sailor began in earnest in 1960, when I decided that my avocation of racecar driving no longer suited my lifestyle or my family commitments. So I learned to sail. A few years later, I bought, on impulse, my first sailboat at a New York Boat show-a 22-foot sloop-and began exploring the sea and the shorelines of America. There were several more sailboats after the first, each a bit larger than the last, and all named Wyntje in honor of the first woman to marry a Cronkite– a distant ancestor in the NewAmsterdam colony in 1642. Nothing compared to the experience of sailing, which brought out the Walter Mitty in me. In the winter, I would weigh anchor for the Caribbean, and in the summertime, my wife, Betsy, and I would set sail from our home on Martha’s Vineyard to visit familiar and favorite haunts along the northeastern sea coast.

What began as a hobby quickly evolved into a passion. In my book Around America , I described sailing from Cape May to New York. “The sailor who rounds Sandy Hook for the first time without losing a heartbeat or two,” I wrote, “has no romance in his soul.” Thus, my familiarity with the last stretch of the journey in each Operation Sail was already rich by the time I came to know its organizers.

Indeed, Sandy Hook is the hinge to America’s front door, and the approach to New York Harbor is one of my favorite passages on water. For more than a century before the Statue of Liberty’s torch was lit, the nation’s oldest lighthouse on Sandy Hook blinked out a welcome to arriving vessels and millions of immigrants. Fort Hancock nearby is almost as old, built as the first in a string of defenses to protect New York from the British in the War of 1812. The most important battery in that string was built at the Narrows, now spanned by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the starting point for every Operation Sail parade of ships.

I first came on board in 1976 for the Bicentennial Operation Sail, and for many years thereafter, I served as an advisor to the organization. During that event, which I dubbed “the grandest birthday party in the history of the world,” I broadcast programs from aboard the USCGC Eagle and managed radio communications with the other vessels. My fondest memories of that celebration are of the ardent crowds. Millions of spectators, 10 to 20 deep and shoulder-to-shoulder, cheered from the shorelines of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and New Jersey. Scores more from around the world watched the occasion on television, enthralled as an armada of the world’s great square-riggers paraded in review. In the calm of that day, the glorious crafts’ bow waves purled in barely a whisper, but together those whispers rose into a chorus that sang of the goodwill and global fellowship of the international sailing community.

Each of the subsequent sails was bigger and grander than the last. Operation Sail 1986, which paid tribute to the centenary of our Lady Liberty and to the principles for which she stands, drew more than six million people to the waterfronts of New York on a resplendent Fourth of July weekend. Broadcast across the globe, the image of sailors gathered together from around the world, united by the simple brotherhood of the sea, brought inestimable and enduring benefits.

In 1992, we gave special emphasis to the Age of Discovery-that era when ships brought worlds together. In the 1400s, when the voyages of the Age of Discovery began, nations and cultures were insulated, unaware of the ways of life beyond their borders, wary even of their neighbors. Today, we are all discoverers, as people from almost every nation on earth now walk the streets of every other nation.

The millennial Operation Sail was another memorable event, with more than 35 countries represented. The International Naval Review that year promised to be the most spectacular to date, but a torn Achilles tendon kept me from appearing on the reviewing aircraft carrier, the now-retired USS John F. Kennedy, or “Big John,” as she is more affectionately known. Nothing, however, could prevent me from serving as a trustee and honorary chairman. I was hooked on the thrill of Operation Sail, the exhilaration I felt at the sight of so many seagoing marvels gliding up the Hudson, their pennants aflutter, their acres of sails taut with wind or clewed up so that the young sailors manning them could line the yardarms in a show of symmetry.

The old sailing ships now are important sites of learning, as many actively serve as training vessels for the next generation of mariners or provide character-building experiences for young men and women around the world by introducing them to the joys and rigors of sailing. I saw this at work firsthand as chair of the National Maritime Education Initiative, which seeks, through modern sail training, to preserve the relevance of the glorious vessels of a bygone age and to further the legacy of our maritime heritage.

We may not yet be one peaceful world or even a world that agrees on many things, but Operation Sail celebrates the fact that we have, indeed, become one world. Ships made this possible, and it seems fitting to commemorate their contribution with a harbor full of sails and sailors.

Operation Sail reminds us that ships brought so many of our ancestors to the Americas, brought cultures and commodities across oceans, brought us to that critical pitch of communication and commerce that has made today’s global awareness possible. Operation Sail has allowed us to see clearly how vessels from all lands — the voyaging canoes of Polynesia, the junks and sampans of Asia, the dhows of the Arab world, the barques and full-riggers of Europe and America — connected and transformed the world.

The world today seems smaller in its distances but greater in its possibilities. It still offers wide horizons and fresh landfalls to us all.

-Walter Cronkite

Bob Schieffer helps pay tribute to Walter Cronkite on the Vineyard

“Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer headlined a tribute to late great CBS anchor Walter Cronkite on Martha’s Vineyard the other day. The event was held at Cronkite’s former home, now owned by Karen and David Brush , and the newsman’s beloved sailboat Wyntje, now owned by “Inspector Gadget” co-creator Andy Heyward , was moored just off shore. As part of the event, Cronkite’s grandson, CBS associate producer Walter Cronkite IV , presented the 2014 Cronkite Award to legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle and Vineyard-based photographer/writer Sam Low .

Names can be reached at [email protected] . Follow Mark Shanahan on Twitter @MarkAShanahan . Follow Meredith Goldstein on Twitter @MeredithGoldste.

