PETTIPAUG MEMORIES Dear Members, 2025 is Pettipaug Yacht Club's 75th Anniversary. I will be sharing photos and memories from the 1950s'- present. If you have a photo or memory you'd like to send , please do so. Thank you! commodore@pettipaug.org<mailto:commodore@pettipaug.org> Pettipaug Yacht Club 1950s [PICT0021.JPG] This photo was taken in the late 1950s. One dock at PYC to date with two Donalds on the ramp! Don Doyle Sr. seems to be pointing his toddler in the wrong direction...but we all know TOBY soon found both the wind and the water! Don Doyle was PYC Commodore 1968-1969 and oversaw the construction of the Commodores' Room and ushered electricity from River Road into PYC. Pettipaug Yacht Club 1960s ~70s By SANDY SANSTROM , Commodore 2004-2005 I don't remember any food or beverage sales in the late 60's or early 70's but for a number of years the Good Humor man would come down in the afternoon at the end of class. The graduation instructor/student throw- in was banned for the first time because it had become a free for all, (very rough). And one year, instructor, Coleen Reynold's father had parked his bass boat "Yardarm" at the dock for a planned instructor "get away" and a bunch of people ended up in the water with the inboard boat trying to power away. It was a very dangerous situation that the very serious board of governors did not appreciate! At the time, I believe the north dock was the only dock, and had a very long, heavy, attractive wooden ramp with curved railings. There were only two launches, both wooden Brockways: a 16 foot scow and a 16 foot rowboat both with 9.9 Johnsons and tiller steered. All the Blue J's were on moorings, south of the club and all the students were delivered out to the boats in the launches. In my early years there was no electricity, an old generator was only used for the dance to power the" garage band" hired for the night, I wonder who the bands were? There was always a group of older kids who would try to shut down the generator in the middle of the dance to throw everything into a blackout uproar. Suspected necking and drinking were also a resulting activity. . I don't remember how the bathrooms operated then, but at one time there was a dug well in the parking lot, very salty water, non-potable. There was also a water tank in the "attic" that must have been a duty for the "launch boy" to fill with the afore mentioned generator? The launch boy was usually an 18 year old, some years he was an attractive nuisance that all the girls would fall for, but it was important to stay in his good graces so you would not get picked up last from the mooring field. The first year we had the family Blue-J, 4022, a wooden boat built by my father, he also made his own mooring, a 100 lb disk of concrete he and Pete Gref dropped early in the season in what they believed to be the right spot. When all the other moorings were installed they wanted to move our mooring but it had such great suction that they couldn't move it and had to put the mooring field around ours, it's probably still there. Friday series was a big deal, there were spinnaker and non-spinnaker class and usually a couple dozen boats participated. The careening and bottom cleaning was an important ritual. We used Petit, MERCURY based, "hard bottom racing finish" anti-fouling paint. It was durable as boiler plate and only allowed minimal slime growth but when applying, if you dripped it on your hands and didn't clean it off right away it would burn holes in your skin. Luckily, gasoline would clean it right off. Environmentally friendly? Best practice? NOT. We car pooled from Westbrook, five or six of us in family station wagons with no seat belts. When we passed Sunset Pond in Essex it was important to count the turtles on "turtle rock" as that was supposed to be the number of boats that would capsize that day, very important on Friday series day. I don't think the numbers worked out but it was an important ritual. A most memorable happening was at lunch one day when a 25' Luhrs cabin cruiser came roaring up the river from the south on the west side of Fetske's Island (Brockway). We all knew it was headed right for the rock piles but there was nothing we could do but watch in amazement as it crashed into the big one and tore itself all to hell. No one was badly hurt. Around the same era Ernie Fetske would land his Piper J3 Cub in the field south of the club until one year the field was too wet/soft and he nosed it over tearing up the prop etc. Not seen again. The PJSA annual picnic was held on Seldon's Island up river and was a bad idea as most of the trip was in the Nav Channel and at the time there were regular tanker and tug and barges in the river. Standing on the river bank when a tanker went by the water receded several feet in depth and then would rush back in like a miniature tsunami. I don't know when it moved to Nott's Island. Until 1972 the Connecticut River was a federally rated class D river, meaning it was considered dead and OK to dump anything into it. Oil and gas, industrial waste and sewerage were all dumped into the river. There were few fish good to eat and there were no Osprey or Bald eagles to be seen. We did not swim in the river. One year for our swim test, we went to Cedar Lake and another year to Mcgee's swimming pool. If you passed your swim test you didn't have to wear your "May West" life preserver, it only had to be in your boat. The river had a very distinct smell and always had an oil sheen on its surface. We learned to water ski off the dock and land on the sandbar, you didn't want to fall in. Sandy
