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Nantes (Municipality, France): Yacht clubs

APCC Voile Sportive
Sport Nautique de l'Ouest

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APCC Voile Sportive

Burgee of APCC - Image by Ivan Sache, 13 June 2010

The yacht club APCC Voile Sportive, based at Nantes and with its club house at Pornichet, was founded in 1978, as the Association pour la Promotion de la Course Croisière (APCC), by Jean-Michel Kobus and Jean-Pierre Cordonnier, Professors at the École Centrale de Nantes; the formal set up of an association was required to register a students' team at the first yachting Tour de France. In its first years, the APCC promoted yacht racing; in 1993, the association inaugurated the Sports School, aimed at training young racers.
The club was renamed APCC Voile Sportive in 1998; the same year, club's member Luc Pillot, the skipper of "Saint-Nazaire Bouygues Telecom", won the yachting Tour de France; in 2002, Pierre-Loïc Berthet and Marc Guessard won another Tour de France under the club's colors. In 2005, Berthet and Mathieu Richard (today one of the best match racers in the world) won the World Championship in the Mumm 30 class. Current membership of the club is above 700.

The burgee of APCC Voile Sportive, as shown graphically on the club's website, is vertically divided 1. A black disk on a yellow field, 2. A white square on a blue field, 3. Vertically divided, six stripes in turn yellow and blue, that is letters "I", "P" and "G" of the International Code of Signals.

Ivan Sache, 13 June 2010

Sport Nautique de l'Ouest

Flag of SNO - Image by Ivan Sache, 16 October 2001

The Sport Nautique de l'Ouest (SNO), founded in 1883, is the oldest yacht club in Nantes. The club was so famous that it was awarded in 1889 a gold medal by the Yacht Club de France. Only five yacht clubs in France have been awarded this medal until now.
Starting in 1900, regattas involving some 50 ships were organized every sunday from May to October in different ports of the river Loire (Trentemoult, Le Pellerin, Paimbœuf, Saint-Nazaire). In 1908, the SNO and the Société des Régates de Saint-Nazaire jointly organized the Grande Semaine Internationale; photographers discovered a new topic and made several pictures, now highly prized in the region. During the 1912 Olympic Games held in Stockholm, the Thubé brothers, members of the SNO, won the gold medal on their 6-meter Mac Miche and won the Swedish Jubilee Cup a few days later. On 28 June 1914, 40 saiboats took part to the great summer regattas in Saint-Nazaire. This was the last main event in the history of the SNO before the First World War.
In 1929, the naval architect Bertrand Talma designed the first Monotype de la Loire, the one-designed sailboat cherished by the SNO until the Second World War. The price for a Monotype was then 9,000 francs, whereas the price for a 10 CV Citroën car was 16,000 francs. In the 1935s, Jacques Thubé brought back a Snipe from the USA, but this boat was not successful in the SNO (whereas it was in Arcachon and Lorient, for instance). During the German occupation, young members of the SNO discovered the American Moth, a small boat which did not required to be transported by car.
After the Liberation, the SNO activity resumed. Roger Triau won three times the French championship in the Caneton series in the late 1940s. In 1954, John Westell designed the 505, which superseded the Caneton. Roger Tiriau and Daniel Gouffier won the 505 French championship in 1955; Gouffier won the title with Jean-Claude Cornu in 1957, 1958 and 1961, as well as the World championship in 1961. The naval engineer from Nantes André Cornu designed in 1962 the 470; there were 56 470s in the SNO in 1965 and club member Marc Bouët was national champion in 1968 and European champion in 1968 and 1969. In 1977, the SNO member Daniel Gilar won the first Mini-Transat on Petit Dauphin. For its 100th anniversary celebrated in 1983, the SNO had 600 members including 465 registered competitors.

A photography of the racing team "SNO Nantes Atlantique" available on the SNO website shows the club flag as a rectangular white flag quartered by a red saltire and with a black ermine spot in each quarter, with the black letters "SNO" all over and probably "Nantes Atlantique" in the lower part of the flag (only the top of Nantes can be seen on the picture). A graphic on the frontpage of the website shows the flag as rectangular and without the letters, which is probably the club flag, whereas the flag with lettering is the competition team's flag.

Ivan Sache, 28 April 2007