HYC-1948-1978
HARRASEEKET YACHT CLUB – THE FIRST 30 YEARS
Author’s Note: These notes of the first thirty years of the Harraseeket Yacht Club were assembled in 1998. They were drawn mainly from minutes of early board meetings and memories of early club members. They are far from complete. In addition, there is a bias: I have been more interested in reporting the human and financial side of the club than in recording who won what over the years. Thanks to the fun we have all had on the water through the club, we have all been the winners. My hope is to produce a similar record of the more recent years of the club this year. I would welcome any corrections or additions you think should be made in the project so far. - Kerck Kelsey
INTRODUCTION:
Sometime during the winter of 1947-48 - and no one seems to remember exactly when – Harry Parker invited a few boat-owner friends to his joinery shop to see if he could elicit any support for a new yacht club in South Freeport. There, surrounded by stacks of lumber and sawdust, the seed was sown.
Harry and his wife Woofie had come to town the previous year when he became the proprietor of the South Freeport Yacht Basin. There had been (and still is) a small yacht club in the harbor called the Casco Bay Yacht Club – primarily run by the Soule family, but Harry apparently had something more dynamic in mind. As he described it to the club twenty-five years later:
‘We called together a few people at the boat yard to see if we could get a yacht club organized. It had been just a year before, just after Labor Day, that Woofie and I first saw this lovely place. There was a total of eight boats moored in the harbor, including four lobster boats. There was only one sailboat, owned by Mr. George C. Soule. One of the Foss family owned this building, the parking lot was the Beach Association’s bathing area. Humpy Dixon’s old boat shed next door was a rubble of lumber and a sway-back building.’
Fifty years later, with more than three hundred moorings in the Harraseeket River, and beautiful clubhouse, parking lot and dock system in place, and an annual budget in excess of $175,000, Harry’s vision of a flourishing yacht club in South Freeport would seem to be well justified. What follows is an outline of the story of how the Harraseeket Yacht Club got to be where it is now in fifty short years.
PART ONE: THE FIRST TEN YEARS
Beginnings:
Six months or so after the original meeting at Harry Parker’s boat yard, and other meetings in Harry’s basement, on August 12, 1948, a petition to incorporate was presented to Justice of the Peace Paul Powers. Although Paul, a local attorney, was himself one of the founding group, the original seven petitioners did not include his name. The seven were: Willis Randall, Henry Douglass (hereafter called by his better-known nickname, Grubby), Harry, John Coppedge, Bill Soule, Tom Reynolds and Dick Wengren.
A week later, on August 20th, the first meeting of the club was held. Present were the above seven, plus ‘some forty other persons’. Powers acted as temporary Chairman, and Rachel Young was made temporary Clerk. She dutifully kept this job for the next twelve years.
No doubt with Powers picking the words, it was voted that:
‘The object of this club shall be to encourage and promote the sport of boating, and the science of seamanship and navigation, particularly for the instruction of the youth of this area, and do all things necessary or incidental to the accomplishment and fulfillment of said purposes.’
Bylaws were passed that set dues at $2.50 per year for adult members, .25 per year for children of members. Capt. Roland Whittom, a retired Merchant Marine Captain, was named first Commodore.
The first Directors Meeting was held August 22, 1948. Their first vote was to have membership applications printed. Their second vote was start work designing a burgee. First committees were to be racing, membership, entertainment, house and junior racing.
The second Directors meeting was three days later, and set the first race for Saturday, August 28th, 1948. The entire course was apparently to be inside Pound of Tea.
A month later Molly White presented a plan for a junior member program to start that winter. There were to be classes on Saturday mornings on her front room rug. Harry provided 6-inch shapes for boats, and Molly supplied a fan for wind. The classes drew seven youngsters, including both Jack Burwell and Dalene Powers.
That winter, the design for a burgee was set and the directors even heard a proposal for a club class sailboat – a 16-foot dory-type called a Dolphin, with an estimated cost of $295 each. As it turned out, the club would depend on the privately-owned boats of its members for more than ten years, and would not actually own a class of sailboats for more than thirty years. But, from the beginning, nobody could accuse the board of lack of vision.
It is significant that the club’s first initiatives were toward racing and instruction for racing. The issue of housing – for meetings and social events - wasn't resolved until February of 1949, when the directors declined Harry’s offer to use one of his buildings for $30.00 per year and voted to rent the upper floor of the old Yacht Club building from Mr. William Soule for $75.00 a year. This location had the advantage of being right next to the town dock, which the club would use along with everyone else.
The club was to be a do-it-yourself operation from the beginning. On May 1st, 1949, Commodore Whittom issued the first call for volunteer labor for club construction to make necessary repairs on the building, including installing a separate door at the foot of the stairs.
