Schooner Adix

Residents of Greenport, N.Y., a small maritime village on the northeast end of Long Island, have been watching all sorts of sailing ships come and go over the past couple hundred years.

- DAVID BERSON

There must be some sort of genetic memory of the commonplace in the locals because the presence of sailing craft, barques, yawls and sloops tying up at the village marina hardly elicits a buzz. On occasion though, when some vessel of rare beauty sails down the bay, the quotidian memory is erased and all eyes turn seaward. Adix is one of these rare sailing vessels: a three-masted schooner of such grace and elegance that even the most jaded are charmed.

Designed by South African Arthur Holgate and built of steel in Spain at the Astilleros de Mallorca shipyard in 1984, Adix was inspired by William Gardner’s three-masted schooner Atlantic, which in 1905 established the trans-Atlantic sailing record from Sandy Hook, N.J., to the Lizard Light. Atlantic’s time was 12 days, four hours, one minute and 19 seconds, with a fastest 24-hour run of 341 nautical miles at a speed of 14 knots. That record held until 1998.