Carleton Mitchell, 96, Sailor Who Wrote About Yachting, Is Dead
wazzzy
Carleton Mitchell, who won the prestigious Newport Bermuda Race a
record three consecutive times, and chronicled the joys and challenges
of sailing in his books, magazine articles and photographs, died
Monday at his home in Key Biscayne, Fla. He was 96.
His death was announced by John Rousmaniere, a family friend and a
writer on sailing.
In the early Depression years, Mr. Mitchell was working at Macy's in
Manhattan, a dropout from Miami University of Ohio who was collecting
rejection slips for Western novels. He had sailed as a youngster on
Lake Pontchartrain, and he vowed to pursue his dream to be a sailor.
With a $500 stake from his mother, he got a job as a stevedore in
Miami. He later worked as a photographer in the Bahamas, taught combat
photography in the Navy during World War II, then turned to sailing
and writing.
Mr. Mitchell sailed through the Caribbean in 1946, and, at a time when
it was only lightly visited, wrote of his experiences in "Islands to
Windward" (1948). After competing in a trans-Atlantic race, he wrote
on ocean racing in "Passage East" (1953). C. B. Palmer wrote in The
New York Times Book Review that Mr. Mitchell's photographs in that
book were "among the most moving ever made of that beautiful object, a
vessel under sail."
Mr. Mitchell reveled in the approach to life that sailing provided.
"No 20th-century man can really escape, but a boat gives a man the
opportunity to get away from the turmoil and into direct contact with
nature," he told Gay Talese of The New York Times in 1958, after he
won the Miami-to-Nassau yacht race. "Somehow the detached life on the
sea gives me the ability to think. It's a life of action, yet
contemplation."
Mr. Mitchell was best known as a competitor for his victories in 1956,
'58 and '60 in the 635-mile race from Newport to Bermuda, winning in
his 38-foot yawl Finisterre.
"His innovation, with the assistance of yacht designers, was to be
able to make a wide boat competitive in racing as well as roomy for
cruising; that was the real insight," said Mr. Rousmaniere, the author
of "A Berth to Bermuda" (2006), a history of the Newport Bermuda
Race.
Between the 1950s and 1970s, one of the most popular and successful
boat models was known as the Finisterre-type yawl, Mr. Rousmaniere
said. Mr. Mitchell's 1960 victory in the Newport Bermuda Race was his
last major competition.
He is survived by his second wife, Ruth. His first wife, Elizabeth,
predeceased him.
In "Passage East," Mr. Mitchell wrote about the mind-set of ocean
racers:
"Here we are, nine men, driving a fragile complex of wood, metal and
cloth through driving rain and building sea, a thousand miles from the
nearest harbor; no one to see or admire or applaud; no one to help if
our temerity ends in disaster. We are driven by our own compulsions,
each personal and secret, so nebulous we probably could not express
them to our mates if we tried. But in our own way, we are about as
dedicated as it is possible for men to be."
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Published: July 18, 2007