In this video, I leave Roberts Bay Marina in Venice, Florida, aboard my Bristol 32, Sailing Vessel Beauty, and set a course north toward Sarasota.
Single-handed sailing has a certain rhythm to it. Once Beauty is under sail and moving steadily through the Gulf of Mexico, the boat, the wind, and the sea become the focus of everything. There is no crew to relieve you and no one else to make the decisions. You learn to trust the boat, pay attention to the wind, and enjoy the quiet that comes with being alone at sea.
The passage takes me from Venice toward Sarasota, with Beauty sailing across the Gulf before making my way toward the waters of the Intracoastal Waterway to the Field Club.
After arriving, Beauty remains docked at the Field Club for several days. The change from sailing offshore to lying quietly at the dock gives me an opportunity to slow down and explore the beautiful surroundings. Sarasota has a remarkable connection between its waterfront, its boats, its gardens, and its architecture, and the Field Club is a particularly interesting example of that relationship.
The final part of the video takes a closer look at the architecture of the Field Club.
The building was originally the winter home of Stanley and Sara Field, members of the prominent Chicago Field family. They commissioned architect David Adler, one of America's noted designers of large country houses, to create their Sarasota winter residence. Construction began in 1925 and was completed in 1927.
Adler designed the house in an 18th-century Spanish villa style, an architectural language that fit naturally into Sarasota's warm climate and the Mediterranean influences that became so important to the city during the 1920s. But what makes the Field Club especially fascinating is the way Adler incorporated the water itself into the architecture. He created a lagoon and canal and positioned the main portion of the house over the water, blending the building, landscape, and bay into one composition.
The property remained the Fields' winter home for decades. In 1957, rather than allowing the estate to be subdivided and potentially losing the historic house, a group of Sarasota residents purchased the property and established the Field Club. The exterior of the historic residence has remained largely unchanged, and the property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
For a sailor, there is something particularly fitting about a place like this—a historic house whose architecture was designed around the water, now surrounded by boats and looking out across the waterway.
Beauty came here under sail and motor.
For a few days, she simply rested at the dock.
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