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Iconic newsman Walter Cronkite made regular trips to Wilmington

Iconic news anchor Walter Cronkite was a nightly presence on TV screens across America, but he also graced parts of Wrightsville Beach and Wilmington on twice-a-year sailing trips.

Cronkite, who died Friday at age 92, docked his sailboat at Seapath Yacht Club in Wrightsville Beach while sailing south in the fall to Florida or the Virgin Islands and while returning north to his summer home at Martha’s Vineyard, said Maria Mann, a captain and friend of Cronkite’s.

“He just liked Wrightsville Beach,” Mann said. “In Martha’s Vineyard, he could walk around and people wouldn’t bother him. In Wrightsville Beach, it was sort of the same way. He could be like a regular person, and he enjoyed that aspect of it very much.”

Mann, 64, of Wilmington, was captain of Cronkite’s boat from 1980 to 1981, and she continued sailing with Cronkite and his family each year until 1999. She attended Cronkite’s wife’s funeral in 2005 and said she last spoke with him on the phone about two years ago.

His boat would sometimes stay docked at Seapath for weeks while Cronkite traveled or worked, but he would often fly in to stay on the boat even when he wasn’t sailing on it, Mann said.

He enjoyed walking the Seapath docks and talking to people about boats, she said. “He loved talking to other fellow sailors.”

Cronkite’s connections to Wrightsville Beach didn’t just involve docking at the marina. Several of his captains, mostly referred by Mann, were from the area, and Cronkite also bought a yacht from local builder Sunward Yachts.

Tom Sawyer, a freelance journalist who also worked in yacht management in the area, served as a subcontractor for Cronkite’s boat and also took photos and wrote an article about a party in 1986 to celebrate the launch of the Wilmington-built yacht.

It was a 48-foot yacht, and, like all of his yachts, it was named Wyntje after the first woman to marry a Cronkite in the New World.

Cronkite told former StarNews reporter Bernadette Hearne about his boat’s name when she interviewed him in 1982.

Hearne, who at that time was just three years out of journalism school, said she received a call from a source in Wrightsville Beach saying a famous person was on his dock.

It turned out to be Cronkite, the man she grew up watching on CBS Evening News and studying in college.

“He was absolutely lovely and invited us on the boat and offered us lunch, which we didn’t take because we were working,” Hearne said. She said Cronkite, who had stopped in town for a few hours after inclement weather interrupted his sailing trip, had only an hour before catching a plane, but he spent it with Hearne and a newspaper photographer.

“He was an icon, and I was more than a little star-struck,” Hearne said. “He made us feel so relaxed and at home and answered everything we asked.”

She said Cronkite must have realized she was a young journalist at the time. “He even made it a point to say, ‘Great interview, kid,’” Hearne said.

Mann said she has many fond memories of Cronkite and his visits to Wrightsville Beach, including one dinner at Bridge Tender restaurant when a waiter asked him for his autograph. He said, ‘Sure, just tear it off the check,’” Mann said, laughing.

“It was wonderful, incredible, to sail with him, because he was so much fun. He enjoyed his boat, and he enjoyed having a good time,” Mann said.

Cronkite, to her, was a sailing companion just as much as he was a famous newscaster.

“He just made it easier for us to accept what was going on in our world back in the 20th century,” she said. “Now, he has become the news. It’s a sad time.”

But there are times Mann can remember when Cronkite took time away from reporting the news to enjoy the freedom of sailing, with no telephones or television, using only a radio to check in on news he had missed.

“Yeah, he could stay away from it,” Mann said. “He could take a break.”

Shannan Bowen: 343-2016

On Twitter.com: @shanbow

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Walter Cronkite, News Anchor and Avid Sailor, Passes Away

• By Christopher White
• Updated: July 22, 2009

ytgjul23enewsCronkiteVineyard525.jpg

The country and the yachting community bid farewell to one of America’s most iconic citizens on Friday, July 19, with the passing of news anchor Walter Cronkite. Cronkite reported on countless major events during his time as a CBS news anchor, such as the bombing in World War II, the Nuremberg trials, the carnage of the Vietnam War, the assassination of JFK, the moon landing, the Watergate scandal, and the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Throughout his professional career his kind demeanor and journalistic integrity led to his unofficial title of “the most trusted man in America.” However, it was during his time off the air that Cronkite took to the sea to pursue one of his favorite passions: sailing. An avid, lifelong sailor, Cronkite would sail in the waters around his house in Martha’s Vineyard during the summer months, and the Caribbean in the winter. Over the course of his life he owned several boats, including a Westsail 42, and Camper & Nicholsons 60, a Sunward 48, and a Hinckley 64 ketch, all named Wyntje , after the first woman to marry a Cronkite in the new world.

In 2006, Cronkite was honored with the SeaKeeper’s Society SeaKeeper Award for his contributions to protecting and improving marine environments. In his 1996 autobiography, A Reporter’s Life , he wrote: “Sailing for me has satisfied many urges. For one thing, it feeds the Walter Mitty in me, that inner heroism with which James Thurber endowed his unforgettable character. I never sail from harbor without either having a load of tea for Southampton or orders from the admiral to purse that villain Long John Silver and his rapacious crew. I love the challenge of the open sea, the business of confronting Mother Nature and learning to live compatibly with her, avoiding if possible her excesses but always being prepared to weather them.” Walter Cronkite will always be remembered as the man who brought the news to the American people, the man for whom the term “news anchor” was coined, a passionate yachtsman, and a true champion of the sea. And that’s the way it is.

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