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ieee SA1 DPW. AN ARGUS SPECIALIST PUBLICATION AUGUST 1991 £1.65 PRIMROSE VALLEY MODELLING WEEK 9 | | 91 1 08 GURYER Al Russell Potts on Vintage 19th Century, Prosperos and Refurbishment Hiatus There was no column in the July issue. This was because John suffered a log jam of material and decided to hold my stuff over. The column I had written for last month was not particularly topical and will not suffer by being delayed. Indeed it will not suffer by being held over for some time and this is what will happen to it as there is some more topical material for this month as the Vintage Group’s summer programme gets under way. Vintage Day at Bournville 28th April This was probably the best attended Vintage day we have held so far. Every time we have a meeting, I mean to count how many boats there are. Every time, I seem to fail to do so, because I keep getting involved in conversation with members. I even spend some time sailing my own boats. It is in any event difficult to get an Vintage Day at Bournville: general view of the scene. direction. This gave those of us with free sailing boats a fair degree of pain and frustration, but did not, I think, affect the enjoyment of the day. Among other things, the very fluky wind meant that we didn’t actually hold any races, despite having Left, a 1950’s M to MacDonald’s Mithras design, brought down _ Newcastle by Bill ee. accurate count as boats come and go during the course of the day and some lurk in the back of cars until late on when their owners pluck up enough courage to bring their toys out for others to see. My estimate of over 40 boats present at some stage of the day was generally agreed by others with whom I discussed the question do with it, as the sun shone all day, encouraging the less committed to make the effort to bring the family out for the day. The down side of this good weather was that the wind was entirely typical of a light summer day at Bournville; that is, next to nothing of it and very variable in It looked as though it ought to be a doddle, and perhaps it would have been if the wind had been there in any strength or certainty. As it was, the wind was so light by the latter part of the afternoon that most of the steering gears didn’t work reliably. This meant that the event was AUGUST 1991 seemed to enjoy it and there were queues to get to the starting position. The winner, employing vast amounts of skill (or being very lucky), was Ralph Nellist, sailing his pre 1939 Marblehead, Squall. Another innovation at this meeting was some formal instruction on how to use the two main types of steering gears found on Right, Cormorant, a very powerful 10-Rater designed and built in 1948 by the Alexander Company of Preston. made arrangements to do so. Towards the end of the day we did hold some straight running competition, on exactly the same lines as power boats. Just a short broad reach across the narrow part of the pond. afterwards. The weather had something to very much of a lottery and boats which scored a bull on one run would fail to get across the pond anywhere near the target a few minutes later. Nonetheless, everyone older yachts, the Braine gear and vane gear. Mick Harris gave us a run through the Braine and then spent most of the afternoon giving individual tuition to those who needed it. The vane gear slot was filled by Vic Bellerson, who was able to get away with the lecture, because those who had brought vane steered boats were all entirely competent to use what they had. Among these were Bill Lee and his wife, who had made the long trip from the North East to sail a borrowed vane 39 Marblehead to the MacDonald design Mithras. Another boat of similar date was an Alexander designed and built 10-rater Cormorant first registered in 1948. The boat is still in very good condition and apart from the substitution of vane gear for the original Braine gear, appears not to have been changed. When the vane gear was fitted, no attempt was made to change the proportions of the skeg and rudder. The vane gear is a complex form, using a take off from the main horse to help carry the vane across when the boat was tacked. 19th Century Boats There was a good showing of really old boats. Roger Daniel’s 20 Tonner Eagle was looking her very best carrying all her huge sail area in the light breeze. John Collins had brought his GRP cutter. This of course is a newish boat in the old style, while Eagle is very much restored and fitted with radio. A 10 Tonner in its original condition was David Mather’s Elfin. which still has her original sails and looks as though she has not been significantly Above, 20 Tonner Eagle leads a modern interpretation of the Victorian style of cutter. Below left, David Miller’s 10 Tonner, Elfin, totally unrestored since she was built, probably in the 1880’s. fully known since she was originally built by a sea captain in the Channel Islands in the 1890’s. Very few of the older boats have a complete history to them. Alistair had also brought with him a simple toy boat, probably dating from the early 1920’s. This was found many years ago on the beach of Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour; probably she had sailed away from her owner on one of the beaches altered since she was built in the 1880’s. She is entirely typical of the serious racing model of her period and has no moveable rudder at all. Despite this, she sails well both on and off the wind, with her long straight of keel and big drag helping to keep her straight downwind, despite the very off-centre position of the Centre of Effort when the main boom is eased off. It constantly amazes me that David was able to buy her from a school friend some twenty-odd years ago for as little as half a 40 Right, Daphne, an 1890’s cutter restored by Alistair Roach. crown (12.5 p). Even for the time, this looks like a silly price. One boat of similar vintage that we had not seen in the flesh before was Daphne, an 1890’s scaleish cutter owned and now restored by Alistair Roach. The sails are by Ralph Nellist. This boat is interesting because her provenance and history are round the harbour. The style is very simple and could date