Arthur Ford served as Commodore of the St. Francis Yacht Club in 1951 and 1952, with Yankee serving as the club’s flagship for her third and fourth years. Arthur was an accomplished skipper who continued to post wins in the Windjammer and Farallones races. His famous dictum during one hard-driven Farallones return — when his nephew Dick Ford came below to report that conditions on deck were getting dangerous — was simply: “Young man, sail her in or sail her under.” See Appendices B for more on the Flagship Years.

In 1955, Sydney Ford sold his half-interest to Arthur. In 1967, Arthur sold half his interest to Robert D. Ford — the boy who had first spotted Yankee on the San Rafael Canal (see Chapter V) — with right of survivorship. Robert had by then become one of the Bay’s most respected yachtsmen and was notably an owner and president of the Barient Winch Company, though Yankee herself continued to sail without a single winch aboard.

Robert assembled a devoted crew that included Bay sailing figures Bob Davis, Smokey McRae, Con Findlay, and Bobby Ayers. These were the men who sailed Yankee through the great era of San Francisco Bay classic racing — the Master Mariners Regatta, the Windjammer races, the annual stag cruises down the Delta to Tinsley Island and the Sacramento River.

One of the most celebrated episodes occurred during a Master Mariners race, probably around 1969 or 1970. Racing up the city front with about twelve aboard, the top of Yankee’s mainmast broke off at the gaff collar — an eight-foot, two-hundred-pound timber swinging overhead on its rigging. Bobby Ayers volunteered to go aloft. Without a bosun’s chair or safety tether, he shimmied up the shrouds, rigged a halyard, and with muscle from below, released the tension and cut the broken timber free. Within half an hour the spar was safely on deck, and so was he.

In 1972, Yankee served her fifth year as St. Francis flagship under Robert D. Ford. In 1976, she won the United States Bicentennial Regatta on San Francisco Bay, with Dick Ford and John McNeill among the crew — both of whom had raced a similar course the previous day and knew the tide was unusually favoring the channel between Angel Island and Alcatraz.

In 1981, Robert sold half his interest to his son Richard (Dick) Ford. Dick had married John McNeill’s sister, Liz McNeill, after the two were introduced at a party on Union Street — a meeting for which McNeill has claimed he cannot be blamed, as he was, in his words, “under the affluence of incohol” at the time. Dick and Liz had three daughters: Christy, Alexis (Lexi), and Samantha.

In September 1985, the family suffered a devastating loss when Liz McNeill Ford died of leukemia. The Leukemia Cup Regatta would later become one of Yankee’s most important causes. See Chapter IX for more on the Leukemia Cup fundraising.

In 1989, Dick Ford was elected Commodore of the St. Francis Yacht Club, following in the footsteps of his father, grandfather, and great-uncle. Yankee served as flagship for the sixth time. That year also brought the Loma Prieta earthquake — another seismic disruption in the long line of Yankee years — which opened a chasm in the parking lot in front of the club.