Another mis-labeled postcard?

I spotted another old post card featuring Moth Boats the other day on flea-bay.  This one supposedly taken in Surf City, NJ a beach community on Long Beach Island (or LBI in local speak).  LBI is another barrier island along the New Jersey shore, just north of  Brigantine.  Unlike Brigantine, LBI has several towns, from Holgate at the south end to Barnegat Light at the northern tip.

On the back side, the card is entitled "Taking boats out of the water after a day of racing from the Surf City Yacht Club."  The scene features Comet class boats, (a magnifying glass reveals that the Comet with the red hull and white transom is named Red Devil, if that helps jog someone's memory), as well as a stern view of a Cates-Florida Moth (the white hull with the girl in red standing next to it), and a Dorr Willey Moth seen in the background.  Folks are patiently waiting for their turn at the ramp or hoist, much as one does today.  To the right, on the pier, a crowd of people are gathered around what appears to be a third Moth with a dark blue hull being loaded onto a trailer.  That boat looks like a Shelley or perhaps a Europa Moth. If so, that would move the date of this exposure to the mid-1960s rather than the late 50s/early 60s.  The upside down boat could of course be another Cates design Moth.  It's impossible to tell even with magnification.  The cars in the photo all appear to be from the mid 50s to early 60s which seems about right.  The real sticking point with this postcard for me is the clubhouse! 

As a teenager, I raced my Moth at the Surf City YC's annual fall regatta.  This was a big multi-class two day event held the weekend after Labor Day, (September in the USA) and was a last hurrah of summer for us before having to put the boats away and get semi-serious about school and studying.  The SCYC clubhouse looks nothing like the unpretentious flat topped building seen here.  Surf City's clubhouse was (still is) a large multistory structure which reminds me in a vague sort of way of a large Dutch colonial beach house.

The building in this postcard might be the Brant Beach YC or perhaps an early shot of Spray Beach's clubhouse, but not that of Surf City.  Having said that, the photo still provides a pleasant journey back to a time which no longer exists--at least in terms of casual simplicity or the types of boats being raced--not a Sunfish, Opti, or Laser in sight.  Speaking of casual, it seems that the producers of postcards during this era exercised a lot of poetic license when labeling their products!  Can anyone comment on the actual location?

Greetings from Painesville (Ohio)

Click on picture to enlarge it.

Eagle eyed CMBA member, Chandler Owen spotted this old postcard on flea-bay.  As can be seen, the card greets us from Painesville, Ohio.  However, of the boats which I can identify by sail number, I'm led to believe that the venue isn't from the "buckeye state", but instead somewhere in the Charleston, South Carolina area.  Perhaps Mount Pleasant?

The boat on port tack, closest to the camera, is Randall Swan's Connecticut design Blue Moon II, Nr 1149.  I don't know if Randall is at the tiller or not but the ID of the boat is not in question.  Interestingly, this boat and several others are being sailed two up which tells us that the young skippers were too light to keep their boats flat with the available wind at their disposal.  Now that we're adults this is no longer a requirement!

Randall's father bought this particular boat from a display at the 1949 New York Boat Show, directly from her designer/builder, Skip Etchells.  At the time, Etchells operated a business called "Old Greenwich Boat Works", located in Old Greenwich, Connecticut.  Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Connecticut was the rig.  Etchells is probably better know as a Star boat builder and competitor.  As such he was largely responsible for introducing the Moth Class to "bendy" masts.  Randall once told me that the young sailors with Connecticut Moths didn't quite know what they were doing when they sheeted in hard and bent the mast, but they knew that the boats were more controllable and thus faster in a big breeze.

The boat with sail number 1202 is, I believe, Rob Johnson in Gremlin.  I'm fairly sure that this boat and Nr 1103 are Darby-built Ventnor Moths.  The old records in my possession indicate that Nr 1203 was owned by Gordon Darby.  Gordon may well be in this picture.  As is the case with many pictures, the more distant boats defy identification and so their designs and skippers remain a mystery.  A mystery which perhaps some reader can partially elucidate with a comment.

In closing, here we have another interesting old postcard featuring Moth Boats on sunny, sparkling waters to ponder over a chilly winter night--even if I remain unconvinced of the venue.  It's a pity that modern postcards so seldomly feature scenes with boats or yacht clubs or races any more.  That makes ones like this one, which I think dates to about 1952, all the more interesting to find.

Added after posting:  I just rec'd this input from Randall Swan:

You are right about the location of the race being Mt Pleasant.Photo shows Castle Pinckney to the West and the only regatta in that location would have been the Mt. pleasant regatta. I believe the dote is 1951, as that was the last year I needed a crew for ballast in most conditions.

Thanks for the photo. Those were the days!

 

Thanks Randall!  I was off a year!

