The Playboy Bunny

Next year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Teacup Regatta, the regatta famous for introducing the world to the Laser (originally named TGIF, Thank God it's Friday). The above photo is from the article on the Teacup Regatta in the December 1970 issue of One-Design and Offshore Yachting. OD-OY came up with the idea of pitting all the 1970 American off-the-beach sailboats in a regatta and judging competition and did all the leg work in putting the event together. The Teacup Regatta was held on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, about a two hour drive from Chicago. In 1969 Hugh Hefner had opened a huge Playboy resort on Lake Geneva, hence this photo of a trio of Playboy Bunnies taking a spin on one of the competing dinghies between races.

This photo jogged the old memory banks about my own Lake Geneva and Playboy Bunny story. Two or three years later, as a poor college student on summer break, I decided to enter the O'Day cup, a singlehanded championship of the old USYRU (U.S. Yacht Racing Union). You qualified in ascending elimination rounds (club to district to region and then to the finals). I didn't have any lofty aspirations; my racing skills were somewhat rudimentary, but it was a cheap way to get in some sailboat racing as the host club supplied the boats and entry fees were either free or nominal. My local club, Berlin Yacht Club, put my name forward and I awaited being told where to go for the Ohio-Pennsylvania district eliminations. It turned out that there was only one other club to put up a name and he dropped out. Without sailing a race I had qualified for the Midwest Regional O'Day eliminations.

The Midwest Regional O'Days were to be held by the Lake Geneva Y.C. in Lasers, a 500+ mile trip from my home and I didn't own a car. During the 1970's this was no problem  as hitchhiking was a viable means of getting around. I had already crisscrossed the Midwest several times on the kindness of others stopping to give me a lift. I duly made it into Lake Geneva. (This may have been the time the rides dried up late at night and I had to spend the night at the Milwaukee Airport; elevator music, bright lights and trying to sleep across three hard seats.) The regatta was midweek and there were four or five of us racing in typical on-off, shifty lake conditions. I finished third or a close fourth, the memory is hazy, but I was fine with that. I had no plan B if I had improbably qualified for the finals and had to figure out how to get to a regatta during the school year and far away.

The Lake Geneva YC had their midweek evening summer series during the O'day eliminations and I got a crewing job on a M-16 scow. (Which has now morphed into the very popular cat-rigged MC scow; the M-16 was main/jib). I remember being miffed at having to handle leeboards on every tack and came away with a better appreciation of my Dad's Y-Flyer scow which was my Berlin YC racing ride.

In the fog of long-ago recollections there is one searing memory from that race and that is of another fellow crew. One of the leading competitors in the M-16 scow class had married a Playboy Bunny who was now his crew. We were far enough back in the race that we didn't cross tacks often with the couple but I did join the gaggle of sailors that surrounded her (bikini-clad) apres-racing. I came away with the impression of a separate female race; not so much titillated by her but more having encountered something genetically unique. Hugh Hefner's vision of an ideal American woman was rooted in the 1950's and 1960's, all jutting breasts, small waist, small butt, very much top-heavy. I had the good sense, even back then, to realize this wasn't the real world.

I never went to the Playboy Club at Lake Geneva during that trip. No money and besides, when hitchhiking, travel times were always open-ended. No time to dawdle. Best to hit the road when things were wrapped up. The Lake Geneva Playboy Club closed in 1981.

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Two videos of the Lake Geneva Playboy Club.

Finn Dinghy Grunt Reaching

I've been featuring lots of videos about how to do it wrong - time to get back to the Olympic sailors doing it right - in this case Finn sailor Alejandro Foglia of Uruguay.

A couple of observations:

• You know it's really honking when a Finn sailor isn't pumping the main.
• The Finn is a heavy singlehander - 107 kg hull weight - but despite the weight this if full on, balls-to-the-wall reaching.

