1976, Born to Run was on the radio, Marathon Man was on the big screen and the country was celebrating two centuries of independence. The sailing team at the Naval Academy had been moribund for decades but a new man at the top, Captain Alexander Graham Bell Grosvenor, had attracted enough talented men, money and boats to build a racing fleet unrivaled anywhere. He gave his midshipmen beautiful yachts and sent them out for a summer of sailing races and socializing in the Yacht Clubs from Annapolis to Halifax. Boys of the Bay is the story of boys afloat and ashore during that historic summer. On the water their life was a constant swirl of boats, women and beer. Ashore in the confines of the Academy life was much less urbane. Plebe training was the business at hand, hot was the weather and heavy was the discipline. But after 131 years of the Academy being exclusively male, women were admitted for the first time. The equation had changed forever at the Academy and this story is about some of the men, and women, who were there.
