Bay people
Sara Aiken
Bringing Pickleball to Sailors By Angus Phillips
O
kay, today’s question for the first monthly Spinsheet black star mindbender award is a tricky one: What do ocean sailing and the emergence of Pickleball in the Chesapeake region have in common? If you said, “Green Turtle Cay,” you are a winner! For it was in GTC, the Bahamian community of 450 in the Abacos east of Florida, that Eastport resident Sara Aiken discovered the sport that is fast becoming the landlubberly pursuit of choice for aging Annapolis yachties. And it was she who helped to make it happen. Aiken is CEO and cofounder of Eastport Pickleball, manufacturers of stylish, high performing paddles she and her husband Ken build on the dining room table of their condo on Back Creek. It’s mind-boggling to consider that just a few years ago, neither had ever heard of pickleball, let alone played it, and now they are its fiercest local advocates. Fate works in funny ways. The Aikens, who moved to Annapolis from the Washington, DC, suburbs in 2007, when Ken retired from XM Satellite Radio, always hankered to go sailing offshore in their own boat. First they bought a Pearson 27 so Sara could teach Ken to sail, and then they got a 40-foot Island Packet for offshore work. But the first two times they tried to get away, Ken’s back went out, and they never got past Florida on the Intracoastal Waterway. Finally, on the third try in 2011, they crossed the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas on Tintean (it means “hearth” in Irish, Ken’s native tongue). They liked it so much that in 2012 they went back and spent the winter at Green Turtle, a threemile-long spit with clear, azure water,
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bright beaches, and one overgrown tennis court behind the Leeward Yacht Club, where a retired fire chief from Seattle, WA, set up a pickleball court for tourists and locals to use. “I had never heard of it or seen it before,” says Sara, who was quickly captivated by the game. She was not, however, captivated by her borrowed equipment, particularly the paddle, an artless, crude lump of plywood. She knew she could do better. “I thought there was a niche for a good-looking paddle that performed,” she says. When they got back to their condo at Severn House, she came up with her own, trademarked version, complete with a green turtle motif on the racket head. Eastport Pickleball paddles today are made of an ultralight, ultrastiff polypropylene core covered by fiberglass, and the grips are hand-wrapped and finished to perfection. They’d better be good. They cost $125 each! The Aikens thought Pickleball was a Bahamian sport, but when they got home, they discovered a small band of enthusiasts already engaged in the sport at Truxtun Park and the Pip Moyer Recreation Center in Annapolis. That’s where pickleball has flowered in the years since, as has Eastport Pickleball. Indeed, business has grown so quickly, Sara says, it has knocked her sailing time back. She and Ken have not had time to go south on Tintean the last two winters. Mostly they sail around the Bay in the summer on Saor (Gaelic for “free”), the Pearson 27 they still own. Both also are involved as founding members and volunteers for the National Sailing Hall of Fame, and Sara continues to run support boats for the Bull and Bear, the two rep-
licas of old-fashioned sandbaggers that NSHOF operates out of City Dock. Another casualty of Pickleball is her longtime commitment to Team DFL, the hapless sailboat racing squad she has organized for the last 10 years to participate in the annual Boatyard Bar & Grill Regatta for CRAB, which raises funds for Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating, an organization that takes disabled folks sailing. Sara started Team DFL (Dead Freaking Last) to make sure that no one who was actually trying to win would wind up last in the regatta. She and the team she assembled used Saor at first, then a series of similarly clunky borrowed vessels, to sail the course as slowly as possible and bring up the rear. Sometimes she succeeded, sometimes not, as occasional unscrupulous rivals beat her out of the dubious honor. However poorly they did, Sara’s team was always dressed to kill, wearing themed costumes that sparkled. One year it was grass skirts, the next outfits made from cast-off spinnakers, one year they dressed as channel markers, once they played fire fighters and first-responders, etc. It was all in fun, but the Pickleball business is so demanding, she managed a weak effort this year, and the catamaran she lined up never even made it over the starting line. You can’t do badly if you don’t even start, and Sara says Team DFL is done. She just doesn’t have the time to organize a losing effort any more. Bottom line, success is messing up Sara Aiken’s life. “I invested so much in this company, I can’t leave,” she moans. “Anybody want to buy me out?” ■ eastportpickleball.com