Please Join Us!
Sailing has returned! At present there are at least seven boats ready to sail for the coming season and we certainly welcome more.  The boats are a good size to fit in the car fully rigged, require simple assembly, are high quality and robust, and reasonable, at $250 US for a kit with the upgraded radio. Best of all, they are an absolute blast to sail. We’d love for any Member to join us and sail one of our boats, and they’ll be hooked. Please join us!

• For more information on the DF65 sailing experience and for up-to-date information and recommendations on purchasing a boat, contact PC Ron Hughes.

A Bit of History
Model boat sailing has a long history at the BCC, with the first regatta being held in 1911 according to a picture in that year’s Burgee.  In the 1970s the Club hosted a regatta for the huge six-foot-long International A Class boats, in which Curt Montgomery finished third. Individual members, including Dan Massing, Chuck Manney, Bill Neal, Bob Straubinger and Curt Montgomery have sailed both motor and sail radio-controlled models over the past few years.

Model yachting has a long and great history.  America’s Cup designers Nathanael Herreshoff and Ben Lexcen, with eight America’s Cup contenders between them, had extensive careers as model yacht designers, and the innovative winged keel which helped wrest the Cup from the US for the first time was tested by Ben Lexcen on model yachts for many years before its appearance on Australia II. Founded in the 1820s, the Model Yacht Club of London, England, predates any yacht club in North America – the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron (1837) being the oldest.  The BCC (1882) ranks 37^th.  Radio sailing is recognized by World Sailing and is included in the Racing Rules of Sailing.

In 2020 a group of BCCers, unable to get to their full-size boats due to the COVID-19 border closure, adopted the DragonForce 65 as a robust and easy-to-sail model to sail at various locations in the Buffalo area.  The DF65 is the world’s fastest growing model yacht class and has done much to popularize the sport. Yacht Clubs in Larchmont, Chicago, and San Diego have placed orders for over 100 boats at a time.

The Canoe Club group began sailing with four boats on Thursday evenings in July at Lake Muir in the Audubon section of Amherst. As the seasons changed and darkness came earlier we moved to weekends and expanded our venues to include lovely Lake Lasalle on the UB North campus and iconic Hoyt Lake in Delaware Park. While we occasionally held informal races, mostly we just sailed together and enjoyed the opportunity to be outdoors with boats. Our 2020 season ended just before Christmas when we arrived on a Saturday morning to find all the lakes frozen.