The club’s first Annual Meeting on Aug 26, 1949 reported on junior classes and sailing lessons, as well as Wednesday and Sunday races for adults. The entertainment committee had held a supper, and a regatta was to be held two days later, with races for both sailboats and motor boats, with prizes donated by Mr. George Bean of Brunswick, as well as a Junior Regatta. Paul Powers was elected Commodore.
The issue of liability, which was to be a prominent part of directors’ discussions for the next thirty years, came up for the first time in June of 1950 – even before the club owned any property. Commodore Powers reported that he had looked into liability insurance and ‘found the rate prohibitive’. So members were on their own. The spirit of rugged individualism, at least for the moment, prevailed.
A dance held during the winter of 1950 netted $54.88, and a clambake on Moshiers Island in August drew 100 people and made a profit of $12.50. The first use of club space by other organizations was approved that summer. The user was the Freeport Art Club and the event was their annual exhibition. There was also a vote to allow ‘Robert Nelson to use the small west room at the Yacht Club for sleeping quarters for himself only’. This must have been a little rugged, since the landlord never did provide any plumbing. The building had a two-holer, and the members made do.
Early Issues
The club soon found out about the full implications of instructing children. A report on classes for children during 1950 noted that the advanced age group was very successful, but the younger group was not, ‘due to inattention’. In July, it was voted to let junior member boys use the clubrooms to dress for swimming. One month later, Harry Parker reported that the experiment ‘was not working out successfully’. Details did not make it into the minutes, but it was early evident that the club could not offer instruction without providing some kind of control to go with it. This, of course, was going to cost money.
At a special meeting in the South Freeport Vestry in October, the membership voted to raise the dues to $5.00 a year for adult members, and the next summer Henry Bird was hired as the club’s first Sailing Instructor. Children were charged .50 per day. There is no record what Henry was paid out of this, but the club did vote to reimburse him $140 plus expenses to repair the boat he used that summer. Henry served as instructor for a total of three summers, and before he left, enrollment was up to 37. His successor, Jack Henshaw, was paid $200 for the summer. He was followed by George Gilmore, who was paid $250 to instruct for eight weeks, five days a week in 1955, assisted by Jack Burwell and Dalene Henshaw who were given $25 each.
Everyone was thoroughly terrified during the Gannett Trophy Race and Regatta in 1950, because of ‘terrific difficulties’ brought on by very high winds, but the club suffered no permanent damage, and successfully entertained more than 150 people from three other yacht clubs with chowder and very good time.
Membership grew by 20 new families and 15 juniors in 1950, and the club had $166 in the bank when the season ended. But although outgoing Commodore Powers wrote that the year ‘will be a high light in my life’s activities in the town’, he declined to be nominated for another term.
The club paid $60 for the ‘take-home’ prizes that were awarded at the annual meeting on September 1st, which was attended by 41 members. In addition, Richard ‘Dink’ Weiner, visiting member of the Chicago Yacht Club, presented two plaques, one each for juniors and seniors, to be awarded to the winners of seamanship races to be held the next day. Andy Fulle was elected Commodore, and during his year, 1951, a new Sportsmanship Trophy, a half-model plaque donated by Harry Parker was instituted. Henry Bird, perhaps in recognition of his work with, and control of, the kids that summer, was the first winner. A 1951 racing highlight was a second place in the Maine State Championships that summer won by Harry Parker, with Barbara and Grubby Douglass as crew. John White was elected Commodore for 1952-53, the year the Mallory Trophy was introduced, and Sears Cup restricted to juniors, and the Adams Trophy women’s competition.
All these ‘permanent’ prizes were to be posted in the clubhouse, but despite repeated resolutions by the directors, many names did not get affixed, and after a while, nobody remembered who won what. Prizes got lost because last year’s winner would move away, forgetting that he or she had the trophy. The result is that the plaques now on the clubhouse walls have lots of empty spaces, and the record of past winners is far from complete. It is an ironic fact that the fierce competition and ambition sometimes shown on the water was not reflected by accurate bookkeeping on the shore.
In the meantime, social activities on the shore grew apace. The calendar in 1952 was expanded to include a Lobster Festival, a Frostbite Race and a Washington’s Birthday Dance. A hooked rug class was allowed to use the club room for a fee of $2.00, if landlord approved. The first summer calendar was designed and printed at no cost to the club by Mr. R.B.McFarland. A few members to contributed on behalf of the club to a wedding present for Archie Ross. Membership by 1953 was up to 88 adults and 73 juniors, and our facilities were beginning to show the strain.
