Yale Corinthian Yacht Club

Yale Corinthian Yacht Club is the home yacht club for the Yale University Coed and Women's Sailing Teams. It is located at 179 Clark Avenue, Branford, CT, 06405. Founded in 1881, it is the oldest collegiate sailing club in the world.

It is generally abbreviated as "YCYC" and is affectionately pronounced "yic-yic."

Description of the Facility

Fleet

YCYC is home to the fleet of the Yale University Sailing Team's dinghies. These include 24 custom-built Vanguard Club 420s, 6 Vanguard Flying Juniors (FJs), and 6 Vanguard Lasers.

History

Founding

The Fifties

The beginning of the fifties found the YCYC with four wooden Dyer dinghies, purchased I know not when. Being wooden, lapstrake boats, they were sturdy, but unable to withstand the neglect inherent in ownership by a rather nomadic, casual student sailing club. During my Prep School days I had enjoyed considerable summer success sailing scows in Wisconsin, and so when I appeared on the New Haven scene in September 1949, I immediately joined the Yale Corinthian Yacht Club, hoping to be able to represent the University in sailing competition. In the years immediately prior to 1949, the YCYC had done extremely well in InterCollegiate competition, and I was eager to join the team. Easily done, as it turned out, because the sailing stars had all graduated, and I was one of the few YCYC members, actually, one of the few of the few YCYC members, that had any racing experience whatsoever. As I recall, David Toy, a California Snipe sailor and I, both Freshmen, were about the only YCYC members who had much of any racing experience as skippers.

The four Dyers were kept in Milford, upside down on the beach, with the sails and other paraphernalia in a shed at the edge of the Milford Yacht Club property. Since the YCYC had no University support, the operation was shoestring, to say the least. The Dyers were intended only for practice, and all competitions were staged at the magnificent facilities of Harvard/MIT (shared on the Charles River), Brown, the Coast Guard Academy, Kings Point and the Naval Academy in Annapolis, the latter a really significant drive pre-Interstate system.

H. Coleman Norris, Yale '53 (JE)

The Lawsuit

Renovations

With additional funding from an anonymous donor, the yacht club underwent a major renovation in the spring of 2002 that was completed in the fall of that year.

Renaming

Yale University Sailing Team

Current Captains

* Zachary Brown (Men's Team)
* Jane Macky (Women's Team)

Notable Alums

* Steve Benjamin
* JJ Fetter Isler
* Dave Perry
* Zack Leonard
* Stan Honey
* Jonathan McKee
* Dick Carter
* Harry Anderson, Jr.

ummer Program

The yacht club hosts a summer program annually for youth and adults in the interest of teaching novices to sail and race while partially funding the college team's racing activity. The summer youth racing team's slogan is "Don't slander me Jamal!" This is an affectionate reference originated from C.J. Walser toward one of the other team members, Jamal, who is a Brownie Scout.

Website

More information may be found at http://www.yale.edu/ycyc.