| a few
memories from the early 70's and our annual Spring and Fall Regattas that began andf ended our year on the Chesapeake Bay at the late Podickory Yacht Club pics mostly by Uncle Al ........ |
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| The first weekend in
May, a
few of us would head down past Baltimore to open our
Wayfarer season
with the USWA Chesapeake Fleet. The first weekend in
October, we
repeated the trip to close out our sailing sailing
season. ........ |
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| 1973 was the year Son
of
Snoopy went - with much difficulty - into a
basement. W852 had
been orange in 1971 but this year was really going to
turn a few heads:
a cross between pink and mauve - periwinkle Color Your
World called it. ........ |
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| My landlord and
sometimes
crew, Clay Taylor, did much of the work. ........ |
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| Freddie Schueddekopp
sometimes supervised. ........ |
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| The afternoon before
the
regatta, Freddie and I stopped off in Oakville to pick
up my crew ... ........ |
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|
... Erik Yeo (l)
whose sister, Jeannette, was there to see us off. It
was at this that
we discovered that the hull was slightly crackedon the
starboard side
where one of the V-shaped support pieces that should
have been made
longer was slowly caving the hull in. It didn't look
too bad, so off we
drove towards Buffalo and the NY Thruway. Having put
in a long teaching
day at school, I soon handed driving duties over to
Erik reminding him
not to do any violent left turns, what with our
delicate hull
situation. A few hours later I awoke when my head
bounced off the right
inside of the car. "Erik," I yelled, "You weren't
supposed to turn left
violently!!" "Had to. Beer store." We soon saw the
worst. The cracked
area was now completely stove in. I thought we were
done for the
weekend, but then I remembered that I was the jury-rig
king of
Wayfarers, and would not go down that easily. We moved
the boat aft on
the trailer so that the trailer's cross support was
now directly below
one of the boat's cross support pieces - see pic below.
When we got to Podickory, we would hammer the plywood
more or less flat
and tape (medical tape - no duct tape as yet) over the
mess. As well we
began to pray for wind so that the bailors would work
- hopefully
faster than the water came in.
........ |
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| Saturday 0600 hrs:
Erik
Yeo. Pretty chipper after the all-nighter, is he not? ........ |
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| Our support team,
Freddie,
with his morning beer. ........ |
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| He, too, looks in good
form. ........ |
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| Getting there so early
left
us with time for a bit of tom-foolery. Click here to go back up. ........ |
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| Since Erik was the guy
who
punched the support through the hull, he got to do the
taping while Al
supervised. Note the boat has been moved aft on the trailer as mentioned previously. ........ |
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| Uncle Al also seems
hale
and hearty after the long night. ........ |
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| Wow! Even a shave! ........ |
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| Feeding breakfast to
the
W852 mascot, a rubber Snoopy. The boat leaked a fair bit but we got lucky with the wind and the bailers kept us properly afloat. ........ |
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| Erik Yeo with new
Wayfarer,
Nick Seraphinoff, who impressed us to no end with his
eagerness to fly
and learn the spinnaker even when he knew the screw-ups would several times lose him the race. ........ |
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| larger image here ........ |
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| Is that Frank Pedersen
and
his kids at the barbecue? ........ |
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| Our host Louis Nees
with
whom our paths would cross again over ten years later at
McGregor Bay
near Sudbury. ........ |
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| May 1974 - click here for larger image ........ |
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| May 1974 - click here for larger image ....... |
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| Lunch on Frank's
Wayfarer:
Frank's first wife and Linda Heffernan? (l) |
