Nimblet’s Good Old Heydays

By Prentice Cushing

1998

Have you ever looked above the Blue Jay Trophy on the west wall of the Squadron Room over the beer cooler, noted the plaque with a half- model of a handsome small wooden day-sailer and wondered what it was ? It is the trophy for the National Championship, which became the permanent possession of the Douglaston Yacht Squadron after having won it three times in a row. So, what was a Nimblet?

The Cape Cod Nimblet was a good-looking, easy-to-handle day sailer 15' overall, 13.5' LWL, 5'1" beam and draft of 7". It weighed 375 pounds, had a mainsail area of 80 sq.ft., a 20 sq.ft.jib, no spinnaker and a large, comfortable cockpit. Built by the Cape Cod Shipbuilding Co., it was THE teaching and young sailors' boat in the pre-war days of Little Neck Bay. First bought in 1935-6 by fathers Roger Smith and jack Logan, later by Paul Bilhuber, Harold Dean and Frank Smithe, who took their sons to the Boat Show, saw and fell in love with it, a decision was made to buy a fleet which consisted of:   

All had the "Standard Rig"-the "Racing Rig" had a longer boom, but since you could hardly reach the outhaul on the regular boom, who wanted a longer one? 

The whole fleet was moored at the foot of Grosvenor Street. When the 1938 hurricane hit (with little advance warning in those days) a few of the owners sank their boats at their moorings and saved them. Roger Smith recalled in his logbook that "When I got home from school about 3:30, 1 went down to the dock and could not look into the wind because it blinded me. I and several other boys watched my boat come into shore. First it came into the float and barely missed being smashed to pieces. It caught on the anchor chair and then a Chris-Craft cruiser, Rhythm, came by and went up on the rocks; at the same time, Penzance came by the dock and Barbara began to go on the rocks. Frank Prindle swam out and saved Penzance and Bob Linder saved Barbara. Then my boat came in. We all dashed into the surf to get it. Every now and then a wave would come in and pick one of us and hurl us about 15 yards backward. We were able to guide Popeye out of danger of crashing against the dock but it still went up on the beach. One wave carried Popeye way up in the air and it tipped over. The mast hit Charlie Glynn on the head but Bob Ritter grabbed him and carried him up on the beach. When the boat tipped over it landed on Prescott Gould's leg and we thought it was busted. Soon after there was a lull in the storm and we carried the Nimblet up over the stone wall to supposed safety. However we had a tidal wave and the water rose about 15' higher than usual. We then drifted Popeye out in the road with the other Nimblets. A lot of boats were caught and smashed under drifting boats.

The boats which didn't get this treatment all ended up on the rocks and were destroyed. Replacements were ordered, mostly with the longer booms, which Cape Cod then called the "Douglaston Rig." Charlie Andersen acquired Chilli and #23 was owned by Allene Zillman (Roach) and then George Brown (son of our illustrious Past-President and pre-eminent bowler, G. Chester Brown), who named her Hey Day.

Other Nimblet fleets were established at Bantam Lake and Lake Candlewood, CT, Sebago Lake, ME; Budd Lake and Green Pond, NJ; and Beverly, MA Yacht Club, hosts for the first National Championship (1936) in which DYS placed third and the second one, in which they were "beat out by the girls." The third National, on 18 September 1938 at Lake Candlewood was won handily by Roger Smith, as was the fourth, hosted by DYS.

By 1941 several of the boats had changed hands, but Roger Smith was still the undoubted champion. A group went to Larchmont YC Race Week in July, where Bing Bang placed second and Roger won, being the only undefeated skipper in the whole fleet, an occasion which produced a complimentary column in the Herald Tribune by Everett B. Morris, the dean of all sailing writers. On 20-21 August DYS hosted the fifth National Championship of the Nimblet Class Yacht Racing Association, of which Roger Smith, Sr. was the Commodore; it was again taken by Roger Smith, which explains the trophy's above-mentioned presence. 

World War H idled racing although a few boats were still in the fleet in 1944, when another hurricane hit; most of the Nimblets, including Popeye, were destroyed, but a few remained. After Doug Fleming sold his schooner Ripple see Hi Tidings of Spring 1993) and before scraping up the money to acquire the beautiful Chantey he needed something to sail, so he purchased George Brown's Nimblet. When chantey arrived, I was lucky enough to acquire his Nimblet, which I named Oppo (if you don't know what that means you will have to buy me a drink and I'll tell you). It was the last one in the Bay and I sailed it with reasonable success in the "Handicap II" class we had in Sunday races during the 50's and 60's. At one point I broke the tiller, a beautiful 3'piece of bent oak. I wrote Mr. Goodwin at Cape Cod Shipbuilding to inquire if perchance they could make one; he had one in stock (all varnished and ready to go) which he shipped to me on open account for the huge sum of $5 (you couldn't even buy the oak for that) and offered a suit of new sails for practically nothing, which I grabbed. When I acquired Tango in 1966 1 sold Oppo to the Huegleins, who lived at the north- west comer of Douglas and Ridge Roads but shortly moved to Plandome, so the last Douglaston Nimblet left for Manhasset Bay.  

OLD IDEAS AND INSTANT TRADITION    

It's always good to promote tradition. Douglaston does, indeed, have a nearly century- old sailing tradition. But, with all due respect to our hard-working Commodore, his column on the March DC Current, claiming credit for having founded the Yacht Racing Association of Long Island Sound stretches the truth. The Douglaston Yacht Club was, indeed, one of the founders, but its heritage belongs to the Manhasset Bay Yacht Club, which they proudly admit and has been described previously in this column. Their burgee was originally that of the Douglaston Yacht Club, not the Yacht Squadron of the Douglaston Club (official name). Nevertheless, sailing in our Bay is an old and excellent tradition and better for kids than "jet-skis" or the go-fast noise boats I observe moored off the Dock this year. Let's keep it up!