The Bill Boyle Story January 24, 2002

Dear Greg,

I wanted to echo some of other folks who sent you notes about their moth experience. Some of my earliest memories are running out of the summer house and into the back of Carl Patterson’s 1955 or 56 ford station wagon. He was on his way to the Sea Isle City yacht club for day camp and he picked all of us up in that car. There was probably 10 of us in the same age group that Carl had in the day camp. He probably favored us because his sons, Tom and Bob were in the same group. He taught us how to sail. He also taught us how to swim, do gymnastics and he coached the yacht club baseball team. Carl taught us to play hard but play fair. He gave us good lessons on life. I started racing at the club in borrowed boats from kids who had boats but didn’t want to race. Eventually my dad bought me an old Ventnor. It had to be from the 1940's and it still had a cotton sail. About that time Carl started building boats. His first ones were for Tom and Bob. They were Connecticut design and at that time could run circles around anything else. Then the first Fletcher Cates designs started showing up and they put the Connecticut at the back of the fleet. Carl turned the day camp over to someone else and started making boats full time during the summer. I was about 14 or 15 then and I asked him if I could build myself a boat in his shop. He said if I did all of the work he would show me what to do and he only charged me for the wood. The Patterson Cates design that emerged had two significant advantages over the Fletcher Cates design. The bow section of a Fletcher Cates was convex and it had four pieces of shaped plywood fitted to separate stringers assigned to each small bow section. The bow shape of Cates formed a knife like prow and a deeper V shape as it went fore and aft. What Carl did on his design was eliminate all of the forward stringers and he bent the plywood from the keel up to the gunnels and then to the prow. This shape allowed a deep V design but eliminated all of the weight of the extra stringers. His boats were 10 to 15 pounds lighter than the Fletcher Cates and had the same sailing characteristics. That made them faster. I believe that is the design that Tom, and then Bob sailed in the nationals and the internationals.

I sailed my boat # 2499 for two or three years ending my moth career in 1965 at the ripe age of 18. I found something else that captured my attention... Surfing. This sport took me away from the yacht club gang of my youth and took me through college and a stint in the Navy. I still have the surfboard hanging in my garage. The moth was long gone.

The next boat was a 24 foot Rainbow which I sailed on the upper Delaware river. We were one of the charter members of the Delaware River Yacht Racing Association. I don’t know if it still exists but back then we did a fair amount of racing on the Delaware.

The job took me to Washington so we bought a house in Annapolis. For the last 20 or so years I sailed a 23 foot Paceship on the South River and the Chesapeake bay. I switched hats recently and now drive a 20 foot cuddy cabin on the West River.

One more piece of moth history. About six or seven years ago I got a phone call that the first words the caller said was "Are you the Bill Boyle that sailed #2499 back in 65?" It was George Albaugh!. He was looking at some old Moth Doings and through a mutual acquaintance he got my name. I went over to his house and saw his collection of moths. I didn’t follow through on that call but as I am nearing retirement from the federal government I recently got back into wood working making ornamental lighthouses. I also started making craftsman style furniture.

There is a good possibility that I’ll start construction of my second moth boat. I still have the plans in my head..

Thanks for bringing all of those memories back to the forefront of my mind with your Moth web page. By the way, here’s my site: http://www.geocities.com/wpb1210/Bills_Lighthouses.html

If any of your other members want to get in touch again my email is wpb1210@yahoo.com

Sincerely,

Bill Boyle