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| (right click on images to open in new window to enlarge) Summer in Southport. |
Monday, August 24, 2026
FLASHBACK: Summer of 2015 in Southport
View From Southport Beach Pequot Avenue
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E. B. Sturges Nirvana 1890's
Greens Farms, Connecticut
B/w post card. Printed on front: "'Nirvana.' E. B. Sturges. Greens Farms, Conn." The estate shown was located on the shore point in Westport just over the Southport line of Sasco Creek, the first house on the water side of Beachside Avenue. In 1925 the 11-acre-plus estate was sold and in 1932 part of the acreage became the Richardson property. Chronicle July 1894: "Edward B. Sturges & family of Scranton are occupying their summer home here. E. N. Sipperly has taken a contract to drill an artesian well for E. B. Sturges.... The well is to be deep enough to furnish a large supply of water.... Hydrants are also to be placed in various places about the grounds...." Chronicle 12 Mar 1896: "J. W. Darling is building a small cottage for E. B. Sturges. The lower floor will be used as a laundry and drying room while the upstairs part will be fitted up as servants quarters." Chronicle 27 April 1896: "Work on the new house for E. B. Sturges is nearly completed."
Creator: V. Louise Higgins
Publisher: Pequot Library Association
Format: Photograph
REFERENCE URL: www.pequotlibrary.org
Southport Breakwater in the summer of 1941
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| (click on image to enlarge) Southport Breakwater in the summer of 1941. Notice the rows of moored boats where the sandbar is currently. Photo: Codge Bullard Archive |
Into the sand
Written by Barry Wallace
(Published in Fairfield Citizen 9/23/09)
The waters of Long Island Sound sparkled a deep sapphire blue. The sunlight spread across its surface and lit up the waves. Shadows shimmered, zig-zagged like a school of fish and disappeared into the edge of the water.
September was cleanup time at the beach, and the weather seemed to be doing the same -- scouring away the leftovers of summer and bringing in a cleaner, drier season. The beach was splashed with bright sunshine and swept clean with brisk freshening breezes.
We were raking again using the old wood-handled rakes with their broken and rusted metal tines. In the pecking order of our Irish-American family at the time we, the twins, "weren't worth much" when it came to work. Our older brother Kevin could already drive a nail straight and true and had the instincts of a born carpenter. He was paired with our Uncle Phil doing the more skilled jobs of fixing porches, mending screens, measuring and sawing.
Brian and I helped the women changing bedding, sweeping up sand, mopping floors, lugging junk and moving furniture. But even these things, especially the cleaning and scrubbing, were considered somewhat advanced for us. So we were handed the old rakes and told to clean the sand around the cottages, removing nails, broken glass and anything else that found its way into the sand during the summer season. The tenants spent most of their time in the front near the water. Things sometimes fell out of their pockets and bags into the netherworld of beach sand.
The yards were all sandy back in the 1950s. Only a few Pine Creekers (pronounced "Crickers") had planted lawns then, and these were considered by the rest of us to be unnecessary and pretentious.
Before the huge stone jetties were built by the town to protect the beach, the yards were fronted by simple wooden bulkheads that did little to hold back the flood-tides. If your cottage survived hurricane season, your front yard would be left with the smoothest, whitest beach sand in all of in Fairfield. Such fine grains could easily flow through an hourglass. As kids we enjoyed making hourglasses with our hands and watching the sands of time sift through our fingers.
For us raking sand wasn't just busy work. After you scraped the surface it was surprising how much could be found hidden in it. We discovered toy guns, nail clippers, keys, coffee cups, cigarette lighters, ladies' compacts and all kinds of silverware. The sand was a lot like the water. After you dropped something into its depths you might never be able to find it again. Just one careless move and it vanished before your eyes. The distraction of relaxation also played a part at the beach. People settling back into a snooze or a novel might realize only later that they had lost something in the sand.
My father was especially pleased when we turned up shards of glass. The green and brown pieces of broken soda and beer bottles were easy to find. The clear glass that you couldn't see in the sand could deeply slice your feet or hands. We wore thick gloves on this work detail. Rusty nails and screws popped up everywhere. So did weathered hammers, screw drivers and other items lost from the tool box. These were rescued and put back into service, never the quite the same but still useful for a while longer. Even if the items were completely rusted, my father would throw them into a box for possible later consideration. We were a thoroughly Catholic family, who took the idea of resurrection seriously.
