Sixty-Something: Remembering “JADE” The Sailboat No Longer at East Hampton Point

This is an obituary for an iconic sailboat that was fully rigged and mounted at the East Hampton Point Bar for decades. No one ever had a sunset dinner, attended a wedding there, or danced to reggae on a Sunday evening at East Hampton Point without admiring it. The boat was pure class and being in its presence was almost religious.

Many folks took photos of JADE or with JADE; the boat was a museum quality classic. It was truly a work of art. Folks marveled out loud, “How did they get the boat into the bar?”

JADE was a 5.5-meter sailboat and one of the last of its breed. That size boat was losing its status as an Olympic class boat in the late 1960s. It was built in Zealand, Denmark. This sailboat marked the end of John B. Mooney’s, a famous Long Island yachtsman’s, effort to make it to the Olympics. Mooney had pursued that goal starting with the 1956 Summer Games.

John B. Mooney was friends with Dick Sage, who was the original owner and builder of the bar that was known eventually as East Hampton Point. Mooney sold the boat to Sage, who came up with the genius idea to literally build the bar around the boat, including designing the cupola (still there) to accommodate the mast.

JADE was an acronym from the initials of Mooney’s four oldest children; John, Anne, David and Elisabeth. Eventually he had six.

Mooney’s son, John (the “J” of Jade) sailed the beautiful yacht down the Sound from Oyster Bay to Three Mile Harbor. In an interview years back, I asked Anne Mooney, a world class sailor/racer to describe the nuts and bolts of JADE. She is the “A” in JADE.

She said, “The 5.5-meter yachts were technically difficult to sail and physically demanding as well, requiring at least one large person in the middle position to fly a spinnaker that was really large for a boat that size.” Then she got more technical. “As you may know, the 5.5 meters were not a “one design” where all boats of that class are exactly the same; they instead were a “rule boat” like the other meter boats including 12 meters.”

One might ask what is a “rule boat?” Ms. Mooney explained, “Meaning the design had to conform to a design rule which allowed changes to a series of parameters including sail area and water line length, among other things.”

She also explained that JADE was experimental and “pushed the state of naval architecture and engineering in their day, which was one of the things that really appealed to my father and others who sailed those boats.”

Sailors of boats of this class cherished the challenge of solving the technical problems. It also meant that these sailboats were designed for the anticipated conditions at each Olympic venue, so they became obsolete very quickly.

Before John Mooney purchased JADE her name was WEB III. It had been designed for a Danish yachtsman for the 1956 Olympics. It actually participated in 4 Olympics but never medaled. Mr. Mooney purchased it in the late 1960s and had it shipped from Denmark to Oyster Bay, Long Island before eventually selling it to Dick Sage. It was one beautiful thing.

When I drove down to East Hampton Point after the present owner purchased the property and they had almost completed the renovation, I noticed JADE was no longer in its perched spot. I asked one of the workers where is the boat. The worker said they were instructed to destroy it and put it in a dumpster to be carted away to the dump.

When I told John Mooney what had become of the boat, he was extremely sad. He knew and understood the gravity of what was done to this prized yacht.