The daffodils tossed into the waters around Blakely Rock Saturday were like the person they signified—sunny, optimistic, full of promise.

Sailors competing in the first race of the Center Sound Series threw the flowers into the water as they rounded the rock, the same way they do each year. The tradition is testament to the immutable and special place Kelly O’Neil Henson still holds in the local sailing community, six years after the beloved sailor and race photographer died at age 46 following a car accident.

Henson’s husband, Gerry, says the annual tradition is important to him and to the couple’s son, who’s now 15. “It’s always meant a lot to us, to Louie and I,” Henson says. “It’s a great way to start the season.”

As the racing season gets underway, Kelly O’Neil Henson will doubtlessly be remembered by many racers, in many ways. She was a fixture at regattas around the Northwest, where she became known for her trademark gesture of throwing Hershey’s Kisses to racers as their boats passed by from her 19-foot Avon, Smile 2, which was often festooned with daffodils.

“She was a hundred percent personality,” said Joel Thornton, manager of the Corinthian Yacht Club, which put on Saturday’s race. “I don’t know anybody that wasn’t a friend of hers. She treated everybody with ultimate respect, no matter who you were—good sailor, bad sailor, total jerk, a person with the highest morals. She treated everyone the same.”

Laura Urlin, who crewed on the Andrews 54 Artemis in Saturday’s race, used to babysit Henson’s son and would help her set up and sell her photos after races. Urlin credits Henson for getting her into sailing. When she was 13, Urlin says, Henson sponsored her membership in the Seattle Yacht Club and helped connect her with an SYC junior sailing program that got her crewing on a big boat.

“Kelly had taken pictures of all these big boats and knew all the crews,” said Urlin, now 28. “She was like, ‘Who do you want to sail with?’ That was when I really started sailing a lot.”

The gesture, Urlin says, was typical of Henson’s generosity. “She’d just totally go out of her way to do something special for someone. She always was buying greeting cards and sending fun pictures to people, just making little gestures to be thoughtful.

“She was friends with everyone. She really made a huge impact on the community.”

(Story continues after the slide show)

Kelly O’Neil grew up in the Everett area and began sailing El Toros at a young age. Her family had a place on Tulalip Bay and much of her childhood was spent on the water. She took up photography as a hobby in junior high and after graduating from Everett High School in 1975, earned a degree in professional photography from Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif. Combining her two passions, sailing and photography, Henson traveled around the world, shooting regattas in places including New Zealand, Florida and the Caribbean.

In 1984, Gerry Henson met Kelly during a Center Sound Series race. At the time, Henson was planning to do the annual Cabo Race and Kelly gave him some input about where to go in the Mexican town. He ran into her the following year at Whidbey Island Race Week and they began dating. They were married in 1990 and Louie, their only child, was born four years later.

The couple raced often together on their S2 9.1, Porky’s Diner, competing in the Center Sound Series and various jack and jill races. Summers were spent cruising around the Northwest. When they weren’t racing or cruising, Kelly was shooting regattas. Her love of the sport, Gerry says, was boundless.

“She was the Northwest ambassador of sailing,” he says. “People would call her and say, ‘Kelly, are you going to come and take pictures of our regatta?’ and she’d always do it. She was always promoting the sport. She tried to keep the sport alive and growing.”

But Henson’s own life was cut tragically short on Feb. 22, 2004. She’d been working in the garden of her Auburn home that day before driving to a nearby market to pick up some food for dinner. As she headed down a residential street, a Ford Focus doing 50 miles an hour, with a drunk driver at the wheel, sped through a stop sign and rammed into a jacked-up Ford F250 pick-up. The car hit just in front of the truck’s rear wheels, launching the truck into the air before it flipped over, landing on Henson’s Chevy Suburban. She was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center and lapsed into a coma.

As word of the accident got out, friends and sailors who’d met Henson at regattas posted hundreds of messages on Sailing Anarchy’s online forum, sending tributes, prayers and support. One thread about Kelly got more than 62,000 hits.

Henson never awoke from her coma, passing away on March 3, 2004. The driver who caused the accident, then fled the scene, was later arrested, convicted of vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison. The judge in the case received more than 500 letters from Henson’s family and friends, asking for an exceptional sentence, which was granted.

“He also said that in all his years on the bench he never had seen such an outpouring of love and grief,” Gerry says.

After Henson’s death, Harborview’s waiting room in its intensive care unit on the ninth floor was redecorated and named in her honor. Seattle Yacht Club and Bellingham Yacht Club named perpetual trophies after her. First Place School, a school for homeless children based in Seattle, renamed its volunteer of the year award in honor of Henson, for all the hours she contributed to the organization. 
 
The Seattle Yacht Club hosted a packed celebration of Henson’s life two days after she died, and her dinghy was set up at Blakely Rock for the annual race a few days later. As sailors rounded the rock, which had been scattered with daffodils the night before, they threw daffodils into Henson’s boat.

“That first year, the rock was covered,” Gerry recalls. “It was a carpet of yellow.”

This year’s race drew 79 boats competing in 12 classes. Under sunny skies and better than expected winds, racers set out from Shilshole Bay, rounding the rock before heading north to the finish line.

The submerged sandbar on the west side of the rock proved hazardous for the Melges 30 Stomp Dancer, which ran aground. The north wind trapped the boat on the bar and it took the assistance of a small powerboat pulling a halyard and helping to heel the boat nearly on its side to finally get it across the sandbar and free. The mishap cost Stomp Dancer precious time, and the boat placed 75th in the race.

First place overall was won by Derek Campbell and crew aboard the Melges 32 Banshee. Complete race results are available on CYC’s website.

Gerry Henson had hoped to be among Saturday’s racers, but his plans were scuttled by his son’s busy sports schedule. But Henson did race in another regatta that held special meaning for him. The year after Kelly died, he took his Express 37 Re-Questdown to San Francisco and raced in the Rolex Big Boat Series, scattering some of Kelly’s ashes in Belvedere Bay.

“It was always Kelly’s dream to take the boat down there and race it in the Big Boat Series,” Gerry says, “so I did that.”

If Kelly knew about the annual daffodil tradition, Gerry says, she would be a little embarrassed by the attention. But if it was done for someone else while Kelly was alive, well, she’d be right there, camera in hand.

“She’s think it was pretty cool, and she’d be out there snapping as many photographs as she could, trying to capture the essence of it.”