Of course, being kids, what we really hoped for was buried treasure. We believed we would find diamonds or rubies that would make us rich. Each unearthed piece of costume jewelry was breathlessly brought to the adults for inspection. It was all worthless but we remained convinced that we had discovered the imperial crown jewels. The rings were probably from gumball machines or Cracker Jack boxes. I should have realized there were no dowagers renting our humble beach-side shacks. They were working people like us out for a couple of relaxing weeks in the summer at an affordable price. A little bit of heaven close to home.
Once we found a condom in the sand and showed it to my father. I naively thought it might be some kind of a balloon. After that incident I remember him saying we shouldn't pick up everything we found in the sand. There was a peculiar expression on his face that I couldn't read, but that look told me we had discovered something that couldn't be explained to us just then. Certainly none of our guests would ever engage in such behavior, but there was a steady stream of beach crashers moved by moonlight and cheap beer to romantic interludes in the sand. Sometimes at night soft sounds would emanate from the shoreline and into our open bedroom windows -- bird calls, bell buoys, muffled laughing and whispers. The beach was filled with magic, but that kind of magic was well beyond the understanding of two still innocent young boys.
Although we recognized our low status on the family totem pole, we knew our father wanted the job done and done right. He would come out and check every so often to make sure we were still raking and to tell us how important it was for us to stay with it. "You boys might think you get all the dirty little jobs, but they need to be done well, too. It's like that in a big Irish family. You can be forty before they think you're old enough to hammer a nail." He was referring to his aunts and uncles who were also at work at Pine Creek. Although he was our father, he was still a boy to them. I sensed that Dad was trying to tell us something about himself and the family that he deeply loved. He wanted us to know that we were one of them in ways we might not understand. The beach was our familial place where we worked together as a family and told family stories. It was where we sometimes awkwardly stepped on toes in the dance of the generations and the complex feelings that were our heritage and our curse. We knew we were loved even if they seemed to have little use for us; even if we were made to feel we were in the way; even if the words we spoke were never enough to express what needed to be said. I may have learned all I ever was to learn on those weekends long ago. Life is filled with repetitive hard work coupled with steady progress and understanding. If you learn anything at all, it is important not to blindly grasp at something you can't see -- like sharp glass and rusty nails. We can't always understand the people we love, and even their love can be hurtful in ways we can never imagine. Time is like an hourglass that runs out on all of us. The older you get the more quickly the sand slips through your fingers. Almost every face and voice I remember from the beach is gone now. All the aunts and uncles, all the beach characters, my remarkable grandmother, Mal, and the father I was never ready to say goodbye to. And you never do find any buried treasure.
So there we all are in the sand next to the sparkling sound under the wide blue skies of a September Saturday. We are working together in the brisk breeze that entwines our breath as it races across the flat expanses of the beach. We are touching each other's lives like the shadows jutting out from the cottages and spreading longer across the sand as the sun slips lower in the sky. What falls into the sand is irrevocably transformed or lost forever. And it is beautiful, piece by piece, because it is all a part of our lives. READ MORE FROM: http://www.fairfieldcitizenonline.com
(click on image to enlarge)
From Fairfield Citizen 9/23/09
(Published in Fairfield Citizen 9/23/09)
The waters of Long Island Sound sparkled a deep sapphire blue. The sunlight spread across its surface and lit up the waves. Shadows shimmered, zig-zagged like a school of fish and disappeared into the edge of the water.
September was cleanup time at the beach, and the weather seemed to be doing the same -- scouring away the leftovers of summer and bringing in a cleaner, drier season. The beach was splashed with bright sunshine and swept clean with brisk freshening breezes.
We were raking again using the old wood-handled rakes with their broken and rusted metal tines. In the pecking order of our Irish-American family at the time we, the twins, "weren't worth much" when it came to work. Our older brother Kevin could already drive a nail straight and true and had the instincts of a born carpenter. He was paired with our Uncle Phil doing the more skilled jobs of fixing porches, mending screens, measuring and sawing.
Brian and I helped the women changing bedding, sweeping up sand, mopping floors, lugging junk and moving furniture. But even these things, especially the cleaning and scrubbing, were considered somewhat advanced for us. So we were handed the old rakes and told to clean the sand around the cottages, removing nails, broken glass and anything else that found its way into the sand during the summer season. The tenants spent most of their time in the front near the water. Things sometimes fell out of their pockets and bags into the netherworld of beach sand.
The yards were all sandy back in the 1950s. Only a few Pine Creekers (pronounced "Crickers") had planted lawns then, and these were considered by the rest of us to be unnecessary and pretentious.
Before the huge stone jetties were built by the town to protect the beach, the yards were fronted by simple wooden bulkheads that did little to hold back the flood-tides. If your cottage survived hurricane season, your front yard would be left with the smoothest, whitest beach sand in all of in Fairfield. Such fine grains could easily flow through an hourglass. As kids we enjoyed making hourglasses with our hands and watching the sands of time sift through our fingers.
