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© St. Petersburg Times, published November 14, 2001
Those of us who like men in uniforms have a special fondness for the Commodore's Ball. True, "yachting formal" is not exactly a uniform, but the navy blue jackets trimmed with braid, the white trousers and caps are probably as close as you will come to uniforms at a nonmilitary event. (Okay, with the exceptions of Boy Scout meetings, police motorcades and gatherings of the Salvation Army.) The effect at the St. Petersburg Yacht Club on Saturday was both dignified and jaunty.
The party honors the outgoing commodore, in this case Pat Seidenspinner. She is the first woman to hold the title in the club's history and, for the first time since becoming a flag officer, she chose to forgo the uniform for "civilian" clothes, wearing a black evening dress and looking very glamorous.
She and husband Ralph Seidenspinner were front and center in the receiving line along with this year's flag officers: Commodore Skipp Fraser, Vice Commodore Jay Fleece and Rear Commodore David Cox.
These guys deserve a nice party and a few hours of fun. For most of the year, they spend hundreds of volunteer hours navigating sometimes rough waters of club management, which means being responsible for dozens of employees, a restaurant, a private party venue, two marinas and hundreds of members who think they know how to run a club, too.
A very nice party is what they got.
The downstairs casual dining room was cleared of tables and chairs and set up for predinner hors d'oeuvres, which is an inadequate term for the gargantuan spread on tables lining the room. We could wolf down as much smoked salmon, caviar, shrimp, beef tenderloin and other assorted luxury nibbles as we chose. Most of us ignored the cheese and vegetable table.
But the vodka display was a great show even if you do not drink vodka. With a flourish, the server hoisted a bottle of premium stuff over an ice sculpture carved to look like a ski run, and poured some into a hole at the top. Joe Pilkington, Celma Mastry, and John and Frances Doyle and I watched as it slushed down the ice into a shot glass. Clever and cold.
Joining Skipp and Joyce Fraser were son Chris, with his friend Erin Whitaker, and daughter Karin Carlan with her husband, Kevin.
The Fleece family also was in full force with Joe Fleece, a past commodore, wife Joanne, Jack and Mary Jane Fleece Cartier, and Lindsey Fleece Henderson and husband Glenn Henderson, a yacht designer who was given the Boat of the Year award from Cruising World magazine. Mrs. Henderson, by the way, wore one of the loveliest gowns at the party in iridescent silk and organdy that she said she bought years ago in Bombay.
A brace of past commodores were in attendance, including Jim Lang; Tom Allison; Don Bogue; Frank Mendelblatt; Earl Fox; Dick Jones; David Knowlton; Bill Hough; Harry Moorefield; Bruce Watters, getting ready for his annual pre-Thanksgiving barbecue in Bushnell for his many friends and family members; Bill Welch; and Tom Wilson.
Also in the crowd were Dot Lang; Evelyn Moorefield; Reba Fox; Hazel Hough; Lynn Cox; Fay Nielsen; Stan and Iris Salzer; Bill and Kally Harvard; Dr. Micheal and Lis Mastry; Frank and Mary Ball; Murray and Kim Silverstein; Cindy Allison, who tells me that since selling her travel agency, she now imports Celtic jewelry from Ireland; Dorothy Wexler and Dick Lundquist; Cindy Weatherby, whose husband, Doug, nursed a bad cold at home; John and Parsla Mason; Ken and Barbara Cowan; Frank Blandford and Cary Bond Thomas; Norma Murphy; Bill and Margaret Dawson; John Bowman and Fay Baynard; and Carl and Betty Bowley.
The stairs to the ballroom were lined with white flowers, and bouquets of blue delphiniums, white orchids and red carnations were suspended above the dining tables.
We did not need more food but, as King Lear remarked, "Reason not the need," so placed before us by white-gloved servers was a four-course meal of lobster, consumme, salad and the entree -- lamb chops and filet mignon. It was very good. And there was more.
The dessert room was sort of like a confectioner's version of Ali Baba's cave, or the set of a talk show segment about People Who Love Chocolate Too Much. Never mind the dozens of torts, tarts and cookies in assorted flavors. Two tables were given over to chocolate.
On one was a large Statue of Liberty rendered in chocolate. It presided over miniature boats in milk chocolate and little Moby Dicks in white chocolate, which was mixing metaphors but who cared. Nearby was a grand piano crafted in the candy, filled with truffles. Rimming it were individual baby grand pianos filled with pastry cream and mousse. I was impressed, and I'm not much of a chocolate person.
Nothing, not the Change of Watch or the Exchange of Burgees or chocolate overload, comes between Skipp Fraser and University of Florida football. He vowed last year not to schedule the Commodore's Ball on the same weekend as UF Homecoming, which has happened in the past. But it did coincide with the Florida-South Carolina game, so he had a big-screen TV set up to broadcast the game. He was not alone in his ardor. Among the group watching it was club treasurer Don Krippendorf, who pulled up his pants legs to reveal his favorite striped socks in UF colors.
The Blessing of the Fleet was the Sunday after the Commodore's Ball, as it always is, and the ceremony can be described as a maritime baptism. To see it is a stirring sight. The Rev. Chris Thompson of St. Thomas Episcopal Church stood on the bow of Bill and Sherry Welch's trawler as boats big and small floated by to receive a blessing.
I was on Dick and Kathy Merriman's 42-foot Grand Banks -- a wonderfully comfortable cabin cruiser -- with Joe and Joanne Fleece, Blanchard and Becky Jolly, and Fred and Barbara McCoy. The Merrimans' grandson Eric Webber was celebrating his 11th birthday by launching his new Opti -- we used to call them prams -- and he also participated in the blessing.
It was a beautiful day to be on the water, and as he bobbed by in his new boat, Mrs. McCoy said, "Why would anyone want to live anywhere else?"
I cannot imagine.