FBYC History....

Jere Dennison

In the early 1960s, the Junior Program drifted along in haphazard fashion. Instruction was limited to only a few weekends during the season and attendance was sporadic. Since there was no official club training boat, juniors blended in with adult members as younger members raced Sailfish and Penguins while older juniors gravitated toward the high-performance Jollyboat. If experience can be said to be the best teacher, then the juniors of this era received a swift education in the rudiments of sailboat racing, many eventually besting their elders around the course.

However, in 1967, Dr. George Prout was picked to Chair the Junior Program and radically altered the direction of junior training at FBYC. His program was so successful that he repeated as Junior Program Chairman until well into the 1970s, and it established the program’s structure for years to come.

George convinced the club to purchase four kits to construct 8 ? foot sailing prams called Sabots. Similar to today’s Optimists, the club finally had a stable of boats to standardize basic instruction and hold junior race events. The following article abridged from the August 4, 1967 edition of the Richmond News Leader with the accompanying photo detailed this new approach to the junior program.

Sailing for All – FBYC’s Aim Frances Schools

Just like the triangular race courses its sailboats run, Fishing Bay Yacht Club finds itself on a three-legged plan. Originally planned as a basically family-oriented yacht club where the accent was on everyone skippering a boat of a small one-design class, the club has seen the years bring about a change to larger cruising-type boats where the whole family could take part, but usually with Dad serving as captain while Mom and the children acted as crew.

Often, however, if a family did not progress to a larger boat, the distance of the yacht club, located in Deltaville, from Richmond, led to the wife and children staying at home while Dad became a one-design skipper all alone. But this year, Dr. George Prout decided it was time the club tackled that third leg of the triangle and tried once again to become a sailing club for the whole family.

“Looking for a small boat that we felt would be easy to handle for the rankest amateur,” explained Prout, “the club decided to purchase four Sabots with which to teach the children of club members to sail.” Prout ordered the eight and one-half foot proms in kit form and then called upon fellow members to assist in assembling them. The families of Van Pelt Sessoms, Williams Blanton, and Dr. Charles Modjeski, aided by Bill McCathern and Tracy Schwarzschild, joined Dr. and Mrs. Trout in the backyard and the building sessions began.

Then, boats complete with fancy sails and color jobs of reds, yellows, blue, and green, Dr. Prout and the others took the boats to the yacht club where sailing sessions have gotten underway. The sessions are held each weekend for children ages 7 and up. An average of 20 per weekend have been showing up to test their skills.

“We don’t have classes as such,” explained Prout. “Nothing like knot tying and lectures on how to sail are offered. There’s nothing duller to a child than a knot-tying class when what he really wants is to get in that boat and try his hand at it.” Prout hopes with this renewed interest in one-design sailing among the younger members, the future interests in the club will be assured.

Later additional Sabots were added to expand the junior fleet, and the new program format proved to be extremely popular. The hull of one of these Sabots can be seen on display in the Fannie House.

An Outstanding Junior of the Era

Although there are many notable examples of accomplished junior sailors during the decade of the 1960s, one stands out from the rest. Raymond J. Munsch (Ray), son of Past Commodore Raymond M. Munsch, grew up at FBYC, first sailing Penguins in the 1950s before moving into the Jollyboat class at age 17 in 1960. As a successful club-level skipper, Ray joined the fledgling sailing team at the University of Pennsylvania where he was an undergraduate business major. Undoubtedly he was our first FBYC junior to enter the ranks of collegiate sailing. An excerpt from the December, 1965 Yachting magazine reported on a major college sailing event held on Lake Michigan in which Ray participated.

A newcomer to the winner circle of intersectional competition, the University of Pennsylvania, was surprise victor on Base Line L., near Ann Arbor, at the annual Cary-Price Memorial Trophy Regatta of the University of Michigan. Very light winds prevailed from the easterly quadrant as Penn forged to the front, after 14 races, and then pulled away in the last six contests for a 16-point win, which marked Michigan’s first defeat in the event’s history. Raymond Munsch from Fishing Bay, Virginia and Leonard Hendrickson of Miami, Fla., with crews of John Hamilton and Gerald Miller, proved quite at home in Michigan on Crackerjacks (Skipjacks).

Ray was listed as the Regatta High Point Skipper in Penn’s defeat of the following schools at this event: Michigan, Michigan State, Wayne State, Lawrence, Xavier, Ohio State, Indiana, Purdue, and Wooster.

In the year following his college graduation, Ray compiled an enviable racing record in a year when he transitioned from Jollyboats to the Olympic Flying Dutchman class.:
Southeastern Jollyboat Championships, Charlotte NC 1st
Columbia Sailing Regatta, Jollyboat, Columbia SC 1st
Lake Norman YC Sailing Regatta, Jollyboat, Charlotte NC 1st
Augusta Sailing Club Regatta, Jollyboat, Augusta GA 3rd
Fishing Bay Yacht Club Regatta, Dutchman, 2nd
Georgia State Championships, Dutchman, Atlanta GA 1st

Ray continued to seriously campaign his Dutchman throughout the remainder of the 1960s and into the 1970s when he qualified for the hotly competitive 1972 Olympic trials by finishing 2nd in the Flying Dutchman North American Championships that year. His crew at the Trials was another former junior member, Sandy Clark. While our FBYC crew did not win this event and fly off to Munich in a blaze of glory, just the invitation to compete in the Olympic Trials would signify a high point in the sailing career of most of us mortals.