Tillerman over at Propercourse just recently featured a video of the massive American centerboard design Flying Scot planing. (There is a true sense of unleashed power when you get some of these heavy designs up and going; I have some fond memories of some great reaches on a American Lightning dinghy (318 kg.) under spinnaker and also the Y-Flyer scow (227 kg.).

Throwback Thursday: International Canoe US 132 "Rosie Cheeks"

Sometimes the question of what next to post on this blog just falls into your lap. Case in point - Andre' Cloutier of Ravenwood Canoes up in Canada posted last Sunday about a 1980's International Canoe he now owned and was intending to restore. As I perused the post and looked at the pictures I realized this was the last International Canoe I owned, US 132, Rosie Cheeks. Originally owned by Chris Converse, who built the aircraft plywood interior into a single skin King Ferry fiberglass hull, this was one of the top U.S. International Canoes in the 1980's.

Somewhere around 2001-2003 time frame I bought,on the cheap, only the hull of US 132 from Steve Clark. My kids were in college, there wasn't much extra cash kicking around, and I had been out of IC's for about 8 years. I was under no illusion that, as a competitive endeavor, putting US 132 back on the water was probably doomed.  A lot of development had gone into the International Canoes in those intervening twenty plus years and what was fast in the 1980's was not likely to be fast in the early 2000's. I threw some experimental stuff on the hull I still had kicking around. (A rotating mast, a wowee-looking NS-14 mainsail; problem was I was under the permitted sail area with this rig.)

As soon as I got on the water, my speculation was confirmed. US 132 was just not up to snuff with the fleet. But the International Canoe is a fun dinghy to just sail, really a neat ride, especially upwind, that I still have fond memories of US 132. I found some pictures of my last travel regatta in International Canoes. Chesapeake fleet stalwarts, Bill Beaver, George Saunders, and I went out to Geist Reservoir, Indianapolis, Indiana for the U.S Nationals. It was intended to support the small Midwest fleet but the turnout was not good. We had, if I recollect, about 9 International Canoes, that sailed the weekend in very little wind. Rosie Cheeks finished somewhere middle but like all road trips there are some great memories.

International Canoe sailors do a lot of standing up between races when the wind is light.

There was some breeze after the racing concluded.

This was typical of the racing. I'm trying to hold off my two Chesapeake team-mates in their two carbon/honeycomb hulls (plus, as I stated above, my rig was undersized). Didn't work for too long.

Most of the fleet scattered over the Indianapolis Sailing Club lawn.

After the racing on Sunday concluded, the wind filled in to about 8 knots, coming down the lake. I went up and down the lake for about an hour, nothing too strenuous, but enjoying the heck out of the daysail (I had crewed a Y-flyer Nationals on Geist when I was in my early twenties, about 1971 - thirty years later the shoreline was now dotted with expensive waterfront homes.)

I came back from this regatta convinced, with some remorse for the International Canoe is a great dinghy, that given the reduced time and money I wanted to put into competitive sailboat racing, the Classic Moth was where I would devote my efforts.

Header Photo: South African Sonnet Scow

South African Jack Koper designed three plywood scows, starting in the late 1950's with the junior scow, the 11'9" Dabchick, and then followed with the 15'6" Tempo scow and then with the 14' 6" Sonnet Scow (featured in the header photo). All three enjoyed great success in South Africa and the Tempo also achieved some numbers in Europe, notably Holland and Germany. The Tempo has faded from the scene but both the Dabchick and Sonnet still have good fleets in South Africa (500 built for the Sonnet). Those readers who guessed the photo might be the American Y-Flyer scow were close -from the photo they look similar - but off by 4 feet in length.

