Classic Moth action: Ocean City YC during the mid60s.

More period photos via Dave Schill.  This time a regatta at Ocean City YC (New Jersey) at some point in the mid-1960s.  The first two photos show the packed rigging areas (both sides of the street next to the club house.

Could this be a young Bob Patterson pushing Nr 2720?

I well remember this concrete launch ramp.  Just wide enough to allow a boat to pass an empty dolly being brought back up to the dinghy park.  When ever I launched there, the wind seemed to be out of an awkward direction!

The ramp could be hard on bare feet!  And of course it was slippery at the water's edge.

Bob Seidelmann was the dominating supplier of  Moth sails during this era but as the class saw the introduction of boats from Europe like this Shelley, other sail makers started to make inroads.  This Shelley has a sail from the Howard Hild loft (note the "HH" sail maker's patch at the tack).

Hanging the rudder on an old Challenger Moth.  The Challenger design predated the Cates Florida and was very much an entry level racer by this time.

Nr 2734 is a "Swiss" Moth and thus dates these photographs to at least 1965 and more probably 1966.

An old Ventnor Moth from the late 1940s with no doubt a brother-sister, junior sailor pairing.

A Cates updated with a center traveler and a laser style boom vang.  Note however, that the outhaul is still tied off at the clew end of the boom.  Sailors were at this time point just beginning to grasp the importance of being able to make adjustments to sail shape while underway rather than rely on a "set it and forget it" mode of rigging before they launched.  Is this Danny Hilferty?

No long hair for this young man.

The old OCYC clubhouse in the background.  If anyone looking at these photos can identify the sailors in any of these photographs please do so via the comment box for this  post.