I noted with sadness the passing of Dick Moe at the end of February. Dick was the SSSS’s first Skipper, now we call the job Commodore, and sailed many years with the club. I remember Dick as an affable person who was a good sailor and good person. I spoke with Parks Weaver about Dick and he described him as “a sailors sailor, he knew his boat well and sailed it well”. He went on to say that back in the beginning of the club there wasn’t a lot of sailing knowledge in our little town. “Dick knew a lot and was a willing teacher, an aggressive racer, and a gentleman to the Nth degree.” Parks also said that if you had a problem with your boat you could count on Dick for ideas and help in setting it right.
As the current occupant of the shoes Dick first filled I feel obliged to comment. Back when Howard Bulpit first advertised for fellow sailors to form a Society, rather than another yacht club, Dick was one of the first to respond. The group was charting new territory in those days. Bylaws were adopted and many new traditions began. Some of those traditions stayed traditions, like meeting at OYC, others went the way of the Skipper title and staying out all night on Toliva Shoal.
When the Society formed in the early 1970’s Olympia’s waterfront was more like Shelton’s. The port was usually full of giant log ships, sometimes 4 or 5 at a time. Those ships often came right thru the race course. And there was no reserve fleet mark because the eastern half of the bay was filled with the reserve fleet. Percival landing didn’t exist, when you went sailing in small boats you did it from behind Mark Johnson Marine, now a wine store, and the boats were stored next to a working tug by a tank farm. There was no Swantown Marina. This was a working waterfront with active saw mills, and marinas were shoehorned in where they would fit. There was a marina at the north end of the port dock and there was Westbay Marina. If you moored at Westbay you had to put up with your topsides being discolored from the chemicals coming out of the smokestacks at the sawmills upwind of the marina.
There was really no such thing as a custom boat, we all sailed Cals, Columbias, Islanders, Yankees, Spencers, Thunderbirds, and the occasional wooden boat. We raced a lot less and cruised more. If you wanted to have your boat hauled, the Port would use one of the old cranes to put you out on a cradle on the north end of the dock. The town had three major employers, the State, the Brewery, and the Port. There was a new college opening on the west side and it seemed like there were a lot more VW bugs and buses around.
The log ships are gone and so is the brewery. We’ve gone from a county population of 50,000 to almost 300,000. And the mall isn’t South Sound Center anymore...
Our organization is not that old but there has been an amazing amount of
change in the 36 years that SSSS has existed. Lots of new people and cool
boats, lots more racing, and Society Members are sailing and racing all over
the world.
I know Dick was a sailor to the end. I hope he was proud of the
change he helped bring to Olympia.
Dave Elliott, Flying Circus