Early Days, RBC

by Marilyn and Dave Sutherland

Once upon a time, Geoff Noble's Shipyard stood at the southeast corner of Thornbury harbour. In the centre of the yard, a monster boulder heaved up through the dirt floor. In the mid-'60s, a few amateur sailors who had gathered around it for the proverbial salty yarns, called this Über-Boulder their “Reef”. And so the club became known as the “Reef Boat Club”. (Our first Commodore, being a teacher and hence a bit bolshie, vetoed “Yacht” in the interests of class solidarity.) Later, the pier was called the inner reef and the breakwall, the outer reef – and a reef knot became our logo.

Hans, Kieth, Dave and Cliff

Among these budding sailors were: the RBC’s first commodore, and my good friend, Hans Huyer and his wife Hermie, with their dinghy Green Bottle; Keith Baker, 2nd Commodore, and Audrey Baker in Dirty Bird (congrats - still afloat!); Bob Allin, local MD, and Lois Allin with a spiffy Folksboat. The token weekenders were Dave, the third commodore, and Marilyn Sutherland. We sailed a homemade, poorly designed, cheaply fitted-out catamaran known as Raft, aka, Pitchpole. Our professionals were: Geoff Noble, with his bespoke, shippy wood boats and Harold (Skin) Abbott, born Thornburger, onetime commercial fisherman, and skipper of our very slow displacement-hull safety boat (took a while, but almost always got to you.)

In no time the club took off (why not, all Thornbury Harbour was our bailiwick!) We mostly had dinghies. Terry and Noni Harris took over Green Bottle. I sold Raft to our forth commodore, Cliff Martin, who got rid of it as soon as he could. The Bakers kept Dirty Bird forever. Stan and Alice Cowan went for steel. Later, Paul and Linda Grigg became trapeze-artistes on a Hobie Cat. The Club had a large Albacore fleet, particularly ill suited to the bay and regularly knocked down like ninepins.
Soon RBC approached 100 memberships. Great social nights – Italian Night, German Night, French Night, Soups Night (thanks to Marilyn’s brigades!) An illegal bar, winked at by the Powers. Lots of work parties rebuilding docks, planting moorings, shoring up the fish shed; lots of wrangling about the constitution, memberships, moorings (big one!), protests

We wouldn’t change a minute of it.