THE SAILORS BALL

The Sailors Ball is a black-tie party for the start of the sailing season in New York Harbor, given each April by the people who race there, to pay for teaching the city’s children to do the same.

It is less a ball than a building full of parties.

The Harbor

New York is a harbour city that spent most of the twentieth century forgetting it was one.

The Manhattan Sailing Club was founded in 1987 by people who wanted to race in the harbour itself, among the ferries and the barges, and by its own account nobody had sailed there for pleasure in sixty years. It began at the South Street Seaport with twelve small boats moored between two tall ships, and lost many of its members in the stock market crash that October.

It survived, became the Manhattan Yacht Club, and keeps a floating clubhouse moored just north of Ellis Island through the summer, from which the evening races are watched.

In 1994 its members set up the New York Harbor Sailing Foundation to do what a club cannot: put children from the city, who would otherwise never be on the water, into boats. The first Sailors Ball was held the same year to pay for it.

The Foundation later acquired two twelve-metre yachts, both named America II, that had challenged for the America’s Cup off Fremantle in 1987. They sail in the harbour.

The Rooms

The ball has for years been given at the Down Town Association, a private club of the Financial District founded before the Civil War, in a building on Pine Street with more floors and more rooms than any ballroom needs.

It uses all of them. Each room is given a theme and its own music, and the evening is spent moving between them: one for a past America’s Cup, one with the tables, and more than one for dancing.

It begins late, after dinner has been had elsewhere, and goes on well past midnight. There is an open bar and a procession of small plates, and nobody sits down for long.

What to Know

It is the liveliest of the spring’s black-tie evenings, and the least solemn about the dress. Sailors wear it with a certain looseness, and a nautical touch is forgiven.

Dine first. The ball feeds its guests only lightly.

The harbour’s racing begins within weeks, and the evening races can be watched from the clubhouse off Ellis Island all summer.

The Court

The Sailors Ball is not the Court’s own. Tickets are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the evening around it: a table for dinner beforehand, since the ball serves none, and a car at the end of it. A member who would rather race than dance will find the Court’s own Sailing and Regatta Crewing in July.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.