Miami Yacht Club Florida Late 1940s

History is marked by "flowering" time periods, a confluence of time, location and people that melds in a dynamism that creates something interesting and different. (Some of these periods have enormous influence on world history, Paris in the 19th century springs to mind; a center of radicalism in mid-century, a center of frenetic artistic bounty in the late century.)  Such was the case with small boat sailing out of Miami during the post-WWII years. A combination of professional builders and amateur tinkerers pushed the development of three small boat classes, two of them local. However, in this history, the two local Miami classes, the Suicide and the Cricket, "flowered" and then disappeared, their effect negligible on the later history of small boat sailing . The long, lean, Suicide dinghy with the wishbone rig was the fastest sailing class in the U.S immediately after WWII. The Cricket was an all-out racing cat-boat with a wishbone rig and a sliding seat. (The Mothboat was the third class - what we call the Classic Moth today.) Miami Yacht Club on the causeway was the focal point for racing these unique craft.

In search of more archival material on the Suicide and Cricket class in Miami, I turned to George A of Mid-Atlantic Musings. George has a vast collection of Mothboat historical material including the Miami period. Sure enough, George was able to produce the Walter Dietel album. Walter was a German immigrant who designed and built his own Mothboats and Suicides in Miami after WWII.

Photos from the album are featured below. Some of the photos are from the Miami Y.C and some, I think, are from the Coconut Grove Sailing Club.

A Cricket coming at the camera with a Suicide in the background.

Walter Dietel Album

A Cricket on a trailer with Mothboats launching.

Walter Dietel Album

A Cricket and a Suicide. I think this is the race committee boat that is throwing them a line. (See photo below.)

Walter Dietel Album

Three Crickets. This may be a start, or possibly a leeward rounding - hard to tell. You can definitely see the sliding seat in use on the leftmost Cricket.

Walter Dietel Album

Jerry Gwynns champion Suicide Joker.

Walter Dietel Album

A Suicide kicking it up on a reach.

Walter Dietel Album

On the launching beach, a mixture of Suicides, Crickets, Mothboats and what looks to be a Whitman EZ-build chine decked canoe (International Canoe) with most likely Lou Whitman himself standing over it.

Walter Dietel Album

The peanut gallery, in rapt attention to the racing, consigned to a log on the beach, .

Walter Dietel Album

Walter Dietel, from whose photo album these images were taken, with his home-built, amateur designed Mothboat.

Walter Dietel Album

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One Hundred Years The Boys of the Genesee Dinghy Club

One hundred years ago, on this day, May 30, Decoration Day in the United States (the precursor to Memorial Day), the racers of the Genesee Dinghy Club started their 1915 season in new digs. They had moved east across the Genesee River to Summerville, a lakefront suburb of Rochester, New York. Their little club of dinghy lockers was now sandwiched between Popps Inn and the U.S LifeSaving Station, just off the beach.

It would be a good move. Launching from the beach was now mostly protected by the jetty that extended out from the Genesee River. If Lake Ontario turned too gnarly, racing could be pulled under the jetty as well. The club would grow their fleet of Genesee Dinghies over the next five years to about twenty with ten to fourteen making it to the starting line on any one day.

The Genesee Dinghy was twelve feet long, about five feet wide, a cat boat, with a low aspect gunter rig of around 90 square feet. It originally started off as a copy of Torontos 1898 Morse dinghy but, as a development class, it quickly morphed into a different craft. The Genesee Dinghy was raced singlehanded, a true novelty in the early 1900s, and they raced on open water, another novelty, but also considered extremely foolhardy for the dinghy racer of the early 1900s.

By 1915 Canada was already enmeshed in the Great War and America was two years away from joining the fight. At least two of the Genesee Dinghy Club members were to fight on the Western front.

From the Emerson collection, here is a photo montage of some sailors from the Genesee Dinghy Club - Americas first die-hard dinghy racers.

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