Exchange Race and Committee Boat history

2009-08-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

An excerpt written by my father, Ted Burt

Exchange Race: I recall in the '50s that the Exchange Race was a big deal. Ryan Fort was Race Committee Chairman. He would line up as many Herreshoff 12 1/2s as he could and hold a drawing for the crews who would race each boat in the Exchange Race. My recollection is that there might be as many as twenty-five or thirty boats, many of which were not sailed actively. These were all wooden H-12s, because there were not yet, of course any Doughdishes. So we would learn what boat we had drawn, which might be great news or it might be awful news, depending on the reputation of the boat. I remember being assigned Rhodora, an H-12 owned by the Carlton family who lived near Nobska. I showed up at theirhome to pick up the bag of sails, cotton, of course. The butler met me at the door and handed me the mildewed bag. He may have wished me good luck, I don't recall. I was probably 15 years old. Rhodora had not been raced to my knowledge in years, so I went aboard early to see what I had. She seemed to be down by the bow as I rowed up to her mooring. On investigation of the flotation air chamber (every boat had one with an access port which screwed in forward of the mast), I discovered that the chamber was more than half full of water. Once it was pumped out, she floated fine, and we went on to have a decent race.

One of the boats we all dreaded getting was Scup, a boat owned by the Rawle family. She had the reputation of being a real dog. Of course, I was assigned Scup for one of the races. We always suspected that the "drawing" was fixed, but you couldn't accuse Mr. Fort of anything. The evening of the drawing was like election night, there was so much calling on the phone, coming and going, tote boards, etc. So we took what we got. On close examination, Scup seemed to have a mast that raked noticeably aft. On closer examination, it was discovered that a number of shackles had been added to the tang on the bow, so the forestay was much longer than it should have been. We removed the shackles, which brought the mast up to where it looked right. I don't recall how we did that race, but Scup surly sailed better that she had looking like a Chesapeake Bay Bugeye. After the race, we put back all the shackles, of course.

Committee boats: According to the Book of Falmouth articles on Quissett, the first committee boat for races was Addie, a cat boat owned by Charlie Eldred. I remember Addie in the early fifties serving as committee boat, so she must have been about fifty years old at the time. She had no mast. Bob Morris and some others would motor her out to the starting line, set the course, fire thesignals with the 10 gauge cannonand wait for the fleet to complete the course.

In the late '50s the Directors of the yacht club determined that we should own our own committee boat. They purchased an old motor whale boat, 28' in length or so, and named it the Commodore Holland after our first Commodore. I had the honor of commanding the Commodore Holland for the couple years she served as committee boat. Commodore Metty Morse did his best to keep her running, despite a very cranky engine and a leaky hull.We didn't dare set out into the bay to watch the race for fear that the engine would quit, and in fact there was more than one occasion when we had to be ignominiously towed back into the harbor after the last boat finished. If there was no tow-worthy boat among the spectator fleet, we had to wait until one was hailed by the sailing fleet when they went in after the race. Often we had to change the finish line after the start. I recall not being able to start the engine to perform this maneuver one time. Fortunately the wind was fair for our destination, so we set the engine cover tarp on the signal mast and sailed down to our new position.

After the Commodore Holland showed signs that she was costing the club more that she was worth, she was sold. Herb Willett loaned the club his small power boat, Jigger. Jigger had more amenities than the Commodore Holland, but she was slow and somewhat unreliable. We were also at the mercy of the Willett's desire to use the boat themselves. The Directors made an arrangement with Bruce Barnard, owner of the boat yard, to useScamper. This was not the Scamper we see today, all refurbished and proper. She was pretty rough, as I recall, but she was fast and had a reliable engine. I learned how to back a shallow draft power boat into a slipin a strong cross windduring the years we used Scamper.

By the early '80s it was apparent we needed our to own our own committee boat and not borrow someone else's. The Directors determined to solicit donations from the membership and purchase a boat which would be reliable and which would be suited to the type of races we ran. A committee of Elliot Billings, Bob Thompsonand John Coffin began a search.It became a question of whether to buy a used boat or to build a new one. In the end the decision was to build. After looking at many different possibilities, the recommendation was tohave built a new Sisu 22'. She was built of fiberglass balsa core construction, which was quite controversial at the time. There were those who predicted that the hull would become waterlogged and heavy, but Mssrs. Coffin and Billings were convinced that the hull would be sound for many years, which proved to be the case. The engine chosen was a Perkins 50 HP diesel, diesel for safety and 50 HP so none of those youngsters who might run her could go fast enough to get into trouble. For the first time we had a signal mast suited to the work of a race committee. The total cost of the boat and equipment was $23,000, a considerable sum at the time, but it was entirely covered by donations. In the Spring of 1982 she arrived and was commissioned Commodore Thompson in honor of Bob Thompson, a former Commodore whowas much admired and who had passed away the previous winter while serving on the search committee. The Commodore Thompson served the club well for 20 years and was sold to club member John and Evelyn Steele. As of 2009 she is repowered and going strong.

