Mr. Goodhue sold his boatyard to Izzy Bromfield who personally borrowed the money for the club. Banks wanted no part of the yacht club mortgage, so twenty-nine of our founding members personally guaranteed the loan. Of course, everybody has been repaid, but the dedication and foresight of these charter members was necessary in order for the club to possess a boating facility.
Goodhue’s was a shipyard with a pier, a barge for a dock, a decrepit looking building, a marine railway, and a typically messy repair yard, which had to be, transformed into some kind of yacht club -what a challenge! The first project was to make a main clubroom, which was set up with ship like portholes. Then the machine shop and adjacent rooms were cleared out and a dance floor and hall built. Hours of work tearing down, building, painting, etc., were spent by the members who worked Saturdays, Sundays, holidays and some evenings during the week.
Next came improvements to the yachting facilities. The pier was strengthened, the area immediately in front of the club was dredged, and a bulkhead on the riverside of the club property was installed. The yard had been filled with enormous boulders and “deadmen” were installed to support the wooden bulkhead (which is under the cabanas). The main flow of the river curved right up to this bulkhead. During all these formative years, the club was run very loosely with an ever challenging group of by-laws, but this was changed in 1955 when our first permanent set of by-laws was written, adopted, and published. Our club burgee was also adopted in the early years and it was registered with Lloyds. The burgee mainly consists of the semaphore code for the letter “M”.