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Flags of Yacht Clubs
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Yacht Club Burgees
Each yacht club has a club burgee, normally a triangular pennant, that
is displayed at its clubhouse and on members' boats according to club rules.
It is traditionally flown at the foremost masthead of a sailboat or at
the jackstaff of a motor boat, but modern sailboats carrying communications
and navigation gear at the masthead now customarily fly the burgee at the
starboard spreader. From the origin of yachting in America, most
American burgees have been some combination of red, white, and blue,
with the designs consisting of geometrical shapes, stars, letters, and
anchors. More recent designs have introduced a wider range of colors
and motifs, but the vast majority are still in the national colors.
The following are the burgees of some of the oldest U.S. clubs, with their
dates of founding. Images marked with asterisks (*) are adapted by
permission from drawings provided by Jose Alegria Diaz.
Yacht Club Officers' Flags
Flags designating the presence of officers of American yacht clubs used
to be similar to the Navy's burgee
command pennant in shape but are now generally rectangular.
Traditionally, the club commodore flies a blue flag with a white design,
the vice commodore the same design on a red field, and the rear commodore
the same design in red on a white field. This system is modeled on the
traditional hierarchy of seniority of rank flags in the U.S. Navy.
The most common design--shown below--is that of the canton of the yacht
ensign, the diagonal fouled anchor within a ring of stars. Such flags
were in use by officers of the New York Yacht Club by at least 1874, although
the NYYC now uses a completely different system based on the design of
the club's burgee. In addition, there are flags for fleet captains,
port captains, and past commodores, as well as for a variety of other club
officers such as secretaries, treasurers, physicians, chaplains, quartermasters,
and so on. Officers fly their flags in place of a private signal, except
that on a single-masted sailboat it flies at the masthead and the club
burgee moves to the jackstaff. Alternatively, it is often displayed
today at the starboard spreader.
Commodore |
Vice Commodore |
Rear Commodore |
Past Commodore |
Fleet Captain |
Port Captain |
Treasurer |
Secretary |
Race Committee |
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Copyright 2000, 2001 by Joseph McMillan
