Search Results for: 75 years

By Dave Hemenway   The 2024 Thames River Finn Championship was held on Saturday, October 5 at the Thames Yacht Club (TYC) in New London, CT. While the weather forecast was for mild winds in the 5 to 8 mph range, the actual conditions were even better with a fresh breeze of 10 to 15 mph – perfect for a bunch of mature sailors racing former Olympic class singlehanders that were built half a century or more…

Story & photos by Dave Hemenway In the mid-1980s, I fell in love with a Cape Dory ten-foot sailing dinghy that just had to become the tender to my Dickerson 36 yawl Tenacity. They were simply a perfect match of traditional boats. My Cape Dory 10 was built in 1966 and needed to be restored – just like most of my boats. I modified her over the years and she has served our family very well as…

Larchmont Yacht Club in Larchmont, New York hosted the Shields Class National Championship regatta on Long Island Sound from September 19-21, 2024. Twenty-two boats were entered in the Championship, hailing from local fleets and Narragansett Bay to Monterey, CA, and Edgartown, MA. Over three days, the maximum eight races were sailed in conditions ranging from light and shifty breezes on the opening day to a clocking easterly with wind speeds in the high teens for the series’…

The International Sonar Class Association held its 2024 World Championship at Noroton Yacht Club in Darien, CT, September 12-15. Thirty-one boats from across the USA, Canada, and Ireland competed on Long Island Sound. © Rick Bannerot/OntheFlyPhoto.net Long Island Sound is known for its hot summer days, but nobody would have expected those conditions to extend until mid-September. On day one, despite her best efforts, PRO Shannon Bush couldn’t conjure up enough breeze to send out the fleet….

By R.J. Rubadeau, Cruising Club of America Boston Station My formative sailing years were spent on a short list of state-of-the-art sailboats in major ocean races along the Eastern Seaboard when Nixon was president. My journey to becoming a professional offshore sailor began with an 8,000-mile Pacific Ocean crossing from Sydney to San Diego as captain of the Maxi Ondine. This life-forming event crystalized my core belief that those scalawags you are lucky enough by design or…

Newport, R.I. — From the inception of the New York Yacht Club Grandmasters Regatta in 2010, Noroton Yacht Club, from Darien, Conn., was the undisputed champion of grandmasters team racing. But the club’s streak of six straight wins ended in 2016 and despite usually being in contention, Noroton had been unable to replicate its previous successes. Until today, that is. With a 4-1 record on the final day of the 2024 New York Yacht Club Grandmasters Regatta,…

By Dorothy Wadlow, Cruising Club of America Essex Station As an enthusiastic birdwatcher, I’ve gained a reputation as the “Bird Lady.” Friends often share stories of birds they’ve seen or pictures of birds they want to identify. My sailing friends tell me about birds that landed on their boat. I can see why. It’s very exciting to be alone at sea on your little “floating island” when an avian fellow traveler pays a visit far from its…

New York City’s boating history comes alive at the City Island Nautical Museum   In late June, I took a trip down a personal nautical memory lane. My cousin Peter Taylor, a talented marine photographer, and I drove over the bridge, first built in 1874, from the Bronx mainland and crept down City Island Avenue, the island’s main north-south artery. We were looking for the City Island Nautical Museum at 190 Fordham Street because we have family…

Story & photos by Dave Hemenway In fall 2018, I was discussing the state of the world with friends at my favorite boatyard on the Thames River near New London, CT. I was lamenting that another season had passed without me completing Tenacity, my 36-foot Dickerson yawl that I have owned for over thirty years and have done extensive work on, but never seem to complete to my satisfaction. In addition, I was longing for a simpler…

By Brian M. Stinson Editor’s note: With the Ida Lewis Distance Race presented by Bluenose Yacht Sales starting August 16, we wonder how many participating sailors – particularly those in the Youth Challenge division – are familiar with the namesake of both the race and its host yacht club. Much has been written about “the Heroine of Lime Rock,” though not always unembellished. Newport historian Brian Stinson sets the record straight.   In the fall of 1858,…