Michael “Bruce” Tait, who was a fixture for more than 40 years on Sag Harbor’s waterfront as a sailor, yacht broker, and longtime chairman of the Village Harbor Committee, died on July 29 at his home, just a stone’s throw away from the harbor he loved. Tait, who was 72, had quietly battled cancer for nearly three years, his family said.
Tait, who was born in Los Angeles, lived a peripatetic lifestyle as a young man, traveling to Grenada in the Caribbean, spending time in Europe, and crisscrossing the United States by car, as a hitchhiker or hopping on freight trains, his daughter Danielle Tait Barton said, eventually returning home to graduate from North Hollywood High School and later earn his captain’s license.
Tait moved to Sag Harbor in the late 1970s after hearing about the village’s charms from Brad Beyer and Ray Simek, who had met him when they both lived in California for a time in the early 1970s.
“We got friendly and told Bruce about this wonderful place called Sag Harbor that was surrounded by water with boats and beaches and all this history,” Beyer recalled.
Tait’s family said he eventually set off for Sag Harbor in an old Jeep he named “Mona,” a vehicle, Beyer recalled, “whose top speed was maybe 40 mph.”
Shortly after arriving in the village, Tait, who first worked delivering boats, teamed up with his future wife, Barbara, and Jerome Toy, another newcomer, to open the Sag Harbor Sail and Pedal Company in a former gas station that stood where the building at 2 Main Street housing K Pasa restaurant is today. They rented and sold windsurfing gear, bicycles and small boats, Toy said.
Toy said he had learned to windsurf, then a new sport, while visiting St. Maarten, and Tait was the only person he knew who knew how to sail. “I was looking for an adventure, and he was available,” Toy said.
The shop opened in 1978, and the owners hauled equipment to Windmill Beach every day to rent. Things went well until the village cracked down on them for using public property to display their wares. Toy said he was even arrested, but the charges were dropped after the village learned the property was actually owned by the Long Island Rail Road, whose trains once ran into the village.
“They didn’t know how to deal with us,” Toy said. “They didn’t like young people walking around Main Street in bathing suits.”
Toy said the partnership was a good one. “I learned a lot from Bruce,” he said. “He was a good businessman, and he was very fair.”
In 1983, Tait became partners with Josh Slocum in McMichael’s Yacht Brokerage on Long Wharf. That eventually morphed into Tait Yachts, which sells, charters and manages construction of new boats and has offices in Sag Harbor and in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
It wasn’t all business. There was a clubhouse in a back room of his office with a pool table and a television, where he could watch westerns on rainy afternoons, his daughter said.
While he built his yacht brokerage business, Tait also became an indefatigable booster of sailing in Sag Harbor. A series of informal Wednesday night races held in the 1980s eventually led to the formation of the Breakwater Yacht Club in 1988, with Tait serving as its first commodore.
“Bruce was nothing if not enthusiastic about the things he enjoyed doing, including sailing,” said Bud Rogers, a fellow sailor who later served as the club’s commodore. From the beginning, first as commodore and later as a director until he stepped down in 2023, Tait kept the club focused on its mission of being “the community’s sailing center,” Rogers said.
Tait’s overriding vision was “to get people in boats” Rogers continued. To that end, he was a leader and supporter in developing Breakwater’s youth sailing summer program and fall and spring sailing for high school students as well as establishing new programs for women sailors.
Tait also enjoyed sailing his own boat, Baby, in Wednesday night races and other, more formal regattas in the region.
“He was great fun to be on the water with when he was racing Baby,” Rogers said, adding that Tait loved to sail his boat into and out of the harbor without using a motor. “He never had an engine on the damned boat. And if it did have an engine, I don’t believe it ever ran.”
“Bruce was a founding father of Breakwater Yacht Club and served as our first commodore and a board member for many years,” said the current commodore, Nick Gazzolo. “His passion for sailing was infectious, and he had countless great stories both on and off the water.”
Gazzolo said the club got its name from the fact that before there was a formal club, sailors used the Sag Harbor breakwater as both the start and finish line for their races.
“His leadership and contributions to Breakwater and the maritime community cannot be overstated,” Gazzolo said. “He will be dearly missed and long remembered.”
Tait was also aware of the potential of Sag Harbor. He was an early supporter of efforts to preserve the waterfront from an environmental standpoint, while at the same time encouraging waterfront businesses. He served on the committee that helped draft the Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, a key planning document that allows for a partnership between New York State and the village to preserve the waterfront, and he was a longtime member of the Harbor Committee, serving for many years as its chairman.
“We lost a legendary Sag Harbor community member in Bruce,” said Steve Clarke, who served on the Harbor Committee with Tait and followed him as chairman. “The thing about him is he was consistent. He consistently made decisions that were in the best interest of Sag Harbor.”
Clarke said that Tait was direct with applicants. “He understood you aren’t going to be everybody’s hero in every case,” he said.
Clarke said that as the owner of a waterfront business, Tait had the vision to see what the village has become. “He knew what the future of Sag Harbor was going to be,” he said, “and what he championed was making sure to preserve what we have.”
Former Mayor Jim Larocca, who first met Tait in the 1980s as a client, said, “Pretty much from the time he came here and started his business on the beach, he interested himself in some of the larger questions about this very small village,” especially the need to convert the waterfront from an industrial base to one that would serve the modern village.
As an example, he said Tait was an early, if not the first, person to suggest that the village waterfront could be opened up for public use. “The first sketch I ever saw of an interconnected waterfront was shown to me by Bruce, and that has to be in the 1980s,” Larocca said.
Tait was born on December 7, 1951, in Los Angeles to Don Tait and the former Jean Parrish.
Besides his daughter and wife, he is survived by four brothers, Sean, Tim, David and Dion; a sister, Pam; his son-in-law, Jon Barton; and granddaughter Annabelle.
A memorial service is planned for October 6. The family has requested that memorial donations be made to Breakwater Yacht Club (breakwateryc.org).
