Dayton Carr, 78

New York City

The sailing community lost a great friend, sailor and champion as Dayton Thomas Carr passed peacefully at his New York City home on April 7, 2020. He was 78 years old.

Dayton established the Venture Capital Fund of America Group (VCFA Group) in 1982, and is credited as being the founder of the secondary private equity industry.

Dayton was a storyteller who often enjoyed re-telling the origins of his firm, the benefits of secondaries, and the many adventures he had through his life-long love of sailing.

Dayton began sailing as a child in the San Francisco Bay area. His first boat was an El Toro dinghy that he raced in the Small Boat Racing Association in Northern California. He eventually moved up to a Blue Jay, and went on to race aboard a Rhodes 33 and a schooner on San Francisco Bay.

At 15, he won the Pacific Coast Lightning Championship in Victoria, B.C., and placed 2nd in the West Coast Sears Cup Eliminations.

While at Brown University, Dayton became captain of the sailing team, commodore of the Brown University Yacht Club, and was active in intercollegiate racing for several years. After receiving his MBA from Harvard Business School, he moved to New York City and bought an International One Design (the first in a long line of Gunga Din’s), which he kept at Larchmont Yacht Club.

With the IOD class, he won the fleet championship, the YRA of Long Island Sound Championship, and the King Edward VII Gold Cup for match racing in Bermuda in 1971 with his friend and crew Corny Shields, Sr.

In the same year, Dayton purchased the prototype Chance 30-30, which he named Ragtime and raced and cruised on Long Island Sound until about 1976. His next boat was the Tartan 10 Mandalay.

Not content to race just his own boats, Dayton joined with a friend who had purchased one of the first New York 36s, Drive, and won the first New York 36 National Championship and many other races over the next several years.

Throughout the 1980s, Dayton chartered a number of boats with which he had great success throughout New England and the Caribbean.

In May of 1993, Dayton purchased a Sweden Yachts 41, his final Gunga Din. He raced and cruised extensively up through this last year, racking up a host of high finishes in events hosted by the New York Yacht Club.

While much of his sailing activity was related to racing, he enjoyed cruising under sail and power, the latter inspired by the twin-screw powerboat his family owned during his childhood in San Francisco. With his friends, Dayton cruised both Eastern and Western seaboards, the Great Lakes, Caribbean, Canada, and much of Europe.

But he declared his favorite sailing in recent years was in late fall aboard his meticulously kept yellow sloop Gunga Din on the waters of Narragansett Bay. He was known to recite the poem that inspired his boats’ name, raising his voice at the end to exclaim, “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!”