Veteran mariner brings sail down on 50 years non-stop racing andrea

The amateur has competed for 51 consecutive years in what's touted as the world's largest point-to-point international race, between Newport, California, and Ensenada, Mexico.

Now John Szalay, 79, a Hungarian immigrant to the U.S. and a retired engineer and executive, is calling it quits, having competed in his last Newport-to-Ensenada race in April.

'It's absolutely beautiful being on the water, it is so self-satisfying,' Szalay said after having completed what he says is his last race. 'You are living in God's country as far as I'm concerned, in southern California. For me, that was my relaxation.'



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Only once in 51 years of competing did Szalay not finish the 125-nautical-mile race. That's when his engine faltered before the race, and a storm brewed with 48-knot winds and 15-foot seas.

It was a reluctant but wise decision.

'It was the only time we quit,' he said, adding that his engine indeed died a half mile from his home harbor, in Newport Beach, California.

'His track record is a rare achievement, even for an amateur in a sail race that has attracted such pros as Dennis Conner and Steve Fossett,' said Dave Shockley, commodore of the race organizer Newport Ocean Sailing Association. Celebrities such as the late Humphrey Bogart and Buddy Ebsen have also raced the regatta.

Amateur racing for 50-plus years is a mantle few share. Theirs is a tale of passion and romance for the seas. These sailors earn a name that evokes an ancient order of sportsmanship: Corinthian.

'We do have a few 50-year people, but they are few and far between, and you'd have to try real hard to find someone as competitive and Corinthian a sailor as John,' Shockley said.

The Newport-to-Ensenada contest is also notable for how it features a panorama of the mountainous southern California and Baja coast and their offshore islands, ending in what's become the heart of Mexico's wine country. The Ensenada area produces 90% of Mexico's wines.

If there's a timeless standard for a true sailor, perhaps it lies in the non-professional skipper who finds a way onto the water even while raising a family and holding a full-time job.

Szalay immigrated to the U.S. at age 21 when he left his native Hungary during its 1956 Revolution. He arrived with his then girlfriend, Edith, now his wife since 1959.

Szalay had no money and didn't speak English, but through ambition and hard work, he became a mechanical and electrical engineer. By the age of 35, he became president of engineering firm with 2,500 employees.

'I was driven all my life,' said Szalay, who's been retired for 11 years after a career largely in management, including at aerospace firms.

'In a way, I'm a very, very lucky person. I'm an immigrant who came here with nothing and ended up doing very well,' he added.

He still speaks with a slight accent.

It was in his native Hungary where he first went boating at about age 14. A friend took him to his parents' cottage beside the largest lake in central Europe, Hungary's Lake Balaton.

They sailed. And that's where it began.

'I absolutely fell in love with it,' Szalay said.

When he later bought a sailboat in his newly adopted country of the U.S., he asked his first son, then aged four, what to name their sailboat.

The son, John Jr., chose a whimsical name that has been used ever since for the family boat: Pussycat.

'Are you sure?' the father asked the son.

'I want it named pussycat,' the son replied, according to the father.

'Fine,' the father said.

'So the boat name stayed,' Szalay added.

The boy became obsessed with the word apparently because a neighbor owned a cat he liked.

When the older son became a graphic designer and artist, he even painted a grinning Cheshire cat on the stern.

Since then, the name has been assigned to every boat the family owned and raced over five decades: a 26-foot-long Excalibur, a 30-foot-long San Juan, and their current 34-foot-long Peterson, all sloops.

The amateur sail racing community has had its fun with the name.

But when Szalay earned a reputation as a racer who often finished at the top of his class, sailors playfully used the boat name in another way -- 'Meeeeow!' became the sailors' cheer.

In all, Szalay finished first in class a total of 10 times in the Newport to Ensenada race, and he's finished either 2nd, 3rd or 4th in class in almost every one of the 50 races he completed, Szalay said.

Szalay remembers his early sail racing years, in the 1960s, when sailors didn't have GPS or cockpit display screens for navigation.

Navigation was done by dead reckoning with a radio direction finder and a chart.

'I don't know how close we were to positioning, but we were able to navigate,' Szalay said. 'I mean, people navigated before GPS. Columbus navigated.'

His best race wasn't one where he felt he showed his best helmsmanship or tactical skills.

It was about five years when, for the first time ever, both of his children joined him in the Newport-to-Ensenada race.

'For the first time in my life, both sons came with us, and we won the race (in class),' Szalay said. 'Of all the races I've done, that was the top.'

While Szalay doesn't directly mention it, what makes the brothers' participation more remarkable is how the younger son, Rene, now 47, uses a wheelchair because he has cerebral palsy.

As such, Rene is assigned jobs in the cockpit during races. In fact, he was part of the crew in this year's race.

With several other crew members beside him, Rene Szalay thanked his mates for accommodating his disability in the cockpit in this year's race.

'We all love each other. I mean, I am a pain in the ass to get on the boat. I really am,' he told them, pointing to the wheelchair in which he sat.

His father, however, disagreed. His son posed no problem, he added.

But Rene Szalay was also especially fond of the same race cited by his father.

'That was the best day of my life,' Rene Szalay recounted, with his father also beside him. 'I will never forget sitting on the transom with you and my brother and having a beer.

'For me to be there and to have experienced it, I could have died that day,' the younger son told his father.

Carol Kokol, a crew member who's raced aboard Szalay's boat for more than the past 25 years, said the team consists of very good friends who like to work hard.

'So John's attributes are these: Number one, he expects to win,' said Kokol, who's full-time job is a real estate agent in Costa Mesa, California. 'He leaves the dock expecting to win. He works on the boat almost daily.'

Then she adds something else about the restless captain.

'And every time we hit the finish line, he thinks we're in dead-ass last place—because we don't see any boats around us' that are in the same class, Kokol said.

Added crew member Rob Daugherty: 'It's a passion for me, too. He fills my passion for racing, too.'

Daugherty, a 63-year-old engineer from Irvine, California, has raced with Szalay for almost 28 years.

Joining them has been Daugherty's nephew, Blake Thornley, 42, though for a few years short of that mark.

So it's been a family experience by blood as well as in spirit.

In this year's race, his final, Szalay and crew finished second in their class.

John Szalay blames it on being dead in the water twice during the race with winds of 'zero speed.'

'That was to me frustrating. But that's sailboat racing,' Szalay said.

It's frustrating enough that he's having second thoughts on his retirement from racing, he jokes.

Such is the soul of a mariner.

Editor's postscript: Though he told NOSA media officials he was retiring, Szalay has since thought twice. 'I unretire,' he told CNN. He'll race at age 80, he says.



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