Dick Cooper - May 2011

 

Sailboat Racing for Fun & Charity
New Events Build on Area Traditions
by
Dick Cooper

The planners of the inaugural Elf Classic Yacht Race and the first American Red Cross One Design Cup couldn’t find two more disparate sailing ideas.
The Elf Classic is patterned after leisurely weekend point-to-point races by gentlemen yachters of the late 1800s. The racers will row to their boats anchored off the Eastport Yacht Club in Annapolis and set sail for St. Michaels. Once in the Eastern Shore harbor, they must anchor, row to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum and sign in at the Tolchester Bandstand in the heart of the Museum campus.
By contrast, the American Red Cross One Design Cup is a two-day flurry of intense racing on small boats manned by one or two sailors who jockey for the finish line in tight formations, often winning by split seconds, only to start over and do it again.
The one thing that the two races have in common is that their proceeds will go to help local institutions. The Elf Classic on May 21 is raising money and increasing membership for CBMM and the Classic Yacht Restoration Guild, and the One Design Cup on August 6 and 7 benefits the American Red Cross of the Delmarva Peninsula.
Elf is the restored 1888 gaff-rigged, topsail cutter berthed at CBMM and owned by the Restoration Guild. Her captain, Rick Carrion, said he got the idea for the race from a 1890s Forest and Stream magazine article. Boston yachtsmen would slip out of work at noon on Friday and take the train to Marblehead.
“The race started when the train doors opened,” Carrion says. “They would row to their boats, tip their hats in salute and the race would be off.”
He says he hopes to have several classic yachts involved in the race, including the schooner Martha White from Chestertown and the Bull and Bear from the National Sailing Hall of Fame. Owners of other classic boats have also expressed interest. He says the race will be less formal than the win-or-die-trying competitions that are typical of Annapolis-based events. There will be no handicaps, and if the weather doesn’t cooperate, “we will take note of our positions, turn on the engines and motor to St. Michaels. This is intended to be fun.”
The Red Cross One Design Cup got its start last fall when Frank DeBord, the incoming commodore of the Miles River Yacht Club, asked the club’s activities committees to look for a way to reach out to the community.
“Some of our members are active with the Red Cross,” says Marshall Patterson, chairman of the club’s Sail Committee. The Red Cross had never been involved in a sailing event and agreed to work with the club.
Sail Committee member John Gargalli, who is working with the Red Cross to organize the regatta, says they hope to draw 125 boats in seven to eight classes for the two-day event that will be highlighted by a fund-raising dinner August 6.
“We are thrilled to be working with the Miles River Yacht Club,” says Betsy Tuttle, director of development for the Delmarva Red Cross and member of MRYC.
Both races carry on the long history of competitive sailing on the Eastern Shore.
Pete Lesher, chief curator at CBMM, says that the earliest recorded local sailboat race was recounted in an 1859 newspaper account.
“It was a log canoe race,” Lesher says. “It shows they were racing sailboats here on the eve of the Civil War.”
While the interest in sail races has waxed and waned over time, taking breaks during World Wars and economic turndowns, local enthusiasts say it remains a strong part of local life.
The log canoes, with their sheer beauty and grace, have long been the icon of the Eastern Shore’s sailing heritage. In their original form, they were the workboats of the shallow bay waters. Watermen crabbed or oystered from them during the workweek. But come the weekend, they became fast-sailing sport boats as their owners battled for the right to brag about having the quickest craft in the fleet. Lesher says by the late 1880s, log canoes were designed and built for racing.
This season, the log canoes will race on eight weekends, four on the Miles River, two on the Tred Avon and one each in Rock Hall and Chestertown. The first races will be the Miles River Yacht Club 4th of July Series on June 25 and 26. The best way to watch the races is from a small boat on the water, but a good spot to watch the Miles River races is Seymour Avenue Park off Riverview Terrace. The Tred Avon races can be viewed from the Strand.
By the 1920s, one-design racing had taken hold, with Stars one of the more popular boats. Lesher’s great-uncle, C. Lownes Johnson of Easton, was a Star racer and builder. He designed the Comet, a class still actively raced.
Over the years, the Tred Avon Yacht Club in Oxford and the Miles River Yacht Club in St. Michaels have been the primary sponsors of regattas in the area. They each sponsor major handicapped races from Annapolis to their homeports each year.
After World War II, as the pleasure boating industry evolved, sailors found that they did not have to be a Newport, R.I., railroad baron or member of the landed gentry to afford a boat. As the number of recreational sailors increased, so did the human desire to compete. Racing rules were drawn up, and designers and builders worked long and hard to outsmart them. The old Cruising Club of America rules measured sailboats on their waterline. Hence the gracious lines of boats designed to that rule with their short waterline and sweeping bow and stern overhangs.
But not all area yachtsmen are members of yacht clubs, and three area organizations were formed to handle their needs.
The Herring Island Sailing Fleet was founded in 1976 by cruiser/racers from the St. Michaels, Claiborne and Easton areas to run weekly handicapped races on the Miles River and Eastern Bay. The fleet has about 50 members and runs about 20 races during the year.
The Wednesday Night Races in St. Michaels have been run for about 25 years with a dozen Stars and two classes of handicapped cruiser/racers starting on the Miles River on 18 to 20 Wednesdays a year.
On Fridays, the boats of the Oxford Amateur Race Series set their sails at 6 p.m. on the Tred Avon River. Tot O’Mara, a former commodore of the Tred Avon Yacht Club and one of the founders of the Oxford race series, says the group started out in the late 1990s on Thursday nights but their membership grew when they moved the starts to Friday.
Now, she says 20 to 25 boats, ranging up to 41 feet, compete off the Strand. She says the races usually include a turn around the Choptank River Light and finish off the Tred Avon Yacht club.
O’Mara, a lifelong resident of Oxford, says she grew up sailing small boats on the Tred Avon. She taught sailing on the river, as did her mother and sister. Her father and husband have also served as commodores at TAYC.
“It is just part of our lives,” she says.
To keep that sailing spirit alive, TAYC, MRYC and CBMM sponsor junior sail programs every summer to train kids as young as six years old how to handle a boat. Several one- or two-week sessions are scheduled through the summer and are open to non-members as well as members of the organizations.
John Stumpf of the MRYC Junior Sail Program says the club’s program has expanded from three to four sessions this year and expects to train about 85 children with varying skill levels.
“It is great watching these kids who have never been in a sailboat before,” Stumpf says. “After two weeks, they are sailing standing up just like ‘Joe Cool.’”
For more information about the Elf Classic Yacht Race, go to www.cyrg.org. To become a sponsor of the American Red Cross One Design Cup, contact Betsy Tuttle at btuttle@redcrossdelmarva.org. For information about the Herring Island Sailing Fleet, go to www.hisf.org. The Oxford Amateur Racing Series website is www.oxfordars.org. For information about the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum sailing classes, go to www.cbmm.org. The Tred Avon Yacht Club’s website is www.tayc.com. The Miles River Yacht is on the Web at www.milesriveryc.org. St. Michaels Wednesday Night Races are on the Web at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sm-wns/.

Dick Cooper, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and his wife, Pat, live and sail in St. Michaels, Maryland. He can be reached at dickcooper@coopermediaassociates.com.