If you attended the 2024 Vintage Boat Week in Minnesota, you may have had the incredible opportunity to see the Raceboats, Baby Skipalong and Baby Bootlegger.
Readers of ACBS Rudder are familiar with the stories of these two boats from the Raceboat History column written by Kevin Bamerick. Baby Skipalong was at one time known as Greenwich Folly. Enjoy this Raceboat History column from the Fall 2022 issue of ACBS Rudder Magazine.
Greenwich Folly
By Kevin Bamerick
“Your best motor insurance against overheating” was advertised in 1924 by the Moto Meter Company of New York for its marine type temperature indicators. Boyce Motor Meter water and oil temp dashboard panels had been mounted in Gold Cup racer boats like the Miss Columbia and Baby Bootlegger. Company president George Henry Townsend dialed in these gauges (including gas and ammeter) into his own challenger Miss Moto Meter.
Naval architect Fred K. Lord executed plans for this displacement class per Motor Boating magazine specified APBA regulations. “The keel and chine or bilge must be continuous and extend from the bow to the stem or stem post… The chines must not project below the horizontal level where the planking joins the keel.”
Henry B. Nevins shipyard on City Island, New York built the 1924 27-foot 5-inch L racer. A Packard Gold Cup IM-621, 270 hp, 6 cylinder motor powered a 17- x 27-inch Columbian Bronze propeller, no gear box, although Joe’s Reverse gear. The deck dash instrumentation panel was protected by a curved beam board. Nevins finished the mahogany double ender to a nutmeg color and spar varnished with Valspar.
Photo credit: Rob Cassell
Miss Moto Meter pre-trials at the 1925 Gold Cup regatta at Port Washington, New York resulted in her capsize after crossing a rogue wake. She withdrew with a damaged bow and was towed to Bragg’s Baby Bootlegger’s marine railway. In 1925, Lord made changes to the hull for widening her planning surface and Nevins moved the rudder inches for improved steerage. The G-8 re-emerged as the Greenwich Folly – named after Townsend’s harbor Connecticut town.
The 1926 Gold Cup regatta at Manhasset Bay, Long Island trophied Greenwich Folly a point’s victory over Carl Fisher’s Shadowvite. The Folly’s dashboard gauges in vision of its riding mechanician Bill Gillette, the H-type dash oil gauge indicating safe from the Moto Meter copper bulb sending unit located in the motor crankcase. Wolf’s Head Oil lubricated the Packard motor – the same Wolverine Lubrication used in the 1924 and 1925 Gold Cup winner Baby Bootlegger.
The 1926 Gold Cup, Greenwich Folly (Photo courtesy of the Indian Harbor Yacht Club).
Lubricating oils, gasoline and benzoyl were sold from the moored regatta fuel barge. In 1925, Harrison Boyce invented a concentrated, oily fluid additive for more pep. Boyce-Ite was advertised “to soften existing carbon deposits into a powder to be blown out the exhaust.” ‘Tis unknown if it was APBA regatta permitted, however, ‘tis wise to folly.
Swiftly flying the colors of the Indian Harbor Yacht Club, Greenwich Folly stern exhausted the competition at the 1927 Gold Cup at Long Island Sound. She defended a second time with Townsend and Gillette. At the President’s Cup Regatta on the Potomac, around the Haines Point buoys, her propeller snapped to puncture her hull. Repairs fitted she placed second.
Townsend later revealed to Motor Boating magazine the Folly’s propeller strut was lined with Promet metal – a mixture of carbon and graphite. The strut “so closely fit one would not get the usual rumble in the stern,” he said. Townsend’s yacht Sazarac was also strut lined with Promet.
ACBS member Lee Anderson in 2016 uploaded onto YouTube the 1929 Gold Cup race of Hoyt’s IMP (G-14). The video end contains 24 frames a second filming of the Folly at the 1927 Gold Cup. Anderson owns Baby Skipalong, the former Greenwich Folly.
Baby Skipalong with Lee Anderson at the helm. (Photo credit DuVernet Photography).
George H. Townsend, Jr., 93 at the time of this writing, provided literature on his father as background for this story—A white paper typewritten by R.R. Smith, Secretary, Yale University on the “1908 class history of George H. Townsend” where his subtitle appropriately described Captain Townsend as a ‘pace setter
Nice article on Baby Skipalong. A good follow up would be her history with R. Stanley Dollar Jr and racing on Lake Tahoe. But his racing history was not limited to just Lake Tahoe. I was very happy to know that Lee kept the name that she wore for a little less than 100 years, Baby Skipalong. A true flag ship of the Tahoe Yacht Club.