4 yacht owners let us tour their Harbour Town boats during RBC Heritage. Take a look
The most comfortable spot to watch top golfers play in Hilton Head Island’s RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing isn’t anywhere on the golf links.
It’s actually about a PGA Tour player’s drive away — in a yacht in the Harbour Town marina.
During the second round of play in the tournament Friday, four yacht owners in the marina graciously allowed an Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette newspaper reporter to tour their vessels.
Here’s a look inside some of the yachts in town for the Heritage:
The Boys’ Inheritance
A man named Rocky Sease (Yes, he said, that’s the real name on his birth certificate) occupies Slip 18 in the Harbour Town Yacht Basin with his yacht.
“Apparently it was my dad’s idea of a joke,” Sease said of his nautical name.
On Friday morning, Sease wore a hat and a white T-shirt. He sported a salt-and-pepper beard with an easy and amused demeanor, while giving a tour of his multi-floored yacht.
Sease, 66, grew up as the son of a paratrooper on a peach farm near Columbia and attended Clemson before running a company that internationally administered training for electric utilities.
His yacht’s name is the Boys’ Inheritance, a reference to his own children and what they may someday inherit.
Sease and his wife, Melissa, live in Townsend, Georgia, where the Boys’ Inheritance is typically docked. The 52-foot Carver Voyager has three guest bedrooms, two bathrooms, a salon with leather seats, an upper bridge area and a galley.
Though they’ve made their way to Harbour Town every year since 2007 for the Heritage tournament, they’ve been spending more time on the yacht than on the course.
“’I know where we don’t have to stand in line for a drink, and we don’t have to stand in line for the restroom and we don’t have to dodge a bunch of people,’” Melissa Sease said her husband told her last year when out on the links of Heritage.
“’We’ll just go back to the boat and entertain,’” he suggested.
The Mystic
Greg Hall, a developer who builds homes in Savannah, sat comfortably with his legs crossed in a wood-paneled 42-foot yacht.
In a soft-spoken voice, he explained how he’s been coming to Heritage since the 1970s as a child.
Now he gets to watch the tournament from the Harbour Town marina while relaxing on a Grand Banks Europa yacht. The yacht, made in Singapore, is more for cruising than for speed. It has wide windows on all sides of the main room. Wood paneling, a box of Girl Scout cookies, and photos of his children decorate the room.
Up a short — and potentially treacherous while intoxicated — wooden ladder brings one to the upper deck of the Mystic.
The upper deck’s cushioned lounge chair is “prime real estate” his daughters race to secure first for sun bathing, he said.
Hall said the upper deck is where he loves to spend his time on the yacht, looking out over the marina.
“It’s the perfect boat for where we live,” Hall said.
Ramble On
Jason Presley, 48, grew up in Sea Pines and has been to 34 of the last 35 Heritage tournaments, he said with a hint of pride.
Presley now lives in Charleston and works in property management for vacation rentals.
His 43-foot yacht is named “Ramble On,” after the song by the English rock group Led Zeppelin.
With cream-colored leather seats, the yacht has two guest rooms and two bathrooms with showers. Presley said there’s no place to stay for the Heritage like Harbour Town marina.
“It’s perfect to be in the marina because you got 18 right there, you got (the) clubhouse there,” said Presley. “It’s just a great location.”
Brain Waves
Brain Waves. The boat was aptly named by its owner, a neurosurgeon in Savannah.
“He’s done plenty of brain surgeries over the years,” Jamie Lindley, 32, of Savannah, said of his father and the yacht’s name.
Brain Waves is a whopping 73 feet. The interior looks a little bit like a spaceship. It has four bedrooms: a master, a guest, a twin and a crew quarters. For its large size, Lindley said he’s seen the yacht go as fast as 60 mph.
White-leather seats, a full bar and kitchen, wood paneling and TVs all fill the inside of the cavernous yacht.
The afternoon is when the Lindleys leave Brain Waves to go to the Harbour Town Golf Links for the tournament.
Lindley said their friends from Savannah dock their boats next to each other during Heritage. In the evenings, they visit each other’s boats to hang out.
As became apparent after talking with the four yacht owners, the golf is almost secondary to spending time in Harbour Town marina.
“(We) just go wherever the night takes us,” Lindley said. “No set plans.”
This story was originally published April 16, 2022 at 10:28 AM.
