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by Allan Appel | Jul 31, 2007 3:02 pm

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At this New Haven bar hard by the banks of the Quinnipiac River, the regulars were watching an Animal Planet program where a sturgeon leaped out of the water and broke a girl’s legs. They drank beers followed by whiskey chasers served up by bartender Scott Carr, who was laboring happily under signs reading “Free Beer Tomorrow” and “Beer: Helping ugly people have sex since 1862.” And as the desultory conversation turned round and round, as it tends to do at watering holes, it was clear that neither Mayor John DeStefano nor the new municipal ID cards were wildly popular.

Welcome to the Waucoma Yacht Club, on Front Street and Pine in Fair Haven. Or, rather, You’re Not Welcome. Unless, that is, you’re one of its approximately 135 members or are accompanied by same.

One of the city’s best-kept secrets is this boating, fishing, eating, and serious drinking club that was formed in 1907. It is gearing up for (don’t spread the word) its centennial in September.

Carr said that the membership is varied, with lots of New Haveners, but also boat owners and guys who like to enter fishing contests from Branford and Guilford, some as far away as Oxford. There is also a healthy representation from East Haven. Why would they come all the way here?

“The simple answer is money,” said Carr, who by day works at the city’s waste transfer station. “Fees to keep your boat in a marina in Branford or Guilford are three times as much as here. Out there, they don’t let you change your own oil. Here, you work on your boat to your heart’s content, and we have all kinds of carpenters, electricians, HVAC guys, plumbers as well as doctors and lawyers, too.”

You can be a boat-owning member and compete for the limited dock space in the club’s marina. Or you can be a social member. (Full disclosure: Your reporter is a social member with kayaks about which he is defensive in club company.) Members contribute work days several times a year. They clean up the yard, paint the railings, banisters, and walls of the 100-year old structure, replace windows, and in general do so much of the maintenance and capital work that annual fees and other costs are kept way down.

Although private, the club is far from insular, opening its doors as a venue for community meetings— for example, for the Quinnipiac River Community Group’s monthly meetings. The club also hosts Christmas parties, July 4th barbecues, Saint Patrick’s Day events, opening day parties, fishing tournaments galore, and an especially prized night called the Game Dinner in January. On that night these fishermen, like Stuart Hutchings (pictured), strut their prey such as the bluefish and the striped bass that Hutchings catches and smokes and serves up at a communal dinner. Tickets are in the $30 range but they’re hard to come by unless you’re on the A list of members.

One of the chief organizers of the dinner in past years is fisherman and hunter Vincent Kay (not pictured), who is also one of Connecticut’s pre-eminent beekeepers. (He is also the creator of Swords Into Ploughshares brand honey, which is featured throughout the city, including un-Waucoma-like venues as vegetarian markets and Yale University dining halls.) Kay and the other Waucoma hunters bag quail and grouse and deer, filet them, and concoct pates of them. They turn Front and Pine into a carnivore’s extravaganza every winter. The repast was superb last year. No one even complained of buckshot in the venison.

On this night, a beautiful evening with the western setting sun lighting up the rippling surface of the Quinnipiac just beyond the club’s docks, the talk was of boats, and fish, and how no one knows where the name Waucoma comes from. Even Anthony Griego (not pictured), a retired city detective (many of the members are current and retired cops), doesn’t know. And he’s Waucoma’s club historian.

Never mind. The documents he’s assembled make clear that in 1907 there were three recreational boat clubs on the river. The clubs were helping to turn an industrial riverine setting into one a little more relaxed and pleasure-oriented. The Quinnipiac Club and the Pequot Club were for canoes. On Sept. 12, 1907 the Waucoma was organized and set itself apart apparently by having an inaugural display of marine engines. One of its founding members, it was said, was building a hydroplane that might be able to go up to the phenomenal speed of 30 miles per hour.

Happy birthday, Waucoma. Anyone who can prove where the name comes from gets a free beer, member or not.

Comment

posted by: Fedupwithliberals on July 31, 2007 6:59pm

I would have rather read about what their comments were about the mayor and the ID cards for illegals.

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