Your leadership has asked me to talk with you about The Catboat Association and how it grew. I've been a member of this somewhat offbeat group for almost 30 years. For virtually all that time my wife and I have helped them work on common catboat interests.

One private matter-I am grateful to the CBA for helping me learn what happened to the old Squab. That was the 21-foot Vineyard cat my father sailed out of Hingham Harbor with great pleasure 65 years ago. I was able to learn the Squab had gone to Woods Hole, to Annapolis, to New Orleans, to Boca Grande, Florida. Under different names, of course. A decade ago she was returned to the Vineyard. She was rebuilt and now is sailed with the care and deference due a lady of nearly 70 years.

We discovered also the old Squab had been bought in Woods Hole by Kit Tobin, a family friend of my wife on the Vineyard, and by Bart Dunbar, son of Spaulding Dunbar, the gifted Cape Cod boat designer and builder. These two sailed the cat to Annapolis on weekends. The academy sailing master had told them where to moor the boat and they came ashore. Dunbar was then a young Navy lieutenant attached to the academy. Kit tells me that two days later, both were summoned before the academy superintendent. He looked at them sharply and said, "It has come to my attention that you two have tied up a pleasure boat on MY mooring." There was: a pause while Kit and Bart began to perspire. The superintendent went on, "This looks like an able boat. When can YOU arrange to take me for a sail aboard her?" That was arranged.

One factor to tell you: in the CBA yearbook, by custom, our members are listed as husbands and wives. Occasionally, there are listings of wives and husbands. And there are some separate listings of members and their children, some of whom grew up sailing in catboats. I think this linkage is one major reason why the catboat came back from near-extinction. When I think of our leadership I think of John and Pinkie Leavens, Paul and Molly Birdsall, Ben and Anne Brewster, Frank and Linda Cassidy, Tom and Susan Maddigan. All had family who sailed with them on their catboats. And these people are now mingled with other names-Fife, Pearson, Browne, Breda, Luckraft, Crosby, Hall, Pepin, Reddington, Titcomb, Johnson and many others who have helped.

I see from your Crocker Talk newsletter that you may have a similar organization in your Crocker Talk newsletter--listing Roger and Maddie Burke, Craig and Cathy Humphrey, Barry and Sue Blaisdell, plus the names of Finch, Churchill, Hayes and others who help.

The CBA has some Crocker members-Ken and Debbie Crocker of Topsfield. They sail the 22 foot Sam Crocker cat August Moon out of Ipswich.

Before there was The Catboat Association, there was the catboat. Before I can tell you about the people who sail her, I need to tell you about this vessel.

So, behold the catboat. Note that it is both a hull and a rig. Note that the hull is wide and the big, gaff-rigged sail is set on a strong mast with a single forestay well forward near the stem. Note how the sail is controlled with a topping lift, lazy jacks, separate throat and peak halyards, reef points.

So the catboat is basic, plain, unadorned except for necessities. The catboat is beamy, generous in girth, usually half as wide as she is long. The catboat is powerful with that big, single sail. The catboat is shallow draft, usually with a centerboard. And the catboat is deceptively simple. The experienced sailor knows that if he fails to reef when the wind gets strong, the cat may turn around and stare him in the eye. He also knows that jibing in heavy air may pull the rig out of the boat.

The gaff main is not meant to be picturesque. It's to lower the center of effort, give more drive off the wind and allow more control through the peak halyard and topping lift.

Yet it is a rig and a hull form that take easily to young learning sailors. We can see this from the Beetle Cats, which have been built for 75 years, and more recently by Harold Turner's Turnabout trainers beginning perhaps 45 years ago.

The catboat is a native American art form. She was developed, built and sailed with great skill by ordinary men who needed her for honest work. Her origins go back at least 160 years, and perhaps more.

She was one of the most versatile workboats ever devised. In the age of sail she was used extensively for all kinds of fishing activities--lobstering, swordfishing, seining, handling and scalloping. She was used in packeting and carry-away work. From southern New England to the Jersey shore, cats took out day visitors for bluefishing and other pleasures.

The classic catboat has a plumb stem, high bow, and big barndoor rudder. Those cats 17 feet or more usually have a cuddy cabin with two bunks and the rudiments for overnight sailing. The cat is rarely longer than 22 to 25 feet. She was never intended for blue water work. Some of the bigger cats did go 30 or more miles offshore in the fisheries. But the cat mostly was an alongshore workboat.

The catboat had also been used since early times for pleasure sailing and for racing. However, some cats built for racing a hundred years ago developed an unsavory reputation and cast a shadow over some other catboats. These racing cats had been given enormous rigs, with booms going way aft of the transom. They set jibs on a long bowsprit and some even had what we might call bloopers, shooters or whatever today.

The Catboat Association began with 20 boats, their skippers and crews in 1962 at a rendezvous at Duck Island, off Saybrook, Connecticut.

The CBA a week ago had 1378 paid members, including 83 new ones this year, and 708 unpaid members. By September we are likely to have 1800 or more paid members. I'm afraid that some of our members are a bit leisurely about paying the $15 dues.

So much for statistics.

The CBA has always been informal. For most of its existence, there were no officers, no bylaws, and no elections. All the work has been done by volunteers, including a corresponding secretary or two. There had been yearly gatherings of a few catboats in the late 1950s at Duck Island for a weekend race, rendezvous and cookout. John Leavens, a New York fiscal expert, and Paul Birdsall, a Connecticut teacher, agreed in 1962 to develop a casual group to continue a yearly race-rendezvous.

They made the CBA open to catboat sailors, owners and those interested in cats. They planned an annual winter meeting. The two began a mimeographed newsletter to exchange maintenance and historical data, along with a list of boats and owners, plus boats for sale. They said they would encourage similar regional groups elsewhere in New England, New York and the New Jersey shore. Dues would be $3.

