FBYC History....

Jere Dennison

Recently I received a surprising call from Richard Chenery, a non-member but river neighbor with a cottage on Meachim Creek off the Rappahannock River. He said he had an old chart to donate to the club and would like to meet with me the following weekend. This I eagerly agreed to do. Upstairs in the clubhouse, he opened his briefcase and presented me with an absolutely pristine July, 1943 U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey chart of the Chesapeake Bay, Wolf Trap to Smith Point as long as I would pledge to frame and hang it in the clubhouse. Richard had acquired the chart, along with some others, from the widow of a retired Coast Guardsman living on the Eastern Shore.

Of course I was curious about this act of benevolence toward the yacht club. Evidently he is a history buff and had read our history postings on the website. Also, he attended one of our Leukemia Cup Regattas a few years ago as a spectator and was impressed with the historical artifacts that we display in our clubhouse. In appreciation, he wanted us to have this chart which depicted the bay area during the time that the club was founded at Urbanna and later relocated to its present site on Fishing Bay. I suppose this demonstrates what good things can happen when the club reaches out to include members of the community at large through its various events and programs.

There are a few observations about this chart which make this chart special. Neither the Rappahannock River (Norris) Bridge nor Piankatank River Bridge are shown since they both post-date the chart. Instead the old ferry routes are designated at these locations. Ruins of the old Deltaville steamboat wharf stretching across Jackson Creek to the area of the first channel marker are shown. The wharf was destroyed in the Great Hurricane of 1933. Also, a substantially larger Grog Island is indicated at the mouth of Dymer Creek illustrating the relentless effect of erosion upon our shorelines. No doubt there are other changes that will become apparent after a more careful examination by our membership..

Later, as I was leaving my meeting with Richard Chenery, I was intercepted by Manager Dixon Cole who introduced me to a tall stranger who had just strolled over from our Jackson Creek piers. His name was Bill Noonan and a one-time junior member who left the club in 1952 after his father passed away. I immediately realized that his mother was Edna Noonan who taught me art at St. Christopher’s School in the early 1960’s.

Bill’s family had joined the club about the time that we relocated from Urbanna, had built a Penguin, named Pogo, in their backyard, and had been active members until the father’s death. Later in life, Bill moved away from the Richmond area and eventually ended up in the San Francisco area. He never lost his love of sailing, and, when he retired in 2001, he and his wife Cynthia purchased an Island Packet 380, named Crème Brule, and began sailing it from California through the Panama Canal and Caribbean and up the east coast in 3-month increments. Although his journey was nearing its end, one of his objectives was to visit FBYC for which he had so many fond youthful memories.

While berthed in Cape Charles earlier this summer, he happened to meet member Ted Bennett who also was cruising on his Island Packet 380, Pharos. Ted assured Bill that he was welcome to visit FBYC and accordingly Crème Brule became a guest at our pier. Next stop for the Noonans was to be Solomon Island from where the boat would be trucked back to San Diego and eventually sailed to a permanent berth in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Meanwhile, the owners will return to their new home base on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Before departing, they left behind a South Beach Yacht Club of San Francisco burgee and a DVD of their experiences transiting the Panama Canal. It is indeed gratifying to encounter former members such as Bill Noonan who retain their affections toward FBYC, even after half a century.

On the Sunday of the same weekend when all the above events occurred, Dave Porter, member and avid master Laser sailor, prodded my memory about a discussion we had had a year or so ago. He had told me then that his widowed mother-in-law, Sue Betty Sawyer, was a resident of a retirement community in Wilmington, Delaware and the object of romantic affections from another resident, a widower by the name of Will who claimed to have been a founding member of FBYC. Knowing the names of the founders, I knew he could not have been a founding member and could make no club connection whatever with the person that Dave described.

However, it now turns out that the Will in the nursing home was coincidentally the same Will Ransom who was the topic of two history articles in the Log last year. In those articles, I related to you the surprising circumstance of receiving a tattered FBYC burgee from Dave Ransom of Falls Church, Virginia with a note attached identifying the owner as his Father, who had died in a nursing home at age 91 and had been a loyal long time member of our yacht club. The burgee attached to a varnished pigstick was subsequently hung in the flag gallery on the second floor of the clubhouse. Nonetheless, there remained a mystery: no one at FBYC remembered Will Ransom. Research indicated that he had been an absentee member of some 40 years from 1949-1989. Except for some possible early visits during the construction of our first clubhouse on Fishing Bay, he and his family had moved from Richmond, never to return during those 40 years.

A subsequent story submitted to the Log by his son Dave explained that his family had flown the FBYC burgee on many charter boats around the world and retained their membership to obtain reciprocal privileges at the many yacht clubs they encountered in their extensive travels.

Of course this will sound trite, but it is indeed a small world, especially when the observation is applied to the sailing community.