The latest issue of the AMYA magazine features a short item mentioning a proposal for a new “vintage” subgroup featuring Marbleheads of the 1970 to 1980 era.
I thought I would bring it here as many readers of the forum are not AMYA members, but may find this interesting.
Earl Boebert is active in the USVMYG and is a member of this forum. Hopefully Earl will jump in and give us some more information. My own M is too new, but I always have an eye out for a good project and will watch the proposal closely.
When we set up the VM class ca. 1995, we established two divisions, “Traditional,” and “High Flyer” In most regattas the two divisions race together but are scored separately.
The rules for each were based on the old MYRAA M Class rules with restrictions on materials and dimensions. They can be found at:
The rules have served us well for 13 years; over a hundred boats have been registered, and our VM National Regattas have displayed pretty boats and close racing. In particular, on all but the very longest courses, the older “Traditional” designs have shown themselves to be fully competitive with the newer “High Flyers.” The three top VM skippers in terms of overall wins of joint regattas all sail “Traditional” boats.
The two existing divisions are intended to cover the evolution of M class designs from 1932 to 1970. We mark the latter date as the end of the “Vintage Era” because it roughly coincides with the transition from free sailing to radio and from the old MYRAA to the AMYA.
Well, time marches on, and Ms from the 1970-1980 time frame are now over 25 years old, so the thought arose that we should add a third division, called “Transitional,” to cover this period. This division was tried out at the 75th Anniversary regatta at Marblehead and seemed to be well accepted, and so we are proceeding with the rules process.
I anticipate that for the next few years at least we will sail all three divisions together, and I also expect to see Al Suydam’s 1936 “Cheerio” near or at the top of the heap
Thanks for yours on John Snow’s efforts on the behalf to the older M’s. I also appreciate your joining our M class discussion group which is open to all M’s and their Skippers.
With all the debate regarding the M class, there was really not a place that people could discuss or debate the changes to the current M class such as draft restrictions or allowing a larger main sail on boats without swing rigs for example.
The discussion group has not seen much activity and that is mainly due to not much publicity about it. With your membership and others, we hope to see this discussion group do what was intended.