For us raking sand wasn't just busy work. After you scraped the surface it was surprising how much could be found hidden in it. We discovered toy guns, nail clippers, keys, coffee cups, cigarette lighters, ladies' compacts and all kinds of silverware. The sand was a lot like the water. After you dropped something into its depths you might never be able to find it again. Just one careless move and it vanished before your eyes. The distraction of relaxation also played a part at the beach. People settling back into a snooze or a novel might realize only later that they had lost something in the sand.
My father was especially pleased when we turned up shards of glass. The green and brown pieces of broken soda and beer bottles were easy to find. The clear glass that you couldn't see in the sand could deeply slice your feet or hands. We wore thick gloves on this work detail. Rusty nails and screws popped up everywhere. So did weathered hammers, screw drivers and other items lost from the tool box. These were rescued and put back into service, never the quite the same but still useful for a while longer. Even if the items were completely rusted, my father would throw them into a box for possible later consideration. We were a thoroughly Catholic family, who took the idea of resurrection seriously.
Of course, being kids, what we really hoped for was buried treasure. We believed we would find diamonds or rubies that would make us rich. Each unearthed piece of costume jewelry was breathlessly brought to the adults for inspection. It was all worthless but we remained convinced that we had discovered the imperial crown jewels. The rings were probably from gumball machines or Cracker Jack boxes. I should have realized there were no dowagers renting our humble beach-side shacks. They were working people like us out for a couple of relaxing weeks in the summer at an affordable price. A little bit of heaven close to home.
Once we found a condom in the sand and showed it to my father. I naively thought it might be some kind of a balloon. After that incident I remember him saying we shouldn't pick up everything we found in the sand. There was a peculiar expression on his face that I couldn't read, but that look told me we had discovered something that couldn't be explained to us just then. Certainly none of our guests would ever engage in such behavior, but there was a steady stream of beach crashers moved by moonlight and cheap beer to romantic interludes in the sand. Sometimes at night soft sounds would emanate from the shoreline and into our open bedroom windows -- bird calls, bell buoys, muffled laughing and whispers. The beach was filled with magic, but that kind of magic was well beyond the understanding of two still innocent young boys.
Although we recognized our low status on the family totem pole, we knew our father wanted the job done and done right. He would come out and check every so often to make sure we were still raking and to tell us how important it was for us to stay with it. "You boys might think you get all the dirty little jobs, but they need to be done well, too. It's like that in a big Irish family. You can be forty before they think you're old enough to hammer a nail." He was referring to his aunts and uncles who were also at work at Pine Creek. Although he was our father, he was still a boy to them. I sensed that Dad was trying to tell us something about himself and the family that he deeply loved. He wanted us to know that we were one of them in ways we might not understand. The beach was our familial place where we worked together as a family and told family stories. It was where we sometimes awkwardly stepped on toes in the dance of the generations and the complex feelings that were our heritage and our curse. We knew we were loved even if they seemed to have little use for us; even if we were made to feel we were in the way; even if the words we spoke were never enough to express what needed to be said. I may have learned all I ever was to learn on those weekends long ago. Life is filled with repetitive hard work coupled with steady progress and understanding. If you learn anything at all, it is important not to blindly grasp at something you can't see -- like sharp glass and rusty nails. We can't always understand the people we love, and even their love can be hurtful in ways we can never imagine. Time is like an hourglass that runs out on all of us. The older you get the more quickly the sand slips through your fingers. Almost every face and voice I remember from the beach is gone now. All the aunts and uncles, all the beach characters, my remarkable grandmother, Mal, and the father I was never ready to say goodbye to. And you never do find any buried treasure.
So there we all are in the sand next to the sparkling sound under the wide blue skies of a September Saturday. We are working together in the brisk breeze that entwines our breath as it races across the flat expanses of the beach. We are touching each other's lives like the shadows jutting out from the cottages and spreading longer across the sand as the sun slips lower in the sky. What falls into the sand is irrevocably transformed or lost forever. And it is beautiful, piece by piece, because it is all a part of our lives. READ MORE FROM: http://www.fairfieldcitizenonline.com
(click on image to enlarge)
From Fairfield Citizen 9/23/09
Hurricane Carol August 1954 at YYY
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| (click on image to enlarge) Hurricane Carol August 1954 at Ye Yacht Yard, Southport, CT Photographer unknown. Photo property and courtesy of Howard Burr Collection. With special thanks to Joe Rainis. |
Sasco Beach Club circa 1927
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View Sasco Beach Club & Water
Southport, Connecticut, 1927
Black and white postcard postmarked August 19, 1927. Scene near Sasco Beach.
