Paul Cayar
Rob Weiland
End of an era
Piet Vroon, 1930 – 2023 The recent passing of Piet Vroon, aged 93, for me marks the end of an era. From the first day of my yacht racing life, 55 years ago, Piet was the com- petition as well as the host when racing took place from his home town, Breskens; Piet often far ahead, sometimes neck to neck, sometimes
pushing hard to catch up. I only sailed with him twice, on Formidable. But we met and spoke to each other many times. At his office, his home, in his car racing over Flanders roads, on the dock, in yacht clubs, at airports, at the RORC clubhouse in London. Always about boats and anybody and anything relating to yacht racing. Post-WW2 Dutch yacht racing has not been short of charismatic
boat owners. Certainly internationally Piet Vroon more than any of them was the face of Dutch sailing if I consider the full period from 1950 till now. His passion for sailing could surprise even his core crew members from Breskens, who at times got a last-minute call to turn up at the dock to take the boat out for a spin, just for fun. Piet’s commitment to yacht racing and sailing is legendary: instru-
mental in founding the marina and yacht club in Breskens, the clubs he was a member of, the regattas and marine enterprises he sup- ported, the countless young sailors he gave an opportunity to crew and, last but not least, the amazing number of offshore races and regattas he took part in. Piet Vroon was often referred to as the ‘king of Breskens’: he was definitely the motor behind making a small fishing village the centre of Belgian and Dutch yacht racing and of course his shipping empire was based there till 2016. Piet retired from his position as managing director of the Vroon Group in 1995, spending a further 22 years on the Supervisory Board. Post-war Breskens was in the process of rebuilding itself after
the 11 September 1944 bombardment by the Allies who were trying to prevent German troops from retreating over the Schelde estuary, in which 184 civilians were killed; and then after the severe flooding of 1953 that took the lives of 1,836 people. Eleven years old, Piet first sailed a locally built dinghy, and he
just kept sailing – eventually accumulating 70 years of owning and racing a wide variety of yachts. The first was called Sportlust: in the mid-1950s Piet bought a half stake in her from boatbuilder Jaap Maas, father of Frans Maas, later of Standfast fame. Soon Piet
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ended up in the UK to race, a RORC member introduced him to his club in 1959 and as they say ‘the rest is history’. A RORC member for 64 years, not many will have raced as many RORC races as Piet Vroon, including 25 or 26 Fastnet Races; Piet lost count himself. A string of Sportlusts followed – all designed by Frans Maas. The six or seven sailing boats berthed in Breskens in the late
1940s were originally moored on the inside of the Flushing-Breskens ferry pontoon. Over the years, encouraged by interest from Belgian yacht owners, a lot of hard work and a gift from the Bruxelles Royal Yachting Club of 1,500 Dutch guilders, by 1954 there was a ‘marina’ of sorts for 80 boats. Soon the owners united in what in 1959 became the Watersportvereniging (yacht club) Breskens of which Piet Vroon was the first chairman, a position he held for near on 30 years. His successor was Hans Zuiderbaan, who later in life became the ORC chairman and was instrumental in ORC joining ISAF (or, as some saw it, ISAF absorbing ORC...). Piet Vroon was good at twisting arms to get owners to join the
Breskens regattas, not least by charming them with receptions at his home; these receptions were hugely popular, drinks, snacks, good stories and all-smiles affairs if my memory serves me well. Piet, like his brother Meo, living 100m up the same road, and
their families were excellent hosts. The Westerschelde provided great racing – only snag was, and still is, that Breskens is much closer to Belgium than Holland and getting there from Amsterdam or Rotterdam could take three or four hours by car, including a half- hour ferry trip. Still there is no better nor more beautiful a place to sail on open water in the Netherlands and Belgium than the Schelde estuary; even now all other inland waters remain closed off from the sea by the Delta Works, the giant flood-control project that closed off the Rhine, Meuse and Schelde estuaries with its dykes. In the 1970s and early ’80s most major North Sea racing would
take place from Breskens, but this changed when Breskens and Scheveningen began sharing regattas. This weakened the Breskens scene, much to Piet’s chagrin, and when in 1984 Scheveningen got the start of the Light Vessel Race, a feeder race to Harwich, with Scheveningen already the finish of the RORC North Sea Race arguably that ended the Breskens hegemony. Piet would come to Scheveningen to race but also 30 years later still with some sadness – like me (and I was born in Scheveningen)
RONALD DEN DEKKER
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