Y-Flyers; "Tim the Sailor"

When I was a senior in high school, my father moved the family to Youngstown, Ohio and I was introduced to Midwest lake sailing. We joined the Berlin Yacht Club , a small yacht club on Lake Berlin about twenty miles west of the city. We brought our Windmill out from Maryland and raced with the handicap fleet for a year or two before my Dad decided to buy a slightly decrepit Y-flyer and join the Y-flyer fleet. Club racing was usually two races on Sunday with a break for lunch and then a barbecue after the last race. Everyone started at the same time, on a line that extended from the club dock, and then we usually raced a circular course around permanent marks placed on the periphery of the lake. Depending on the wind, we would start going west or we would start going east. We might get a true beat, and then again we might not. To say this was a culture shock would be an understatement, as even back then, my sailboat racing in Maryland featured separate fleet racing around triangle courses with the first beat to windward. And then there was lake sailing where the wind was most times light to nonexistent and puffing from over there, oops.... now it's behind us, or now it seems to be wafting from above.

As frustrating as it seemed at the time, I have fond memories of racing a Y-flyer on Lake Berlin. There is just something about the Midwest sailboat racing that ratchets down the competitive buzz you get out on the coasts. The racing was fun, ludicrous at times but it made you humble; the people are genuine.

Probably no YouTube video out there epitomizes my Y-flyer racing on Lake Berlin than the following video about "Tim the Sailor". Light air degrades into drifting, then upgrades into light air, then degrades into drifting. There is the mass start where Tim starts next to a Thistle (never, never start next to a Thistle in light air, there are few boats anywhere in the world that can stay with a Thistle in the light to drifter). There is the parking lot, the inevitable bunch up where all fleets are mixed together. And there is that smile, when upon finishing, golly-gee-whiz, you have actually beaten a Thistle.

To Berlin YC and the Y-Flyer.........

Ran into Bob Turner, He of the Sock Burning

I wrote about Bob Turner a while ago; tucked in a post about the Y-Flyer scow was a one sentence tip-of-the-hat about his wooden Y-Flyer he built in his teenage hippie days . Bob Turner is now a yacht surveyor (a yacht surveryor..... they all seem to have a Magic rubber Mallet used to bang incessantly across a hull.... this subsequently determines the ultimate seaworthiness of said craft). I ran into him banging away with his Magic Mallet on a 50 footer and he mentioned that he stumbled across my blog and was astonished that his exploits in Y-Flyers had made it onto the web (and this is from the only person that I know that invented a viral cultural happening; for Bob came up with the ritual sock burning celebration on the Vernal Equinox .)

Well, lets go to the six degress of separation, Bob Brannan's dad (Bob Brannan of the of the 60th birthday party) owned a house on Green Street. In the 70's Bob Turner rented a room at that Green Street house with, I think it was his first wife, but it may have been a girlfriend, and the story goes that, way back then, at 6 am there was a huge crash that woke up all boarders asleep in that Green Street house. Bob Turner's wife/girlfriend, had embraced Yoga way before it became fashionable, and was wont to perform headstands early in the morning. That morning, she had fallen asleep in the headstand and in her collapse to the floor, had taken out a lamp and and some shelving.

Bob Turner can weave a sea story with the best of them. Hmm! I wonder if he has had a 60th birthday party yet?

Are We Having Fun Yet? Family Sail

I ran across a YouTube video, that in a sideways fashion, brought back memories of my dad and his attempts to get our entire family sailing.

Our Dad first bought an 8' El Toro, which both he and I eagerly embraced in learning to sail and, then we divvied boat time up among ourselves as we puttered about the creek. My brother was lukewarm to sailing a pram, my sisters and mother were definitely not too enthusiastic. So to light the fire and get the whole family participating, he bought a 16' Rebel sailboat, a commodious fiberglass daysailer still raced in the MidWest. Our first family sail in the Rebel resulted in us going hard aground in the Chesapeake black mud. My Dad could string some profanity together at the drop of a hat and this was one of those times. Both me and my brother leapt overboard and pushed us off but the remaining day's sail remained under a black cloud. The second attempt at a family sail had us sail smack dab into the middle of a vicious thunder squall. Thankfully we were still in the creek and managed to get the sails down, but it poured buckets, and thunder and lightning filled the air. My Mom and sisters squeezed themselves under the small foredeck and waited it out; to me it was all a grand adventure. After that, I don't think my Mom ever set foot again in a sailboat, and my sisters went out occasionally but never took to it as I did. My Dad and I continued on, eventually competing in the racier Windmill and Y Flyer. My brother returned to sailing as an adult, enjoyed it immensely and became a very competent dinghy racer.

