Helplessly HOPING

Beau and Stacey Vrolyk struck a deal with rock star David Crosby to buy his 59-foot schooner, Mayan. There was just one problem: Crosby wasn't ready to give up his sailing dreams

- Kimball Livingston

Many, many months after rock star David - Crosby struck a deal to sell his classic schooner to Beau and Stacey Vrolyk, the deal was instead stuck, dead in the water. But that's not where this story ends-or begins. Two stories, really.

John Alden design No. 356B launched in 1947 in British Honduras, land of the Mayas, and the 59-foot schooner Mayan is a celebrity today wherever she goes. Pampered inch by inch and pound for pound, all 70,000 pounds, Mayan is home-ported in San Francisco Bay as the flagship of St. Francis Yacht Club. Under 2023 Commodore Beau Vrolyk, there is gravitas in that.

How it came to be, after those many, many perplexing months of waiting to buy, is one story.

Mayan, however, had already touched the hearts of millions millions who might not know the boat beyond their imaginings of a song about "wooden ships, on the water, very free and easy." A reader might recognize the words and phrasing of the troubadour who owned Mayan for 45 years, from 1969 to 2014. If something made to go places can be said to be an anchor, Mayan was that, the emotional anchor in Crosby's rich but tumultuous life.

When Crosby bought Mayan out of the charter trade in 1969, he was riding the height of fame. His earliest musical hits with the Byrds had included a cover of Bob Dylan's "Tambourine Man" that defined folk rock. Later came the Byrds' own (ahem) "Eight Miles High." Now, the eponymous debut album of Crosby, Stills & Nash was shooting straight to the top, and the three were honored as best new artists at the 1969 Grammy Awards. It was a heady time. Woodstock lay on the horizon. The political landscape was ablaze. And along with the discovery that he could harmonize with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash to create a unique sound came a preference to think of the group not as a band, but as individuals. They would be together or not, harmonizing or not and feuding or not, for the rest of their personal and professional lives.