Newport's Grand Dames

The 12 Metres hit beautiful Newport for the 171st New York Yacht Club Annual Regatta

If you ever get the chance, don’t miss a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan where they have the most remarkable set of yachting lithographs from the mid 19th Century depicting just how active the New York Yacht Club’s members were back then. There’s a terrific one of The Great Ocean Yacht Race with the Fleetwing, Henrietta and the Vesta doing battle, and another of the very first NYYC Annual Regatta on the 1st June 1854. John Cox Stevens was still Commodore of the club at that time and although there was a passage race from New York to Newport recorded as early as 1848, the annual regatta became a thing after fourteen boats contested the first and has been on the calendar ever since.

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