“The only cause my husband Humphrey Bogart ever gave me to be jealous was not of a woman but a boat – a racing yacht called Santana,” said the actress Lauren Bacall in her memoirs. Bogie was a respected helmsman – he won the San Clemente Island Race three years in a row on his beloved Santana, a 16.7 metre schooner.
Sailing was a passion for Bogart but not for Bacall. “I didn’t want to sail, I wanted children,” she said.
Humphrey Bogart and Santana: below decks
Santana was named after Santa Ana, the hot winds that often cause havoc in Southern California in the autumn and winter. Bogart was passionate about her. “An actor needs something to stabilise his personality, something to nail down what he really is, not what he is pretending to be,” he said.
The images of the restoration
Not that it was always plain sailing onboard. His fellow sailors were recruited from the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, so included the likes of Frank Sinatra, David Niven, Richard Burton, and Ingrid Bergman. Bogart preferred an all-male crew – for convenience’s sake: “The trouble with dames on board is that you can’t pee over the side.” At his funeral in 1957, a model of Santana stood on display in the pulpit.
The 1935 Sparkman & Stephen’s designed fifty-five foot Santana was launched in 2016 after a two-year restoration at Loughborough Marine Interests, Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