Another old Post Card

This card features my favorite island and favorite class of small racing dinghy:

The Moths pictured here are quite primitive and appear to date to the very early 1930s. They feature transom bows and probably have heavy, pivoting centerboards rather than "jab" or "dagger" boards which were introduced to the class by the mid-1930s.  Although the card is postmarked August 25, 1938 the card probably was available in drug stores and novelty shops well before that date  Hull shapes changed at a revolutionary pace rather than an evolutionary one during that first decade.  By 1938 the Moth Class had round bilge shapes such as Antares, Stormy, and Imp Too.  I can just make out the name Pluto on the side of the boat closest to the camera.  It was a tradition in the old Evening Star Yacht Club to name Moths after stars, planets, constellations, etc. and so while this race is taking place in Brigantine,  no doubt most of the fleet is from the ESYC in nearby Atlantic City.  The presence of boats with two digit sail numbers is another clue to the correct age of the image.  The boat sporting "LE 3" on the sail is probably a visitor from the Little Egg YC, which like many Barnegat Bay clubs used their own fleet numbering system rather than that of the fledgling National Moth Boat Association.

The ink on the reverse side of the card is faded to the point where I had to resort to the aid of a small magnifying glass to make out the message and address.  The card is addressed to a Mrs. W. Helm at Box 6-5-2, Laurel Springs, NJ.  That's interesting in as much as Laurel Springs is less than 50 miles from Atlantic City.  I purchased the card from a vendor in New Castle, Kentucky.  One wonders how the card traveled so far after it's first trip through the mail?  One also wonders if this card is the sole survivor of this photograph?  Turning to the message, the writer is someone named Priscilla.  Priscilla, a woman of few words, wants Mrs. Helm and family to know that she's having a good time in Atlantic City.  She doesn't add on the well used line of  "wish you were here".  One reads into this that Priscilla, although concerned with the Helm family's well being, didn't particularly want them under foot during her brief spell of R and R by the sea.  Other notables and ponderables  seen on this side of the card include the fact that Brigantine Beach was considered "Atlantic City's smartest suburb".  Really, Brigantine, a separate island, a suburb?  One wonders if Ventnor, Margate and Long Port (towns on the same Absecon island as AC) were also considered suburbs of the "big" town?  Note that postage was just a penny.  The stamp of course predates the self stick variety we know today.  Back then one had to lick the stamp (or otherwise moisten the adhesive) before applying it to the card.  If I wanted to carefully lift the stamp off the card and then solubilize both, perhaps there would be enough extractable DNA from that lick to learn a bit about the mysterious Priscilla, such as her ethnicity, predisposition to a laundry list of chronic diseases and so on.  But, like Mrs. Helm, Priscilla is probably no longer with  us--the card we know from the postmark is 81 years old.  The sender and recipient were perhaps in their late teens to early 20s, so by now would either pushing 100 or beyond that age.  No, I will allow Priscilla to sleep in peace and enjoy the card as it is--a rare surviving window into a world which, like the folks involved, no longer exists.

Moth Sailboat Fleet, Stone Harbor (1952)

Here is a facsimile  of an old post card which I bid on but failed to win from a well known on-line auction site.  This photograph, showing the up-wind leg of a race at the Stone Harbor YC, reinforces my assertion that most so-called development classes boil down to a series of very similar boats for a given era and venue.  In this picture 100% of the boats close enough to be clearly identified are those built by the old Ventnor Boat Works from roughly 1940 up to about when this exposure was made.   The only differences seen among these Moths are those of the two slightly different Ventnor designs-- early Ventnor Moths, produced prior to (and a very few during) WW II, had transom bows while post war Ventnors featured a redesigned "bull nose" bow.  A very few pre-war boats also sported canvas fore decks in an attempt to reduce weight.

If I were to substitute this picture taken in 1952 with one from 1962, most of the boats would be of the Cates Florida design. In 1972 the majority of the boats would be narrow water line designs such as the Duflos and the Mistral.  The top dogs of the fleet tend buy the latest equipment and the rest follow along in a herd mentality sort of way.   For the most part, "development" staggers along at a generational pace with occasional "break through" designs and occasional flops.  This is a good thing--no one wants their new boat to be totally obsolete within a few months.

 Checking the surviving Moth Class records from this era I found it interesting that none of the boats with sail numbers close enough to the camera to be read are from Stone Harbor YC!

Nr 742 Black Beury, sailed by Harry Beury, Margate City YC
Nr 659 Name unknown sailed by A. McGee, Margate City YC
Nr 686 Champ sailed by Bob McGurk, Margate City YC
Nr 752 Nutshell sailed by Bill Maguire Ocean City YC
Nr 642 Circe sailed by John Elfman Margate City YC
Nr 640 Black Cloud sailed by Henry Hood Ocean City YC

Perhaps the boats in the lead are Stone Harbor boats, making full use of local knowledge!