Physical Expansion
Impatience over use of the public dock surfaced in 1952 when Commodore White was authorized to appoint a committee ‘to recommend to the club and to the town manager revision and improvement of float facilities at the wharf’. Membership calls to build and maintain a separate float and approach became louder. As a result, White and Dick Davis, with the help of Jimmy Lumsden and Ellis Snodgrass, got permission to use an old military-surplus steel pontoon barge that was sitting on a mud bank behind Merrill’s Terminal in Portland. They successfully towed it to South Freeport for the club to use as a float. Its ownership, however, remained unclear.
The following year, 1953, during Harry Parker’s tenure as Commodore, a working party picked up a float donated by Walter Swett, a local ferryboat captain, who was awarded a Life Membership. The float was designated for use by the junior sailing program. A bulletin board was also voted for the foot of the stairs leading up to the clubrooms.
Concerns about the future housing of the club surfaced in June of 1954, when the directors deferred discussion on bringing water to clubhouse ‘until future disposition of building was certain’. $50 was voted for paint and other improvements, but the club remained gun-shy about taking on new debt by changing quarters.
Mother Nature played a part in the ultimate decision. 1954’s annual meeting, beside electing Dick Davis as Commodore, included a vote of appreciation to the Yacht Basin for its emergency hauling and sheltering of boats during Hurricane Carol. Then, in 1955, the building housing the club was declared unusable due to ‘unsafe underpinnings’. (One can be forgiven some skepticism about this, as the building was still there and being used for storage by Brewer’s Boat Yard forty-three years later. Like Congress’s Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, however, the declaration resulted in some dramatic changes.) It was determined that we couldn’t stay where we were.
Following much heated discussion, it was voted in July of 1955 to purchase nearby waterfront property from Gordon Hopkins for $3000. An alternate proposal to run ramps and floats from Dick Wengren’s property was not carried. The directors also voted to construct float and ramps, if advisable. Commodore Davis was given authority to conduct negotiations, and in August he reported that he had paid the Hopkinses $300 down, and promised $2700 more for September 6th. The directors then voted to obtain financing for up to $5000 – thus incurring the club’s first debt.
Racing Issues
Wear and tear on boats used in races by the club was a continuing issue – no matter who owned them. In August, 1953, the directors voted to pay for a new mast for Bill Elliott’s boat, which was broken while being borrowed for use in Sears Cup eliminations, and every couple of years somebody got paid for ruined spinnakers. By 1957, Directors voted to pay members who loaned boats for sailing lessons - $20.00 per month for Lightnings and $10 per month for Turnabouts.
Another issue was about who was going to run the races. During 1954 Jack Henshaw was paid $1.10 an hour over and above instructing classes ‘for work such as running races, etc.’ Thereafter, running the Wednesday and Saturday races became a paid addendum to the head Instructor’s compensation. It was 1956 before the board voted to pay for gas used in race patrolling, and 1959 before the club had its own patrol boat with motor.
In the meantime, the club’s racers continued to make a mark for themselves. In August,1954, the directors proudly voted to send Harry Parker, Commodore Douglass and Gardner Brown to sailing races in East Greenwich, R.I., they having won the Maine State Championships at Blue Hill. They were to repeat as Mallory Cup champs 1955, and again in 1956.
Expansion and Controversy
We don’t know if it was the prospect of new club debt, or the anticipation of future difficulties over the Hopkins land, or just plain bullheadedness about accepting changes, but 1955’s annual meeting saw the appearance of a dissident slate of candidates for board of directors. The effort was defeated by a vote of only 15–11, and the vote for officers, including Harold Cobb for Commodore, was not unanimous.
Not surprisingly, dues were then raised to $20.00 and a new service charge of $5.00 for sailing lessons for non-member children was approved.
On a more positive note, life memberships were voted to Gordon and Myrtle Hopkins for their generosity in making their property available, and Dalene Powers was awarded the Sportsmanship Trophy for the second time – becoming the only person ever to do so.
At a special meeting that November, with $1264.00 reported in the treasury, the directors declined to approve a bond issue, but approved a subscription drive for three-year pledges from the membership at large. Ed Hobbs was asked to lead a fund-raising committee. By spring, he had secured 51 pledges for a total of $4215.00!
Preparations got under way for construction of ramps and float. In January, 1956, Bill Elliott and new member Robert Saunders reported on construction costs and recommended permanent-type construction. Piles were driven in May driven next day for under $2000, and Ned Coffin built a float for $800.
As the new financial obligations loomed, there was increased concern by directors about collecting unpaid dues and sailing lesson fees. Despite these concerns, someone brought up the need for some kind of ‘sinking fund’ to handle unforeseen expenses. It would take another twenty years, but the club would eventually be able to do this.