November 13, 2008
Dear Chesapeake 20 Fleet
and Supporters:
We had a very successful C20 annual meeting on the 8th
which is reported on at the end of this newsletter but first I have big news.
Volunteer and Magic
Clay
Taylor and I announced at the C20 annual meeting that we had acquired Volunteer #27 and Magic #111 from the Hedlers.
We are grateful to Don and Jean for agreeing to sell them to us. Magic appears to be in pretty good shape
overall. She could be up and running fairly soon. Volunteer, on the other hand, will require extensive
reconstruction. Our goal remains to gather
and preserve as many of the original Chesapeake 20s as possible. If you can restore a 20 or know of someone
who would be willing to please let us know.
As of Monday you can check out Magic, she’s already at the club. From now on she will be known as “Defender” –
read on……
The
story of our 20’s continues to unfold.
Until now we believed three or four Mower designed boats had been built.
We thought Magic/Babs was one of them. Upon
examining our records I have discovered that Magic was indeed Babs however,
before that she may have been Defender which is not a Mower design but the third
attempt by Captain Dick to build a faster boat than Vanity. We will need to take measurements of Vanity and Magic to determine if Magic is indeed a Mower design as we have generally assumed. As you may recall
Vanity was the fastest “20 footer” (as they were referred to then) on the bay
and she was a Mower design built by John Gregory. This means that there were
probably only two Mower designed boats all along; Vanity and Gay Lady.
Vanity #101 now sits outside at the Shadyside Museum. She dominated
the Chesapeake 20 fleet in 1934 and 1935 winning nearly every race by wide
margins. She actually proved that round-bottom twenty footers were vastly
superior to a “V” bottom with the more traditional chine design. Her obvious superiority became a major
challenge for Captain Dick Hartge who must have been thinking about building a
fleet of 20s.
Charles
Mower was a famous naval architect who designed several America’s Cup boats; by
contrast, Capt. Dick used half models and designed through “trial and error”.
His
first attempt was Mermaid #22, (now
fully restored and owned by Clay Taylor).
He gave Mermaid to Oscar
Hartge after its construction to be finished off. But he did not like the look of Mermaid which was significantly wider at
the bow, and had a flatter bottom and lower freeboard and most importantly she
consistently came in second to Vanity.
Continuing
the pursuit of his goal to beat Vanity, Captain Dick next built Challenger (c1936), then Defender (c1937). In the 1937 Summer Series Defender placed third behind Vanity and Mermaid. However, Captain
Dick managed to finish first in Defender at
the 1937 West River summer series, with Mermaid
in second. At the WRSC Annual
Regatta in 1937, the order was Vanity, Mermaid and Defender.
Then
he tried one more time and built Ranger (1938).
At last in the 1938 Summer Series, Ranger
came in first, Vanity second, and Defender fourth.
Based
on this winning design, Capt. Dick was satisfied and settled on Ranger as #1 to become the proto-type of
nearly 50 “Hartge 20s” as he called them, built between 1938 and 1944 with a
few more built after that.
The
first “production” Hartge 20 was Stormy
#26, owned by me and now registered as #2390 with the Maryland Inventory of
Historical Properties.
Most
observers thought that Babs (aka Magic, Attaway,
Attagay and Defender) was a Mower boat because of its striking similarity
to Vanity but now we know the truth.
Incidentally,
the Board of Directors for Shady Side Rural Heritage Society this week agreed
to include Vanity as part of our
efforts to register C-20s with the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties.
Champagne
& Potluck
We
had a very successful and enjoyable Chesapeake 20 Annual Meeting on November 8,
2008 at the club.
The
business meeting was swift. We reviewed
last year’s minutes, the budget and elected our officers for 2009. They are Ted Weihe, President; Robin Hartge,
Vice President; Clay Taylor, Secretary and Carole McCullough, Treasurer. We want to thank Nicky Schlegel for his
service on the board.
We
also discussed the generally lower participation rates for the 2008 season - higher
for the Nationals (14) and Hartge Cup (12) - and set the date for the Worlds on June 20-21,
2009 at the Annapolis Maritime Museum in Annapolis. We also decided to have more races early in
the season to prepare for the Worlds.
With all of the trophies lined up, the winners of major
regattas were announced and congratulated. (See the last newsletter). We want
to thank Roger Link for updating the trophy plaques.
“Classie” round
Chesapeake 20 stickers, designed by Pam Taylor, promoting our class and our website
were given to all attendees. Let me know
if you want some stickers for your car.
Judy awarded Glenda Blomquist and Carolynn DeTessiere yellow
flags for their yeoman work as race committee on the Jenny Girl. Some comment was made about having a blast.
The
champagne, potluck dinner and camaraderie were extraordinary and made this one
of the best annual meetings in recent years.
Speakers
We had two great speakers: Will Keyworth of North Sails
described his early years as a junior fleet member at WRSC. Halley Thomas and Bobby Orme were his
mentors. He worked at Bobby Orme’s (whom
he still calls Mr. Orme) Blue Water Marina off Rhode River, throughout high
school and college. This job included working on and restoring Chesapeake
20s. He said that Mr. Orme was very
demanding and that the Chesapeake 20 bottom had to be perfect. They raced competitively and Will’s job was
always to give Mr. Orme his greatest competition. Later, Will became a school teacher and then,
using his knowledge and love of sailing and racing, he continued racing during
the summers. Eventually he raced all
over the world and now he is the manager of North Sails of Annapolis.
Molly Winans made a slide
presentation of a proposal of Spinsheet’s to sponsor a trip to Galway Bay,
Ireland for the Volvo 70 Round the World
Race stopover in late May. Several
attendees indicated that they were very interested in joining the group. If you are interested check out Spinsheet at www.Spinsheet.com.
River Sailing
West Club Annual Meeting
Please try to make it to the WRSC annual
meeting on Saturday, November 22, 2008, beginning at 2 PM. There are two major items that will be
presented to membership: a dues increase and moving forward with purchasing the
land where the catamarans are now parked.
Also, parking spots will be at a premium this year, so it will be
important for Chesapeake 20 owners to have their dues in early and apply for
parking spots.
