More Olde Timey Images of Yacht Racing Past
A couple of weeks ago, we ran images of yacht racing coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle from back in the 1950s. That inspired John Dukat to send us these images from the archives of the Examiner and the Oakland Tribune from prewar days of yore.
“W.R. Hearst’s Examiner used to cover yachting quite decently (prewar to mid-1950s). Lots of front and center sailing with photos on the cover of their sporting section,” noted John.
“There was a second reason yachting wasn’t covered pre-internet. Other sports get covered in the papers. The Bay Area has how many professional teams? How many college teams?
“Once when I called the sports desk trying to get a little yacht race snippet in, I was told in no uncertain terms: ‘The Monday after a 49ers win, the Chron sells [something like a quarter million] more papers’.”
“Yachting coverage’s decline in the papers might start with professional teams coming west, and possibly the college football national rankings. Add to the mix that yachting also suffers from an undeserved hoity-toity tag.”
Lattitude 38 September 1989 has the Skylark with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, on the cover. I still have the Cover and the print that I bought from Lattitude as I owned the boat.
Are there any old photos of the Folkboat fleet in the 60’s. My team on Alice (#70) wan the fleet YRA championship in 1968 with the entire crew being UC Berkelry grad students (we were young and tough in a very wet boat)
Fantastic…Thank you for posting!
Sailing in a Snipe, my first memory (more or less) ever. The cool thing was the wood ones had these spray shields on the deck that kept the little guy in the bottom from getting soaked. I have a perfectly clear image of what those floor boards looked like that day and I was sure I was going to die.
My first sailing experience came from renting an El Toro in Redwood city and Immediately being stuck in the slough across from the rental shop breaking an oar and spending my hour getting the boat back across the slough to the dock house.
Most, if not all, of the yachting images published in the San Francisco Examiner were taken by staff photographer Bob Bryant, who was both an expert photographer and sailor. I have all of his original images and the newspaper clippings.
Jennifer Bryant, do you happen to have any pics of Bird #22, Hummingbird? I now own Hummingbird and I’ve been searching for pics of her. I’m also trying to revive the Bird class, and would love digital copies of any of the Bird pics you might have as well. Hopefully someday I can start another Bird Class website with historic pics of each of the boats, and pics of boats that are no longer with us.
We’ll have a look to see if we have any pics but, in the meantime, we’re sending a link to our very first ‘Boat of the Month’ which was on the Bird boat in the first issue of Latitude 38 in April 1977: https://www.latitude38.com/issues/april-1977/#20