McKenzie's point in the distance.
Monday, August 17, 2026
FLASHBACK: 2009 Opti Championship Regatta August 13-15 at PYC
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Some Optis arrive by tow on Thursday.
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At the 2009 Opti Championship Regatta hosted by Pequot Yacht Club on Friday morning. Over 155 junior sailors from 50 clubs are competing this weekend in the waters south of the Southport Harbor channel.
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An Opti racer heads out at Whyte's Rock, YYY.
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Flotillas heading out on Friday morning at YYY.
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FLASHBACK: Giant Pumpkins on Pine Creek in August 2010
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These giant pumpkins sit only a few feet from Pine Creek.
August 11, 2010
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Sasco Beach Club in 1927
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Sasco Beach Club
Rare postcard, Sasco Beach Club postmarked August 17, 1927. View from a private beach near Sasco Beach near the Southport Harbor inlet. McKenzie's Point in the distance.
FLASHBACK: August 9, 2010 PYC Laser/420 Regatta
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The fleet of 100+ boats heading out on Monday morning for the 2010 420, Laser/Laser Radial Championships.
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The Regatta 2-3 miles off shore Sasco Beach on Monday morning.
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Seventh Annual Hoyt O. Perry, Jr. Regatta August 2016
Written by E. Packer Wilbur
Sunday, August 7th turned out to be a fine summer day with very indecisive breezes. Our four-foot radio controlled sailboats don’t need much wind but it is useful when it comes with generally consistent pressure and direction. The wind gustedfrom zero to eight knots and often reversed itself completely in a matter of seconds. Upwind starts became downwind. Mark roundings were chaotic.
In the midst of this confusion, Wes Schluter was somehow able to react quickly and correctly and sailed Patriot to a decisive victory. Mary Lou McGuire took second and Hans Linderoth rounded out the medals with third place.
Ward Jennings, one of last year’s winners, was just out of the money this year.
Jan Perry came over with Dave and she presented the trophies to Wes, Mary Lou and Hans.
Rhys Goff brought a Whaler over from the Club and set the marks, based on the wind at the time, with assistance and direction from Wes. Andrew Wilbur seemed to be everywhere, helping skippers and generally ensuring that everything went smoothly. Tim Clark, master regatta organizer, helped with the many details.
Diana Schluter brought her signature brownies which disappeared quickly, vying in popularity with the chocolate dipped strawberries. She and Laura Wilbur formed a no nonsense race committee with orderly starts despite the changing conditions. This year, the recorded one-minutestarting sequence included an earsplitting cannon blast to signal the start.
Ellen and John Levinson hosted our event which was sailed from their gorgeous lawn fronting on the harbor. Their colorful signal flags were flying when we arrived and stretched from the boat house to the water’s edge.
Howard Burr at the helm of the SAFARI in 1956
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| (click on image to enlarge) Howard Burr seen here at the helm of his Chris Craft, the SAFARI off Southport, CT in August of 1956. Photographer unknown. Photograph property and courtesy of Howard Burr Collection/Joe Rainis. |
FLASHBACK: 2009 Pixel & Blue Jay Invitational Regatta - Southport
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Over 50 boats participated in the 2009 Pixel & Blue Jay Invitational Regatta,
south of the Southport Harbor Channel, August 3-4, 2009.
Augustus Jennings House in 1906
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| (click on image to enlarge) |
158 Westway Road, Augustus Jennings House
Southport, Connecticut
Description: B/w post card. Printed on front: "Southport 1906. House of Dr George B Prentice." This house was built c1830 by Augustus Jennings at the northwest corner of Pequot Ave & West Main St/ Westway Rd (just west of the Pequot Library property). After Mrs Jennings' death, the building was sold. It was moved to the West Main St/Westway Rd location in 1899. The lamp in the foreground ws one of the Dietz lanterns put up by the Sasquanaug Association in the late 1890's. The house partially visible at the right is #144 Westway Rd. See Packet Oct 1993.
Creator: V. Louise Higgins
Publisher: Pequot Library Association
Date: 1906
Format: Photograph
2009 Long Island Sound Opti Champs at Pequot Yacht Club
2009 Opti Championship Regatta at Pequot Yacht Club August 14-15, 2009
video by Somers Cooper.
FLASHBACK: The 57th Annual Pequot Invitational Regatta - July 31-August 2, 2011 in Southport
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| (click on images to enlarge) Nearly 100 junior sailors compete in Pixels in the 57th Annual Pequot Invitational Regatta (July 31-August 2) off Southport Harbor on Monday. |
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