After a week of detailed yacht polishing, cleaning, repairing, and organizing, a group of crewmembers face-off at center court to do the opposite. Under night lights on a concrete street hockey court in South Florida, it is time to dress down, get sweaty and dirty, and play hard. Several yacht crew join this weekly pick-up game in a recreational group that was started by Kevin Quirk in 2013. Quirk is co-publisher of Triton and a partner at US Marina Group. “But my title is goalie,” he said with a laugh as he took off his face mask and wiped away sweat on a Wednesday night in February, just north of downtown Fort Lauderdale at the city’s Holiday Park. On the field this week are a lot of friends — both fresh and former. Several regular yacht crew are out of the country on charter or owner trips, but First Mate Kim van Jaarsveld and Second Stew Kylee McLoughlin are in town. Van Jaarsveld works on M/Y Kashmir, a 133-foot Splendor, and McLoughlin is on M/Y Dona Lola, a 130-foot Westport. They met about 10 years ago during school field hockey games in their home country of South Africa. “We were not friends, we were rivals,” McLoughlin said. “Now we’re teammates.” They are usually the only women on the court and are competent competitors even when the game gets physical. “It is intimidating. We’re playing grown men here, some are double our weight,” Van Jaarsveld said. “Kim and I, we’re good, we can play, and sometimes they’re shocked,” McLoughlin said. “It does surprise them,” Van Jaarsveld added. The two explain how the sport is like ice hockey but without the ice, with no padding, and a ball instead of a puck. It’s perfect for exercise, flexibility, and to work out stress from life on board. “It’s my time, it’s what I really enjoy,” Van Jaarsveld said. “It’s competitive and good for cardio. Lots of yachties are into pickleball, but a lot don’t know about this. I know Kylee’s and my love for the sport, and I bring my friends in.” Each armed with an ice hockey-type stick, they wear white shirts hoping to be on the same team this week. Teams are differentiated with black or white shirts. There is some debate tonight as a couple of the guys have on gray shirts and a shirtless player laughs, “What color am I?” The players are divided fairly randomly and change each time, sometimes even mid-game — if someone steps out or the required number of players are not on the court. What makes a good player? “They’re quick, they don’t look at the ball to make sure they hit it, they can go around everyone, and they have speed,” Quirk said. “This is a very quick game with no time-outs; this is non-stop.” At 63, he loves playing with the younger players. “I can still torch them,” he said and added that he will play 25 more years until he is 88. There was no official scorekeeper for years, but now there is an electronic scoreboard that somehow gets updated by whoever is closest when the ball gets past a goalie. Mano-a-mano and looking a bit chaotic to the uninitiated, three 30-minute games go by quickly with short breaks in between. Aside from the fancy scoreboard, this is the opposite of the pristine, high-tech, and stressful world of yachting. Parker Simon, first officer on M/Y Calypso, a 126-foot Feadship, missed this week’s game because he was at work on the yacht in the Bahamas. He called to talk about his love of the game and his “fear of missing out.” “I got FOMO when I saw videos from the bench of goals and stuff,” Simon said. “I wish I was there.” He knew about the game because he played street hockey as a kid in cul-de-sacs in Philadelphia. As he grew up, his life veered toward working on the water: teaching sailing, a stint in the U.S. Coast Guard, as a crewmember on a Maine lobster boat, and the last eight years in yachting. His interests merged one evening after meeting Quirk when the yacht was at the 17th Street Yacht Basin at the Hilton in Fort Lauderdale. “I was apprehensive at first,” Simon said about playing. “What level was everyone? Were they ice hockey players?” He was told there were players of every skill, which dispelled his preconceived stresses about it. “I instantly fell in love with the game. It’s great to blow off steam, and I met a good group that I never would have met before,” Simon said. He now goes to every Wednesday possible and often introduces new crew, even making the hour-long drive from West Palm Beach when the yacht is at Safe Harbor Rybovich Marina. Yacht crew work and street hockey intersect, Simon said. Dynamic, fast-paced, and full of last-minute decisions, both crewmembers and hockey players have to adapt to what’s around, deal with people from all walks of life, remain flexible, and go about the task at hand. In a moment, he said, we all have to come together for a common goal, read situations, and figure out how to use that to win or have a good competitive game, or a successful yacht trip. “We work together and focus on people’s strengths and weaknesses on the hockey court,” Simon said. “We shift our team’s style to make people feel welcome and to balance it out. We make it fun and inclusive for everyone. Everyone has to help out, at any time, everyone may be asked to rise to a role.” “Like on board, if I know a deckhand is not as coordinated, I can jump on the tender and let him handle the lines when the boss is on,” Simon said. In both yachting and hockey, he said, “We don’t set people up to fail.” Fort Lauderdale Yachty Hockey