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
Pettipaug Yacht Club 1950s
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