In Memoriam Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr.
9/25/17 - 9/9/03
by Tad Thompson
If there ever were a man who loved the sea, it was Gene Sydnor. I had the privilege of calling him "Skipper." A graduate of Saint Christopher's School and Princeton Universitys Class of 1939 along with cohorts Jim Mullen, Tommy Johns, and Mac Parrish, Gene actually started out to be an equestrian, competing in a number of horse shows as a young boy. A couple of summers at a New England sailing camp changed that forever. He learned to sail, saw the J Boats race, and he was hooked for life on the sea and New England waters. His love of the sea and its discipline and traditions were further strengthened during his service on a destroyer in World War II.
A member of Fishing Bay Yacht Club, he liked to complain about the "airless" Chesapeake Bay summers. When Hurricane Hazel wrecked his Hinkley 31 sailboat in 1954, he forsook the Chesapeake summers for Padanarum and the Concordia Boat Yard. When I first sailed with him in early June 1967, it was on his bright hull 41" Concordia yawl Ad Astra (the name taken from the motto of his beloved city of Richmond that he served for a time in the Virginia General Assembly). What a wonderful, beautiful boat! I was fascinated by the pipe berths and the gimbaled table with a skylight overhead. We were delivering the boat from Padanarum to Annapolis for the Annapolis-Newport Race. The race was hit by a northeaster just as the fleet left the Bay. A third of the boats turned around and went back, but we persevered; this was a test of seamanship - what ocean racing was all about for Gene Sydnor! In this the discipline of the Navy served him well and was impressed on the crew - relieving the watch meant appearing on deck 15 minutes before the hour! Coupled with the Swedish watch system, he used (3 hours at night, 4 during the day), one didn't get much continuous sleep at night. At the end of the race, the fog was so thick you couldn't see the rocky shore as Gene worked his protractor to give courses and run times to the helmsman until he ordered "drop the anchor." When the fog lifted we were less than 200 yards off the Ida Lewis Yacht Club. His regimen of summer racing usually included the New York Yacht Club cruise, and one memorable regatta was the 1967 Block Island Race Week in which we were joined by Jim Mullen, the legendary Richmond rocket scientist and yachting enthusiast.
After Ad Astra, Gene purchased Windhound, a custom-built aluminum hull S&S designed sloop in Grosse Point, Michigan, which he renamed Etoile the first of three of this name. I helped deliver the boat with the family: Gene, his first wife Lucy, and their youngest son (of 3) Charlie. After a beautiful spinaker run across Lake Erie, we had to put the mast on the deck to contend with barges on the Erie Canal to Albany before proceeding down the Hudson and around New York City. There were tough moments for Charlie cleaning the scuppers with "Scott" towels. His mother had other chores for him too until he threatened to entitle his summer report "How My Mother Bugged Me on the Barge Canal."
Gene sailed Etoile on the first of many Newport-Bermuda races, interspersed with Annapolis-Newport races on the odd years. I think he made every Bermuda race from 1968 through 1996, just shy of 15! Following the 1972 race, he raced Etoile across the Atlantic to Vigo, Spain, in the Regatta del Descubrimento commemorating the 480th anniversary of Columbus' voyage.
After Etoile, Gene flirted briefly with Dancer, a blue-hulled sloop, but then it was back to Etoile. Number two was a Farr design that had the most claustrophobic quarter berths I ever encountered. Finally came Etoile III, a super-fast Rachel Pugh design with lots of potential. In 1990 Gene and Etoile III took first in Class and 2nd overall, finishing the Newport-Bermuda Race in less than 4 days. A rule-beater ketch named Denali, whose sail-plan featured NO headsails (ask Preston Smith who sailed in her that race), saved her time on us. It was very exciting when we crossed the finish line in the middle of the night accompanied by the flashes of the press boat cameras. You can imagine how our hearts sank when we saw Denali coming in just after sunrise as we left our anchorage in St. George's to motor around to Hamilton Harbor. Her rating was protested later that summer and adjusted so that, had the adjustment occurred earlier, we would have been the overall winner. What a disappointment to come so close, but Gene accepted it gracefully in the best tradition of yachting.
In later years, Gene's program followed a familiar pattern: racing the Spring Series at Fishing Bay (he was always the scratch A boat with a rating of 17), heading north in May for the Bermuda Race and the NYYC Cruise, returning in the fall to Fishing Bay and Annapolis to race and winter over. Beneath it all, Gene really loved the Bay, serving for many years on the board of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. And of course, he loved the sea, sailing, and yacht racing. He was an inspiration to us all. As the Royal Navy toast he knew so well goes:
To the wind that blows,
To the ship that goes,
To the lass that loved a sailor.In his later years Elaine was his lovely wife and the dear lass who loved him. May the love of the sea abide in you forever. Farewell.