Club has made a major mark on Tamar
QUESTIONS: When was the Tamar Yacht Club formed? And when was it established at Launceston? They are queries that remain somewhat unanswered in Julian Burgess’s new book, The Tamar Yacht Club: a History of Sailing in Launceston
Tasmania from 1837, says Hobart yachting journalist Peter Campbell.
In a review of the book, Campbell asks “Was it 1837 or 1880?” — although he goes on to say that, regardless of the date, the Tamar Yacht Club has played a significant role in the development of the sport of sailing in northern Tasmania.
Campbell, formerly of Launceston, says his own interest in the Tamar Yacht Club began when sailing as a “bailer boy’’ in a heavyweight sharpie on the Tamar, and that an antecedent, Launceston lawyer R.M. Collins, was one of the founding members of the club.
Campbell writes that it is clear from Burgess’s meticulous research of pleasure boat sailing on the Tamar River that the Tamar Yacht Club is one of Tasmania’s oldest sporting clubs and one of the nation’s oldest sailing clubs.
Burgess, a former associate editor of the Launceston-based Examiner newspaper, also began his sailing with the Tamar Yacht Club in the Tamar class dinghies, moving into keelboats and ultimately being elected commodore.
In this detailed history of the TYC, Burgess writes that the first mention of the Tamar Yacht Club appeared in a colonial newspaper 180 years ago.
There certainly had been yacht racing in Van Diemens Land before 1837, mostly between landed gentry and successful businessmen and bureaucrats of Launceston and Hobart.
However, there are few mentions of the Tamar Yacht Club between 1837 and 1880, though the annual Tamar Regatta had become northern Tasmania’s most popular sporting event.
Elegant gaff-riggers raced on the tricky waters of Home Reach down the river, and rowing was also a major competition.
Yacht racing out of Launceston finally became formalised when the modern Tamar Yacht Club was established on Tuesday, February 23, 1880.
New yachts were built by shipwrights on the Tamar. One of the vessels built in 1895 was Bronzewing, which is still racing on the Derwent.
Over the past 137 years, the Tamar Yacht Club has played a significant role in the development of the sport of sailing in the North of Tasmania, expanding its activities with a clubhouse and marina at Beauty Point, nearer to the mouth of the Tamar.
In 1907 the club co-hosted Australia’s first ocean race, across Bass Strait for the Rudder Cup.
This week it started the 11th annual Launceston to Hobart offshore race.
In the 1940s club commodore Eric Massey skippered the Tamar’s first Sydney to Hobart yacht race entrant, Wanderer.
In 2007 club member Ken Gourlay broke the record for the fastest solo, non-stop circumnavigation of the world by an Australian.
Gourlay’s son Tristan this week is skippering Force Eleven in the Melbourne to Hobart Westcoaster race as his qualifier for the twohanded Melbourne to Osaka race next March, a distance of 5500 nautical miles.
A feature of the Tamar Yacht Club’s racing, although no longer held, was the North versus South Cup.
The yacht America was launched in 1895 and taken to Hobart to test it out against the top boats on the Derwent.
According to newspaper reports of the time, the trip down the Midland Highway was interesting: “The yacht was loaded on to a dray pulled by four horses and left Jack’s Boat Yard on January 21 accompanied by Messrs Ritchie and Barnard on bicycles. The going was very rough and several times the yacht nearly ‘broached’ and had to be manhandled back into position on the dray. Nearing Hobart an extra two horses, loaned by a farmer, were coupled to the dray. The America reached Constitution Dock three days later.”
Campbell says that Burgess’s book is an interesting history of the Tamar Yacht Club, its organisation and its racing from dinghies through to ocean racing keelboats, but also its influence on the social life of Launceston.
“Many [well-known] yachtsmen and yachtswomen [Vice-Commodore Jo Breen is also contesting the twohanded Osaka Race] have been and still are members of the Tamar Yacht Club, and Burgess’s book is a fine tribute to all who have sailed on the Tamar,’’ Campbell says.