The following video features an English family sailing a Lymington scow, which isn't a scow at all, at least in the American definition, but a small dinghy. By small, the Lymington scow is 11'4" long and a tad under 5' beam, a hair bigger on those dimensions than my Classic Moth. In this video, the Dad is having a great time (Ah! The male ego.... "This is good, this is what it's about". Something I could well be accused of saying!), the older son enjoying himslf as well, the younger son is affixed on the leeward gunwhale in his own reverie and the Mom, well the Mom has her game face on (and is bailing with a passion) but I have a feeling she is thinking this is really bloody stupid. I wonder how much Mom has been out on succeeding family sails on this Lymington Scow, or has she always found some excuse to opt out?

Lymington scow video no longer available.

Here is a video on the Rebel class.

I ran into a Y Flyer sailor! From Ohio!

One thing I've noticed as I've aged.... there is that one particular class you sailed as a youngster (probably either crewing with Dad and then branching out, or even learning to sail, as in an El Toro pram), that one sailboat class of your youth has put a hammerlock on you for the rest of your life. Many return to that class and continue racing in it, becoming the wizened veteran competitor. Some of us move on to other boats. Still, we hold those memories; those sweet, sweet memories of a carefree summer of our youth and of glorious regattas in days gone by.

The Y Flyer scow is that sailboat class for me. I ran into Naval Academy midshipman Josh (skipper of the Academy's Farr 53 "TomCat") who it turns out, sailed Y Flyers on Chippewa Lake, Ohio. I sailed Y Flyers on Berlin Lake, about an hours drive away and though our time in Y Flyers is separated by more than 30 years, when two sailors share the love of the same sailboat, the stories come flowing out.

Josh's Dad and other fleet members from Chippewa have been building wooden Y Flyers. The Y Flyer class has been mostly fiberglass, even back in the ancient past when I was sailing (Bob Turner built a wood Y back in my era, we ran in the same crowd in Annapolis in our twenties, but today our paths cross every once in a Blue Moon).

The Y Flyer is a great scow class. I'll devote another post to wax lyrical about the boat (I know, I know, all small boat sailors can pontificate endlessly about the virtues of their particular class ..... but this is my blog.)

Many sailors on the East Coast have no clue what a Y Flyer looks like so I've lifted some pictures from El Fraser over at his Y Flyer blog. Click on the pic for a larger image.





Also, this somewhat humorous YouTube gives good top down view of a Y Flyer (inadvertently).

A-scow helmet camera

I've always had a soft spot for scows. If you've read my profile, you will note that I sailed the 18' Y-flyer scow as a teenager. As an adult I sailed an Australian scow Moth in the now defunct U.S. Modern Moth division for several years. The following is a YouTube of A-scows, the Big Daddy of U.S scow classes at 38' length. I've sailed on MC scows and E-scows but never had a chance to ride on a A. The YouTube video is an excerpt from a longer professionally made film and gives a good idea on the speed of these beasts. If you listen, you can hear the unique thump, thump of a scow shape as it goes through waves.



Bob Turner, born of South Carolina, sailor of Y-flyers, made a go of getting an E-scow fleet on the Chesapeake. I thought he was crazy since the Bay is notorious for a short chop but then I realized that most regattas take place in the rivers feeding the Bay. These were perfect Scow locales but for whatever reason the E-scow didn't achieve permanence here on the Chesapeake Bay. There is still a strong fleet in Barnegat Bay, NJ, about a 4 hour drive North of Annapolis.