The replacement for the CommodoreThompson camein2002 (exact date needs to be checked).The Directors felt that a larger and faster boat was in order tosafely accommodate theRace Committee, which was growingolder, and the fleet, which now began to include several Herreshoff S-Boats as well as a number of Handicap Class boats. A committeeled by Skip Bergmann searched the options, once again rejecting the idea of buying a used boat in favor of commissioning the construction of a new one. The result was Cornelia Carey, a 27' Maine-built lobster/ work boat powered by a 260 HP Yanmar diesel.Great thought went into her design, and she turned out to be the ideal committee boat in every way. Fast, comfortable, maneuverable, and equipped with GPS and a remote anchoring system, she should serve the club well for many years.

History of Ensign sailing at Quissett

Throughout the 1950s Quissett Yacht Club racing had been limited to Herreshoff 12 1/2s. Beetle Cats were used to instruct the children in the sailing classes, and it was expected that these young sailors would graduate to race in the H 12s. Older families remembered the Herreshoff S class, which offered an opportunity to sail faster and more comfortably, and there had been attempts to sow the seeds of a new class in the form of the Herreshoff Islander Class in the mid 1950s. This class never took hold, and Islander racing was limited to a couple boats for three or four years.
In 1966 a group met to talk about bringing a new class of racing boats to Quissett. Several boats were considered, including the Sailmaster 22 and the Vinyard Haven15. The idea was to find a boat that would sail well in Buzzards Bay and that would challenge sailors with a larger and more modern rig than the H 12. One of the boats considered was the Ensign, a 22’ fiberglass sloop manufactured in Bristol, RI by Pearson Boats. There was one already in the harbor, owned and sailed by the Chalmers Family, a very active group of sailors with racing experience in both collegiate and yacht club competition. They were enthusiastic about the prospect of having additional Ensigns at Quissett to form the nucleus of a racing fleet.
During the winter of 1966, Dick Haigh and Ted Burt resolved to start an Ensign Class at Quissett and begin racing the following summer. They each purchased a new Ensign, and they arranged for a third to be made available for charter, anticipating that it would be purchased by an interested family once it was seen that these were fun and challenging boats to sail and that there would be competitive racing sponsored by the club on a regular basis. This purchase came about very quickly when Elliot Billings decided to buy the boat for the use of his children. Thus, the summer of 1966 began with four Ensigns in the harbor, Thrym (Chalmers), Allegra (Haigh), Mistral (Burt) and Wahoo (Billings). Wahoo was later sold to Willard Smith and renamed Bandwagen, and then to Stu Jones and renamed Blue Max. Over the next several years the Ensign fleet grew with the addition of Triad (Morse / Daignault / Perkins), Gryphon (Clowes), Penzance (Gifford), Zephyr (Hiam) and Blue Dragon (Crain). The fleet thus topped out at eight boats, of which five or six raced regularly through the early ‘70s.
Eventually, interest in Ensigns began to wane, and competitive racing in the class died out by 1980. There was, however, some very exciting racing through the late ‘60s and mid ‘70s. In fact a crew of Ensign sailors represented the Quissett Yacht Club in the Prince of Wales Cup, the North American Match Race Championship, in 1969, held that year in Portland, Maine and raced in Ensigns. The Quissett crew included Ted Burt, Browne Littell and Skip Crowell. The semi-finals were raced against the crew from Alamitos Bay YC, a hot bed of match race competition. In fact, every previous year the Price of Wales Cup had been won by a crew from California. Intimidated by this daunting opponent, and still struggling to master the art of match racing at the highest level, the Quissett boat lost the first two races in a best of five series. Fortunately, they were able to gather themselves the next day and reel off three straight wins to earn their way into the finals. Quissett was able to beat the crew from New Orleans YC, the runners up in each of the previous two years, in four straight races to earn the championship trophy.

Quissett Yacht Club Centennial

Exchange Race and Committee Boat history