BoatU.S. - August/September 2011

has owned a 28-foot Rinker, with a single Mercruiser engine he kept at his home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore for 10 years, before donating it to St. Michaels Maritime Museum to auction last year. He also has a 36-foot Chris-Craft Corsair (which he still owns).

“We have a condo in Florida, so every
winter we’d truck the Corsair down to
Florida, and then bring it back up to the
Chesapeake in the summertime.” Last
fall the boat was already on the truck
on its way to Florida when Breaux and
his wife stopped by the Fort Lauderdale
International Boat Show and came away
with a 47-foot Sea Ray Sundancer. “So I
ended up with two boats in Florida for the
winter,” he says. By late March, the Chris-
Craft was on its way back north where it’ll
live out its days. He also keeps a 21-foot
ski boat and a jet ski in Maryland. Some of
his greatest pleasures, he says, come from
tinkering with his boats himself. Later this
year he’ll take a trip to Bimini with his wife
and a group of Sea Ray enthusiasts. In the
meantime, he’ll keep updating himself on
the latest boating gadgets and apps com-
ing on the market. His iPad is loaded with
multiple weather and navigation apps and
he’s downloaded the new BoatU.S. app
( www.BoatUS.com/app) to his phone. He’s
also got Zeus pod drives on his Sea Ray.
“You can make a dumb mariner look really
good with those,” he laughs. “I love all
aspects of the boat. Just getting out in the
open and being on the water separates you
from the day-to-day stresses that everyone
has. I’d rather worry about my boat than
worry about everything else I have to do.”

Dawn Riley — Big Dreams
Lead To Big Achievements

Now wannabe sailing rock stars, as well as those who want to improve their sailing game, can head down to Oakcliff Sailing Center in Oyster Bay, New York, and find out what it’s like to train for the America’s Cup. Dawn Riley, the executive director, means the school’s pedigree is as good as it gets. As CEO and captain of America True, Riley was the first woman to manage an America’s Cup sailing team, raced on four America’s Cup and two Whitbread (now Volvo Ocean Race) teams, is the former president of the Woman’s Sports Foundation, and serves on the board of US SAILING.

Riley’s sailing experience started as
a one-month-old. She might have started
sooner except her mother wouldn’t allow
her father to take her out before she was
baptized. When she was 12, her parents
took their three kids on a yearlong cruise
from Michigan to the Caribbean and back.
The day after she returned, Dawn started
racing and has barely stopped since. “From
the time I was 13, I did everything from
crew, to cook, to clean boats. I’ve never had
any other job.”
Thirteen seems to have been a sig-
nificant age. It was also when she saw
the America’s Cup for the first time in
Newport, Rhode Island, and announced to
her family that she’d be racing in that one
day, too. — A.D.

Dawn Riley shows her sailing skills in all kinds of
weather.