Join Fairfield Harbor Yacht Club for the 40th Oar Race Regatta! This year’s race will be an approximately 22 mile race from New Bern to Oriental NC, on the Neuse River. The race is in honor of the exceptional soldiers who fought in WWII. Early in the Second World War the British had sent an expeditionary force into Europe. They were pushed back to the beaches of Belgium near the harbour of Dunkirk. The harbour was severely damaged by German bombing. Between May 26 and Jun 4 1940 a total of 338,000; 198,000 BEF and 140,000 French and Belgian men, were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk back to England, some 30 miles away, by a rag-tag flotilla of 850 vessels, mostly volunteer amateurs. That’s an average of almost 400 men per boat. You know that they all had to make multiple trips. Some rowing some sailing and some under power. A retreat it may have been but the humiliation of defeat generated the “Spirit of Dunkirk” that ultimately led to victory. That spirit is the ability of a people to come together and rise above adversity. The retreat from Dunkirk was perhaps second only to D Day in winning the war. One of those vessels was the yacht Clara. Clara’s owner was a friend of John Walsh, a now deceased member of FHYC. He gave John an oar that was actually used during the evacuation. What we do each year in the Oar Race is to remember those stalwart volunteers who made this evacuation possible, by sailing a race of a distance similar to Dunkirk to England. The award is a replica oar and to have the winners name added to the original oar which is displayed in the FFH Community Center.

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