Eight Bells: Mary von Conta

Mary von Conta

Mary von Conta, who made sailing better through her involvement, passed away August 7, 2024 at age 90 in Southport, CT. With her passing sailing lost someone special.

Spotlighting the need for better instructor training, she developed and implemented a program to bolster ethics, integrity, and culture in junior sailing. She identified the importance of instructors receiving proper training in powerboat handling, and was relentless in her pursuit of making sailing safer for our young sailors (without taking away the fun).

Mary grew up sailing at Pequot Yacht Club in Southport, CT. A teacher by profession, in the early 1980s she served as Chair of Pequot’s junior sailing committee. Her background as an educator drove her to identify the value of instructor training, first at Pequot, then in collaboration with others on Long Island Sound, and ultimately, nationally.

At the same time, recognizing that there was a growing “ethics, integrity, and culture” problem in junior sailing, Mary led an effort to develop and implement an ethics program on Long Island Sound, which was also adopted nationally through US Sailing. For this she was awarded US Sailing’s Virginia Long Sail Training Service Award in 1999.

Mary was Board Chair for the Junior Sailing Association of Long Island Sound (JSA) in 1999 and 2000, devoting much of her efforts strengthening a culture of ethics and integrity for our junior sailors.

In 2013, Mary embarked on a mission to address a shortfall in the training of instructor powerboat handling. Her efforts resulted in the creation of the US Powerboating Safe Powerboat Handing Course. She was again awarded with US Sailing’s Virginia Long award in 2020, and is the only individual to receive this award twice.

From the Citation for the 2020 award:
“The all-around voice of reason on Long Island Sound for over five decades. She has worked tirelessly to promote professionalism among sailing instructors and has recruited some of the best Instructor Trainers from around the country to teach US Sailing courses in her area. She has also pushed hard to have more powerboat training on the Sound, helping to establish a requirement that all instructors must have taken a US Powerboating Safe Powerboat Handling course if they wished to teach. Not satisfied, she pushed host clubs to run higher level US Sailing training courses. Through her efforts, Long Island Sound now supports several Level 2, Level 3, Reach, and Adaptive courses each year.”

In 2019, the JSA created the Mary von Conta Award, to be presented to a JSA member program that has made an exemplary contribution toward improving the quality and safety in the training or instruction of sailors.

If one were to consider that Mary’s focus on safety was not relentless, consider the following that in 2005, the organizers of Pequot Yacht Club’s Blue Jay Invitational regatta thought it might be clever to design a regatta t-shirt depicting a Blue Jay (the boat) sailed by blue jays (the bird). When the draft design was shown to Mary, she looked at it carefully and smiled. Then she frowned and said, “Those birds are sailors, and they need to be wearing PFDs!” The design was changed to put PFDs on the blue jays.

In spite of all these efforts, Mary found time to raise a family, enjoy big boat sailing, and even sail across the Atlantic. Mary was a sailing “force of nature,” dedicating her life to making junior sailing better, safer and more fun. She will be missed and greatly appreciated.

Mary is survived by her daughter Martha von Conta Dunn and her beloved granddaughters, Natalie Mary Dunn and Elise von Conta Dunn. She is also survived by many nieces, nephews, cousins, and countless friends. In addition to her parents, she was predeceased by her siblings, Janet Scranton, David Hetzel, and Barbara Angstadt.

A Memorial Service will be held on August 23, 2024 at 2pm at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Southport. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Pequot Library, 720 Pequot Ave., Southport, CT 06890.

Additional information: https://www.spearmillerfuneralhome.com/obituaries/mary-von-conta