Happy Birthyear to the Lightning

Welcome to my new blog for the Lightning Class site. I have asked you come over to the test site while we work out bugs in the new site. We will over the next months follow the history of the Lightning and the ILCA in roughly chronological order. It will be comments on a mix of photos, videos, clippings from our Class materials and periodicals. I will use a little music from the period under discussion to take you back in time. Occasionally I will toss in something interesting that crosses my desk. For tradition I will be keeping Mary Huntsman's original column title at the masthead.


Lets go back to 1938 with this tune below. It was the number two song on the 1938 hit parade. The song was the Andrews Sisters breakthrough song done for a 1938 movie. When the Lightning was being developed in the Skaneateles Boat Company shop in 1938 this would have be playing on the radio...

The idea of the Lightning was born in conversation at the Skaneateles County Club in 1938. Lead by Comet sailors Linzey Nickolson and Gordon Cronk the parameters were set for 20'ish sloop for racing and daysailing. Two members of the group, boatbuilders John and George Barnes, recommended 19 feet for  best use of standard 20 pieces of lumber. John Barnes would suggest they use a the hottest new design team to draw the boat. That would be the new firm of Sparkman & Stevens in NYC. A deal was struck with S&S do the boat and sell  enough sets of plans to satisfy the fee.  Then they would sign rights to the design over  to a new class association. And the name? Why not the fast old clipper ship Lightning.

Here are the young gentlemen that gave us out boat. Over the next months lets get to know them better.

 

To view this as it should appear click the 2017 archive to the right  and start with the first entry. Keep clicking up and it will keep reloading, appearing as it would in order.

Craig Thayer & Bill Fastiggi's notes on Fleet #7

After posting earlier on Fleet #7  I received an email from Bill giving me insight in to what happened at Riverside YC. He says in the Forties that the Fleet Lightnings were loaned to the Juniors during the summer weekends  and raced by the parents on weekends. Great arrangement. By end of the Forties the kids were wanting a sportier boat. Riverside YC would go to the Fireball, a small plywood scow with a trapeze. Bill says this was the story all along the Sound.
 Craig, who grew up on the south side of the Sound in Huntington dose not re
member  Lightnings as Junior trainers. He remembers the S&S Bluejay ( a 13' miniature Lightning) being the kids boat.

Two different takes by two reliable sources. Looking into it I find they are looking at two different times.  The Fall 2016 issue of Flashes  had a photo in my history column of a cover from the August 6 , 1945  Life magazine showing kids rigging a Lightning at Riverside YC.

Note the magazine's date... it's the day the Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan ending WWII.

Going back to my files to review the issue I re-read the article which was about the Juniors Program at Riverside which describes the program being sailed in Lightnings. The instructor is Jane Webb who's dad was an early Lightning hotshot on LIS. Better yet looking at the photos we find old 'Tam', #289, again,  

 so we now have #289 as a cover girl (we have many more Lightnings on magazine covers over the years including Ladies Home Journal and Sports Illustrated, we will get to them in the coming months ). Now with Bill's contribution we can tie it all together. Here, slip back to 1945 and enjoy the Life article:

If your club or class boat made the cover of a leading publication you would want the world to know.  Lets look at Yachting. The magazine  ran in the back pages several columns for sailing areas and classes. There it was in the October 1945 issue of Yachting. We find our Class President James M. Trenary (#298) penning a section called "Lightning Flashes". He announces the August Life article and we find the Life photographer who did the piece was crew on Lightning #675. 

From a couple of seconds clip from a video I published a couple of posts back we have tied things together to  give us an insight into our early Class history. Here is the Yachting, note the establishment of the first Class office, Karl Smither ( Fleet 12) goes for a swim and we read of the start of Lightning sailing in Columbia SA. 

Now for Craig, he is a decade ahead in the 1950s. The Blue Jays he remembers was designed by Sparkman & Stephens. Like the Laser the Blue Jay started as a sketch on a napkin. Doodled by Drake Sparkman (Lightning #5) and his fellow YC members in 1947. One suggested the name "Blue Bird" and Drake refined it by calling it "Blue Jay" making for an inexpensive Class insignia, using  a stock sailmakers blue colored letter 'J' .  Taking it to Olin Stephens the plans for the boat were drawn in 1948 and the first Blue Jay was shown at the 1949 New York Boat show. S&S would ( and still does) sell the plan for a nominal fee. The Blue jay went to fiberglass in the Sixties. Two of the molds made are owned by the Blue Jay Class and are in good hands at Allen Boat Co. in Buffalo. Need a 'J', give Tom a call.   

Motorboating   January 1949

And last, looking for Webb in our 1946 Lightning Class Yearbook we find a Rosenfeld portrait of the Webb family.

                                                   

Thanks to Bill and Craig for helping us out here.