By September they had tracked down more then 50 catboats in the northeast for the first CBA Bulletin.

That was the framework. From it, things began to fall into place. At that first annual meeting the chief speaker was member John Freeburg who told of taking his wife and four children in a big catboat to Florida along the inland waterway. They returned the next year with five children. CBA members decided to add two more summer rendezvous.

However, at about the same time, Breck Marshall had designed and built molds for an 18-foot fiberglass catboat. Two of these showed up at the 1963 Osterville gathering and showed their speed unofficially to the assembled wooden cats. That WAS a revelation.

The fiberglass cats helped to bring a gradual rise in the number of CBA members. The dues went up to $5. By 1969 when my wife and I joined there were 300 members. The number of summer races and rendezvous had increased to seven. Changes were needed.

What came out of this was that a member-staffer at Mystic Seaport, became Corresponding Secretary, I agreed to help John Leavens write and edit the Bulletin. A dozen members set up as a steering committee, to help the Leavens and Birdsall families from sinking out of sight from overwork. The dues went up to $10 and stayed there for nearly two decades.

After that, there were gradual changes, but always a talented member to take over.

The fidelity of CBA members is to me phenomenal. Paul and Molly Birdsall in the early 1970s bought 350 acres in Maine and moved to Blue Hill to get in on the beginnings of the then-new move to organic farming. But Molly continued as treasurer until the late 1970s, telling us yearly, by tradition, "We are solvent!" Only last year, Paul and Molly sold their catboat. They are still members.

Pinkie Leavens at age 90 can climb aboard a catboat more nimbly than I can at age 70. She has given regular help to the Bulletin and its Editorial Board, giving family photos and slides of catboats, texts of unpublished stories and ideas for us all.

The founding men and women also set the character of this group in another way. At every gathering--the rendezvous, annual meeting or other-they would go among the sailors looking for friends and looking for

strangers. They wanted to see friends, of course. but they also wanted to meet newcomers They wanted to be sure that newcomers were welcome, that they had anything they needed, that they met other members. They knew everyone's name before the day was out. They believed the people were as important as the boats.

The key factor that has tied us together over all these years is the Bulletin. John Leavens set a high standard from the beginning of wide coverage of today, good digging for reports on yesterday and a place for members to contribute. I think it is true that everyone has at least one good story to tell usually more. That integrity has been kept by his successors. The Bulletin is published three times a year, and for the past decade has been put together by an Editorial Board of usually four members. The past Bulletins have become a fund of ideas by members on how to improve their cats. I hope someday all the Bulletins will be put on compact discs for anyone to read.

Max Fife also puts together a spring yearbook with the names, addresses, boats, histories and other data.

If there is a basic purpose for the CBA, I think it is to help people use and enjoy catboats.

If there are any guidelines, they are probably these:

-Simplicity in organization, with all work done by volunteers.

-Equal chance for all family members to take part in and help with our mutual interests.

Fifteen years ago, as our membership was nudging one thousand, we realized that we were no longer an unincorporated association for a modest group of worthy citizens. We set up shop in Massachusetts as a non-profit

corporation. We needed this especially for mailing privileges on the things we send members four times a year.

We now have a corporation president, Tom Maddigan, and a treasurer and secretary. But I think Tom's basic job is as head of the Steering Committee and as the focus for what he terms congratulations and complaints.

The Catboat Association seems to have thrived because of a sizable group of people interested in this kind of boat. Some have been on their way to other, bigger sloops, cutters, ketches and so on. Others, often of modest means, saw the catboat as a way to sail for pleasure, yet be able in many cases to bring the boat home for the winter. Some were older sailors who had nostalgic memories of the old cats. And fiberglass allowed development of some well-designed, strongly-built cats which, length for length, usually sailed faster than wooden ones.

For most of these 36 years, the CBA has had some foreign members. I think it began with four Japanese who were discovered sailing cats. We now have members in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Australia, Brazil and other countries. While most of our membership is clustered in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York, we have a scattering of members and boats in more than half the other states. There is now a Chesapeake Catboat Association, a Nederlandsche Catboot Club and separate groups in Narragansett Bay and along the Jersey shore.

Our founders wanted no recruiting. We have done no advertising and have taken none for our Bulletin. But we have come better known over the last 18 months because we have had a catboat page on the Internet. It is well done,

and if you want to see it, try for http://www.catboats.org.

Is there a recognizable type of catboat sailor? I doubt it. At the risk of suggesting a word not much heard these days, I think that some people view the cat as a wholesome, forgiving boat which attracts like-minded people. But the cat also draws people who yearn to sail something which looks like a boat. And one in which they stand a chance of climbing aboard again should they fall overboard.

Some catboat sailors seem to have a few characteristics in common. Many are tolerant, persevering, trustworthy, cautiously confident, competent, good-humored and determined. But there are many kinds of catboat sailors. And we have always said that people can enjoy catboats without necessarily joining the CBA.

I would say, then, that she is a small boat, but there are those who love her.

We have tried without success to find some idea of the catboat's time and place of origin. The Dutch claim to have developed the rig without a headsail several centuries ago. But the Dutch drawings and engravings of 300 years ago often show a hull with two masts, sometimes quite slender, what we would call today a cat-schooner or cat-ketch.

Dutch maritime historians concede that the two-beam workboat with a hull about half the length and a single big gaff mainsail, set well up near the stem on a stout mast without stays is an American invention.

We know that some catboats were in use in northeast waters in the 1830s, but they were mingled with all manner of other working small craft. Some harbor craft had movable masts that could be sloop-rigged or cat-rigged depending on the season.