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14 | <strong>01945</strong><br />
Marblehead Town Class sails on<br />
BY TRÉA LAVERY<br />
On a hazy morning, a group of small,<br />
brightly-colored sailboats drift slowly<br />
from their moorings by the Marblehead<br />
causeway toward the end of the harbor.<br />
These boats, most crewed by just one<br />
or two sailors, may look inconsequential,<br />
but they make up Marblehead's oldest<br />
continuously-raced fleet. The Town Class,<br />
affectionately known as "Townies," are<br />
ready to race.<br />
On the porch of Corinthian Yacht<br />
Club, the race committee hangs an orange<br />
two-by-four from a railing, marking the<br />
starting line. Traditionally, a sailing race<br />
committee will be stationed on a boat to<br />
set the line, but Corinthian's is unique.<br />
"Coming back and looking at<br />
that is just beautiful," said sailor Peg<br />
MacMaster.<br />
The 16.5-foot, one-design Townies<br />
were first built in 1932 by Marcus Lowell<br />
of Amesbury, and arrived in Marblehead<br />
in 1936. They were designed to be<br />
accessible to an ordinary townsperson,<br />
hence the name. Marcus' son, Pert, later<br />
took over the business, establishing the<br />
Pert Lowell Company in Newbury, which<br />
Boats in the Town Class, affectionately named<br />
"Townies," race around Marblehead Harbor during<br />
the Monday morning regatta.<br />
PHOTOS: JULIA HOPKINS<br />
his son-in-law, Ralph Johnson, runs today.<br />
To date, they have built over 2,000 of the<br />
boats in wood and fiberglass models.<br />
Marblehead Harbor is home to the<br />
world's largest fleet of Townies, currently<br />
numbering just over 40. Race committee<br />
member Bart Snow is to thank for that.<br />
Snow's parents purchased a Townie<br />
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in 1953 to provide him with an outdoor<br />
activity that wouldn't upset his hay fever.<br />
The next year, he started racing and, in<br />
1962, he won the first-ever National<br />
Town Class Regatta in Nahant.<br />
In the 1990s, after taking a few<br />
decades off to race other boats, Snow<br />
was approached by an old classmate to<br />
join the Town Class Twilight Series,<br />
which races in the harbor on Tuesday and<br />
Thursday nights throughout the summer.<br />
He was disappointed to find that, while<br />
he was used to seeing upwards of 60<br />
boats from his old racing days, just 11<br />
Townies were left to sail Marblehead<br />
Harbor.<br />
"We would go out racing and be<br />
lucky to get three or four on the start<br />
line," Snow said. "The whole problem<br />
was that all the boats got sold out of<br />
town, because it's a 20-year wait for a<br />
mooring."<br />
Snow decided to take things into his<br />
own hands. He got permission from the<br />
harbormaster to install a trawl along<br />
the causeway, which could hold 20<br />
boats. The space was formerly unused,<br />
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