Youth sailing and racing has a long history in the Kennebunks. Even before the Kennebunk River Club was built in 1890, kids were learning to sail and race their sailboats out of the Lobster Boat and Canoe Club near Government Wharf.

George H. Walker offered a prize for a series of races in 1904 that finally required all the contestants have boats of the same design. National Newspaperman, Francis Noble was Vice Commodore at the Kennebunk River Club in 1913. He and Ralph Durrell designed a fleet of six shallow, clunky, slab like, 12-foot sailboats called Skipjacks, and organized a youth sailing club called the Sand Peeps in 1914.

Members of The Kennebunk River Club acquired a new and improved fleet of sixteen 15-foot “Monty Cats” with centerboards and one triangular sail to participate in races against a team from Falmouth Foreside in 1922. The Montycats were designed by Captain Montgomery of Annisquam, MA. They were sounder vessels than the Skipjack, that by then even designer Francis Noble was calling an abomination. The Kennebunkport course ran outside the breakwater to Cape Porpoise and back.

Bea Edmands remembered one Montycat race on a very windy day. “When they got to the Breakwater, they started to capsize, one after the other.” Atwater Kent had to rescue them all in the club motor launch.

The next design of local youth sailing vessels was called the “Indian.” It was an Alden designed 21-foot centerboard knockabout built by George l. Chaisson for Nantucket and Kennebunkport in 1928. The rigging included a self-tending jib and a small spinnaker. This fleet included 13 boats. (1-12 and 14) Indians were raced here until the 1940s shorter visits curtailed youth sailing programs.

Booth Chick designed and built 76 “Chickadees” in the 1950s. “Chickadees” and “Indians” were put back to work in the 1960s and 1970s, eventually used for youth sailing programs at the Kennebunk River Club, Arundel Yacht Club and Kennebunk Beach Improvement Association. A few Chickadees are still around. What do you remember about learning to sail in the Kennebunks?