History of FBYC
on Wednesday March 13, 2002 12:20AM
Having been enticed by our persuasive Commodore Scott to contribute a series of history columns to the Log about the formative years of FBYC, I will cheerfully comply. As a clubmember since 1955, I suppose my credentials at least partially (but not uniquely) qualify me to undertake this task. However, major credit must be given to MacDonald Wellford, a founding member and early club historian, who fanatically maintained scrapbooks on club history from its inception in 1939 until the late 1960s. Mac kindly loaned these scrapbooks to me before his death, and these will be source for much of the material dealing with the early years of the clubs existence. Second credit must go to the Richmond Times-Dispatch and News-Leader, both of which newspapers covered club racing and social activities in extensive detail until about 1970 and whose articles were reverently pasted onto the pages of Macs scrapbooks.While not the regions oldest yacht club, at age 63 we are certainly one of the senior sailing institutions on the Chesapeake Bay. The story of the Fishing Bay Yacht Club spans an era from prior to World War II when wooden racing yachts carried Egyptian cotton sails, through the rapid transition to fiberglass hulls and Dacron sails on aluminum masts in the 1950s and 60s, and into the present day when exotic high-tech materials dominate marine-construction. To many of us older (and I do hesitate to say old) folks, perhaps the early history will not seem so ancient. But to the youngsters currently enrolled in our Junior Program, 63 years is an almost incomprehensible period of time in the same manner as the turn of the 20th century prior to WWI appeared to me as a youthful member of FBYC. So there is lots to tell during those long intervening years....