SongwritingSongwriting Joel’s latest design is VVendetta,endetta, a 57-foot modern version of the commuter boats that andand saltsalt waterwater plied Long Island Sound inin the 1920s and ’30s. BILLY JOEL HAS TURNED HIS ATTENTION FROM THE PIANO TO THE WATER THESE DAYS, AS THE LONG ISLANDER FOCUSES ON BOATS AND DESIGN Alexa is Joel’s 36-foot swordfishing/lobster boat hybrid. GORDON GRANT PHOTOS BY BILL BLEYER I don’t put a Billy Joel never attended college, but during than a decade, and it’s moved even higher on the list carried Gold Coast magnates from their North Shore house, why not have the boat to go with it?” he says. coming from Connecticut,” a statement he followed in recent years as he’s phased out touring and record- estates on Long Island to Manhattan before World “I’m only about 28 miles from [New York City] as the with his impression of a high-performance power- lot into the his long musical career he’s spent plenty of ing. So he didn’t seem at all out of place as he faced a War II. The new commuter was scheduled to be crow flies, but it can take close to two hours if boat engine. And these muscle boats, he added, look time on campuses — initially performing in lecture hall full of students and faculty. With his back- launched July 24. there’s bad traffic.” like “Clorox” bottles. up band of yacht designer, boatbuilder and full-time “I always thought that it was a great tradition during With his new boat, to be christened Vendetta, Joel While he didn’t want his new boat to be all engine, concert, and more recently teaching master’s captain, he talked about his connection to the sea, his the ’20s and ’30s that these guys would go into Wall expects he’ll be able to get to Manhattan within a that didn’t mean he wanted it to be plush, either. “I boat in terms classes for music students. boating history, his current fleet, and his foray into Street via Long Island Sound and the East River,” lec- half-hour at cruising speed. “I go into the city more don’t put a lot into the boat in terms of creature com- B commercial yacht construction. tured Joel. “They used to race each other. And they and more these days because I live closer to the city,” forts and brightwork and trim — the things you “In 1996, Billy found a way to turn his lifelong pas- built beautiful boats — Consolidated, Purdy — and he says. “My daughter goes to school in the city, and would normally expect to be on a 57-foot yacht,” Joel “ of creature But when the 56-year-old singer-songwriter who’s sion for boats into a money-making venture; at least they used aircraft engines to drive these things. I’ve gotten to the point in my life when I want to do says. “I don’t need deep-pile carpeting; I don’t need sold more than 100 million albums appeared late last he hoped it would be a money-making venture,” said “Anybody who’s ever been on the parkway or the more things in the city.” He says he is going to have TV sets. I want a boat.” year at Webb Institute in Glen Cove on New York’s college president Ron Kiss in introducing him. expressway knows it’s just awful. When I moved an apartment in the Big Apple, and his wife has her Joel’s previous boats have been designed for perfor- Long Island, it had nothing to do with performing or Joel then took center stage. His presentation — of- back to the North Shore Gold Coast area, I said ‘Now interests there, too. mance and day cruising. “They’re not intended to comforts. … composition, at least in the musical sense. Joel and fered with self-deprecating humor and his own vocal- it makes sense for me to have a real commuter.’ ” While speed is important in the new boat, so is a cruise around the world on,” says Doug Zurn of Mar- his entourage came to the naval architecture college ized sound effects of high-performance boats and The Vanderbilts, J.P. Morgan, the Whitneys and sense of style and tradition, Joel told the Webb audi- blehead, Mass, who designed both Vendetta and to talk about a different type of creation: designing other nautical fixtures — focused on his latest mar- Pratts all owned commuters, says the Piano Man, ence. “We know that there are Fountains, there are Joel’s Shelter Island Runabout. “They don’t carry a lot and building boats. itime venture and preoccupation: construction of a whom Soundings caught up with at his waterfront Formulas, there are Cigarettes, Scarabs and super- of fuel, and we built them fairly light. We keep them I don’t need That’s been one of Joel’s biggest passions for more 57-foot modern version of the commuter yachts that mansion on Centre Island. “I figured I had this big boats that go 70-plus,” he says. “You can hear them bright and airy down below. So we’re not carrying as much weight around and the boats perform better.” Vendetta, like the two previous boats Joel has had built for himself, started out with his rough sketches deep-pile — “Really like a little kid’s drawing,” he says too mod- estly — that he made on the drafting table in his home. Joel says he took mechanical drawing in high school, carpeting; “but that was just so I didn’t have to take math classes. I probably get more into the design and building as- pect of the boat than I do in the use of the boat.” That came across clearly to his Webb audience. I don’t need “It’s a tremendous experience to see the practical application between client and designer and builder all in one session,” college president Kiss said after the presentation. That was especially true for the 15 TV sets. to 20 percent of the student body — currently 76 — who go into small-boat design. “This is fantastic. He’s bringing back a forgotten era of beautiful boats that pretty much predominat- I want a boat. ed in this area,” says Ryan Eisenhower, a junior from Schenectady, N.Y., who was among that 15 to Doug Zurn designed Vendetta, which has a rounded torpedo stern and air tunnels built intointo thethe bottombottom forfor herher surface-piercingsurface-piercing” props.props. Joel has been drawn to boats for as long as he can remember. 29 Gold records and sportfishermen hull, deck and hardtop to Shelter Island. Although he grew up landlocked in Hicksville on New mess up with somebody else’s boat.” California, where he began playing in a piano bar under Joel was in the market for the commuter because York’s Long Island, Billy Joel has been drawn to the sea In 1971, when he was living in Hampton Bays and his the name Bill Martin to escape an onerous recording he had sold his prototype Shelter Island Runabout to and boats for as long as he can remember. first solo album, “Cold Spring Harbor,” had just been re- contract. That experience resulted in his breakout a buyer who refused to wait for another boat to be First, he used to look at boats on family excursions to leased, he joined the ranks of boat owners. “My first album, “Piano Man,” in 1973. built. “He pointed at my boat and said, ‘Whose is the North Shore. As he got older he took a bolder, more boat was a rowboat,” he says. “I bought it in Hampton When he returned to Long Island he rented a place on that?’ ” Joel recalls. “I said ‘Well, that’s mine.’ And he hands-on approach. “I used to ‘borrow’ boats,” he con- Bays. It was an 18-foot wood lapstrake whaling dory. It Oyster Bay and bought a 17-foot Boston Whaler. By the goes, ‘Are you in the boat business or not?’ … And I fided to the Webb Institute audience he addressed last was a heart attack rowing this thing, so I got a little early 1980s, his career soaring and with a house on the sold the boat.” fall in a lecture on designing and building boats. “I money and bought myself a kicker, a 10-hp Evinrude.” waterfront in Lloyd Harbor that he shared with then-wife would just unclip them from the moorings, motor them Then he could fish, clam, and explore the bays and har- Christie Brinkley, he owned a 20-foot Shamrock skiff. A $2M one-off around, bring them back and clean them up. It’s a good bors of Long Island’s South Fork. As more gold records lined the walls in Lloyd Harbor Even without Awlgrip on the hull and with the way to learn how to be a good boater because you don’t Joel sold the dory after one summer and moved to and later in Amagansett, Joel’s boats got bigger. There hardtop, seats and other final details missing, was a 33-foot cruiser named Sea Miner he used to fish Vendetta was an impressive vessel that looked like offshore and a custom-built 38-foot sportfishing boat it was moving fast even while at rest. The 21-ton named Sea Major. He traded up to a 46-foot Jarvis New- vessel has a plumb bow with a good amount of man sportfisherman with a tower and flybridge that he flare, and a rounded torpedo stern.