A trip down memory lane: First Cadet Member and Sabot Winner by John Fletcher

I was lucky enough to be among the first group of cadet members of MYC which mainly consisted of pilot station kids and a few ring-ins like me. Most of us had sabots and I can lay claim to winning the club’s first Sabot race in my racing car red Sabot Nolea D named in honour of my Mum who bought it for us.

The Tracey family made up the majority of the fleet with their three sabots – Mink, Beaver and Otter. The Bacon and Ahern families had a boat each.

The course was a couple of laps in front of the clubhouse which was not quite finished and the marker buoys were a couple of fenders anchored by a couple of rocks. Post-race activities consisted of eating watermelons and swimming in the crystal clear water of our beautiful Mooloolah River.

Harry Pollard was the first commodore and I can remember going to BBQ’s at Harry’s motel on Aerodrome Road before the clubhouse was opened. Once the clubhouse was opened it was the centre of our activities and to us kids the MYC was just one big happy family and we ran amuck while our parents enjoyed the cold XXXX and many seafood feasts thanks to the abundant supply from the trawler fraternity who also made up a large component of the early membership of MYC.

The club’s early financial success, according to my father, was the fact that the local watering holes were all Carlton Pubs and MYC was the only venue selling XXXX. I clearly remember noticing the Carlton neon sign in front of the clubhouse when it reopened a few years ago and having a bit of a chuckle as I’m sure the early members would be turning in their graves! Funny how things change and sometimes go full circle.

The original club managers were Bob and Nancy Blinkhorne. Nancy ran the office with an iron fist and Bob was the affable bar manager who became somewhat of a legend among the large contingent of yachties who made the MYC a compulsory port of call whilst racing and delivery yachts up and down the cast coast.

Bob and Nancy’s adopted son Tim Wotton was the enterprising young lad who is mentioned in dispatches recently in regards the La Balsa visit as he was the one charging the visitors for a tour of the raft in his well weathered tinnie. Tim has been a compulsory crewmember of mine over several decades of racing and delivering yachts and he has become one of the most respected and experienced maxi yacht skippers in the Whitsundays.

My father Alan Fletcher had been an advocate of Mooloolaba Yacht Club among the Brisbane yachting fraternity from the beginning. He had done several of the early Sydney to Brisbane races as navigator and saw the obvious merit of finishing the race at Mooloolaba. My Father was a well-respected yachtsman and administrator achieving Honorary Life membership of Queensland Yachting Association in 1966, crewing on many successful yachts since the 50s, including navigator for Peter Kurts on Mister Christian when she won line and handicap honours in the 1966 Brisbane to Gladstone. Mister Christian was the first Queensland yacht to win line honours since Alvis in 1957 and Dad was also a crew member on her.

He was also a long-standing member of Queensland Cruising Yacht Club and this well-established club did not have a clubhouse. Dad argued the case for the club to get onboard with Mooloolaba, but it was an idea that didn’t get any traction. Dad’s good friend and skipper through the early ‘60s, Clarrie Noble who was a past-commodore of QCYC, took up the case to have the Sydney to Brisbane Race finish moved to Mooloolaba and so began a new era for MYC.

There was no looking back from there and an idea put up by a foundation member, Dougy Fortune to have an Offshore Racing Regatta out of MYC became a reality in 1975 with the inaugural Sunshine Coast Offshore Racing Series (SCOR series) attracted an entry list of nearly seventy yachts.

The original series was well supported by our good friends in Middle Harbour Yacht Club. This association with MHYC went on well into the early ‘90s when that club came into financial troubled waters and the race was taken over by Cruising Yacht Club of Australia whose members had also been great supporters of both the Sydney to Mooloolaba Race and the SCOR series.

The spin-off of this boom in yachting through the ‘70s, ‘80s early ‘90s was unreal and it saw MYC as arguably the best yacht club in the country. Without doubt it had the reputation as the most fun club.

I can remember regular club events of 30+ Div 1 boats and 20+ Div 2 boats. We used to race every second weekend during the season in those days, which I think was one of the secrets of the enormous success of the club. Members still had time for their families although it was always a family orientated club. I think the racing program just got too much for the average owners and crew and it gradually started to die off.

Clubs had become businesses which had to happen and our club’s success was obvious and some clubs copied our format and along with some situations out of our control such as the silting of our once great harbor entrance saw a decline in our position.

I can remember bringing Jack Rooklyn’s maxi Apollo in and out of the harbour each race day during the 1985 SCOR; I think we only had to wait outside on two or three occasions as well as a couple of early starts, but it was no real inconvenience and she drew 14 feet.

 

Photo – Fletch and his ’98 Brisbane Gladstone Race crew on Utopia.