The Williams College Yacht Club was founded in the mid-1930s. Although there is no apparent record of when the club was first formally created, its first active racing season was in the fall of 1935 when freshman James P. Lewis '39 seems to have sparked an interest in the club. In the fall of 1936, Williams sent crews to four regattas at MIT, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Brown. They did quite well, taking a third, a fourth, and a sixth in fleets generally numbering 15-16 schools. Interestingly, all of these regattas took place in November and December, after the end of the present day collegiate season. This would have made for some extremely cold sailing. Lewis was made Commodore of the Yacht Club in the spring of 1937 and continued to lead the Yacht Club until his graduation. During this time, the Yacht Club also had a program of bringing prominent yachtsmen to speak on campus during the winter. George Owen visited and spoke before the school in both 1935 and 1936.
The Yacht Club continued active fall and spring seasons that included participation in the Intercollegiate Sailing Championship for the McMillan Cup at Port Washington after the end of the school year. The Yacht Club held its first home regatta and gained the ability to hold practices in the spring of 1937 when members Peter Shonk and Ivor Catlin agreed to bring their own boats to Lake Pontoosuc and make them available to the club. This first regatta was against Amherst and a number of faculty members, and was held in two Class B and two Dublin one-design dinghies. The Yachtsmen handily defeated all challengers.
The Pontoosuc fleet continued to grow and in 1940 added four Comet class knockabouts, rented by the college, to the eight dinghies owned by club members. In 1939, Williams Sailing reached its highpoint on the strength of expert skippering by Arthur J Santry '41 and Robert N. Bavier '40. The Yacht Club won the intercollegiate championships in 1939 and again in 1940 and maintained an undefeated series of first places for almost two years. Williams also had the honor of being the first school invited to the Naval Academy in Annapolis for an ocean race against the naval cadets. Under Bavierís leadership, the Yachtsmen defeated Navy, on their home waters, by over a half-mile. After graduating from Williams, Bavier continued the success he had at Williams and went on to a prestigious sailing career. In 1964, he captained Constellation to victory in the Americaís Cup.
Throughout the 1940s and early '50s, the Yacht Club remained quite active although they never quite matched the success of the 1939 and 1940 seasons. In 1952, with Bill Maclay at the helm, Williams again won the Intercollegiate Championship in Annapolis. After this point, however, the Williams Yacht Club appears to have slowly gone downhill and dropped out of sight. Although the Club continued to exist at some level, the Williams Record stopped reporting on their regattas. During this time, the Yacht Club was not competitive and received no financial support from the college and thus had no boats with which to practice or hold regattas. The club was, in fact, little more than a group of people who entered and paid their own way to regattas at other schools. In 1964, after a surprising victory by freshman skippers Ted Green and Chris Dorin, an editorial appeared in the Record decrying the "Campus Indifference" under which the Yacht Club had to fight to exist. Noting that: "Most people at Williams do not even know that there is a competing sailing team," (Williams Record, 11/20/1964) the article pointed out that Williams Yachtsmen actually had to hitchhike to regattas as the College refused to pay for transportation. By 1970, the Williams Yacht Club had completely ceased to exist.
In 1976, it was re-founded under the initiative of Professor Carl Van Duyne who raced in the Finn class in the 1968 Olympics and placed third in Finn Worlds in 1970. Out of respect for Williams' early role in pioneering collegiate sailing, the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association (NEISA) agreed to reinstate the reformed club as a full member without the normal period of associate membership. The new club sparked a great deal of interest and Professor Van Duyne hoped that the Yacht Club would be able to "purchase their own small fleet and perhaps sponsor their own regatta." (Williams Record, 10/8/1976) Unfortunately, funding for this never materialized and the Williams College Yacht Club was without boats and unable to practice or host regattas. The Yacht Club continued at this level until 1995 when Brett MacLeod '98 captained Williams to victory in the Corinthian regatta at the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point. Following this victory, the Williams Yacht Club received a sixty thousand-dollar donation from an anonymous alumnus. This enabled the Yacht Club to purchase the six 420-class dinghies and docks that they currently have on Pontoosuc Lake.
In 2003, it became apparent that the team's facility at the Ponterril Marina would no longer satisfy the team's needs. Over 120 years of New England winters had weakened the structure of the main building, and the team was forced to move facilities. With the assistance of Richard Cote, the College secured a permanent membership in Berkshire Community Sailing, a non-profit boat club on Pontoosuc Lake, where the team now holds practices and regattas.
History Researched and Written by Brad Nichol, '02