JAN HARLEY
American news HOG ISLAND Junior sailors discovering Beetles
After more than five decades of autumn Sunday morning sailing, the venerable Hog Island Series of Beetle Cat racing on Cape Cod has seen a resurgence, writes Chris Museler. With 15-20 coloured sails on
the line every weekend, the diminutive cedar-planked gaffer now has its next generation of junior crews carrying on the torch. It was started in the late 1950s by Sloat Hodgson of the Chappaquoit Yacht Club in West Falmouth. The boats were used for junior training and Hodgson thought the adults should take advantage of the Indian summers. Since then, a family volunteers to provide food each weekend, racing starts at 10am sharp and there are no protests. “If you had a flagrant foul and didn’t exonerate yourself, it would be in the weekly paper,” says participant George Kirk.
DE SOTO LANDING
CRAFTSMANSHIP
Last fall, the next generation of Hog Island sailors were initiated when sons and daughters manned centreboard and mainsheet. With that have come many new boats including one for 505 world champion
Beetle Cat racing at Cape Cod – with next generation joining in
Mike Mills, double Olympian Tim Wadlow, and twice team race world champion Tim Fallon. Yours truly bought the boat Fallon grew up on – Mole Minder, after the collective nickname of the five Fallon children.
Spanish attack Florida, again!
It will be under less acrimonious circumstances when a Spanish long boat lands on the beaches of De Soto National Memorial this April than when Conquistador de Soto did in 1539, writes Chris Museler
.
Thanks to volunteers of the Florida Maritime Museum and the National Parks Service, the annual re-enactment of the Spanish attack on Florida’s native Indians draws visitors eager to learn about the history of the bloody massacre that unfolded in the 1500s. “We can explain how the
conquistadors used these boats to explore up rivers and bays,” said Jorge Acevedo of the memorial. The reenactment has run since 1948. Since 2009, it has revolved around the 25ft (7.5m) replica long boat built at the Maritime Museum in
SAN DIEGO New class for Half
Pint o’ Rum Race The allure of San Diego’s Half Pint o’ Rum Race is partly the experience of drinking from a cask of mixed expensive rums but also in the challenge of making it to the shore with your offering to start and end the race. Last December’s running of the all-classic wooden boat race saw a new class that starts from anchor, avoiding the slog to the beach. “It’s for smaller boats where it’s not
practical to get ashore, and appealed to older skippers too,” said organiser Greg Stewart, who races a Clinton Crane 6-M. The protocol involves anchoring off a
Bradenton, Florida. “The design was common for that time and that explains why there were no plans,” says Acevedo. The impetus for building it came from an artist’s rendering of the de Soto landing for a Junior Ranger handbook. “When we saw the painting we said, ‘Why not build one?’”
Replica conquistador’s long boat at the re-enactment
beach in San Diego Bay and either swimming, paddling or rowing in to deliver a half pint of rum to be poured into a group wooden cask. Time penalties are given to poor offerings and the race starts when crews are released from the beach. It ends when crews return to the beach and swig rum from the cask. CM
CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2012 25
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