from almost any time after 1890. The steering is by means of a weighted rudder swinging on the end of the small skeg. As is necessary for a weighted rudder, the rudder post is fairly sharply raked so that the rudder tends to centralise when the boat is upright. MODEL BOATS The day was graced by the entire membership of the Manx branch of the Vintage group. Brian King and Hugh Revill had made the long journey from the Isle of Man, including two night crossings, to be with us. Hugh brought a selection of the levels of activity, with at least three active clubs, were quite a bit higher than anything else I am aware of, apart from the special case of some small Scottish fishing communities, where nearly all the male members of the community were the older style Manx boats that he has restored and which I featured last year in my report of my trip to the Island. Brian had his Littlejohn Marblehead and a 36 involved in a short model sailing season each year. Certainly it was more active than Glasgow at the same period, which I obviously intended to be a gaff cutter with a bowsprit. The rudder is designed to move and the rudder post goes up into a trunk, but doesn’t seem to emerge on deck, so exactly how it was intended to be steered is unclear. Possibly the rudder was a friction fit and the helm was set in a single position for each board. The ballast lead is not very large for the size of boat, though Restricted, representing the period of the last great flourish of model sailing on the island. Above, a commercial toy boat, probably from the 1920’s or just before the first war. Above, part of Manx contingent .In foreground a hose SE 36R from pre 1939; behind, an M to a Littlejohn design; probably pre-war although the boat was started in 1950, finished recently by Brian King. have previously regarded as the acme of model yachty-ness. There were then 40 odd clubs affiliated to the Scottish MYA and by far the majority of them were in Glasgow and the other towns in the Clyde conurbation. Returning to the Vintage day, one of the pleasures of such gatherings is the oddities that people bring along in the hope that I can give them a steer on date and style for given that it is carried so deep under the hull it may be adequate. The finish of the hull and of the simple fittings suggests that she was a commercial product. It is of course very difficult to be sure with boats of this age, because the methods of construction used by commercial producers were essentially their restoration. One such is shown in the photos. Just a hull, about 30 inches long with an unnaturally deep fin under a body A % size Prospero, looking at her best at Bournville. similar to those used by the most skilled amateurs. Often amateur boats are identified by the disparity in the standard of work between the woodwork and the metalwork. Most amateur builders are either woodworkers or metalworkers and the difference shows if they attempt to do both sides of the job. In the last twelve months at least a dozen quality boats from the later 1930’s have been discovered on the island, representing a very high level of activity in that period. The population of the island is only 60,000 now and was smaller then, so AUGUST 1991 A 1920’s toy, also an Alistair Roach restoration. that bears some resemblance to the full size yachts of the 1920’s. I found it very hard to say much about this one except that it isn’t a class yacht and the rig was The worst examples are usually the ones built by metalworkers, many of whom seem to bring together a high level of metal bashing skills with an almost total inability to put wood together sensibly. I had a GRP “A” boat once with a wonderful set of stainless steel fittings covered with engine turned decoration. When I took the deck off there was more lovely, but very heavy, stainless steel, but the few bits of wood were butt jointed and patched together with GRP bandage and every joint that a nail could go into was nailed together. It hadn’t helped as every joint was slack and wobbling. Two Small Scale Prosperos At Bournville, there was a very nice example of a slightly reduced size 41 Prospero; unfortunately I didn’t get the name of her owner. She is in fact a % size version and retains something very close to her original rig. She is still a schooner and still has her topsails, though the size of the rig seems to me to be a little more reduced than the straightforward scaling down would call for. This is all to the good, because the application of he square/cube law means that Prospero, tender enough in her full size version, becomes even more so as you reduce the size of the hull. In the light weather this example, fitted with rudder only radio control, was in her element. As the Prospero design was so popular versions were built to % size, as discussed above, % size usually still as a schooner and at % size. When you get down to half size the hull length is only 30 inches or so and a schooner rig becomes very impracticable as the individual sails become too small to be very effective. At this stage the builders usually change the rig to a simple gaff sloop on the lines of the 10-raters of the period. Indeed, some of the % size versions that I have seen are rigged in such a way that the boat will rate asa 1-rater. A straight scale reduction from the Prospero original will give a rating of 1.8, but this sail area is far too big for the hull, so a reduction of 80% in the sail gives a handy little 30 inch hull with a 21lin water-line and a sail area of 261 square inches. A ¥% size version that has clearly been rigged as a sloop in shown in another photo which was sent to me by a correspondent some considerable time ago. This is of course an “as found” photo and black iron stains on the deck where the nails had rusted over the years. Despite its long and useful life, it had a glaring error in construction as the mast hole in the deck and the corresponding cut out in the hull for the foot of the mast were nearly half an inch off centre. This may not have affected her sailing performance that Blue Flash alongside Peter Kelley’s 10-rater, | Wonder. much and may even not have been noticed by someone who just wanted a toy for his boy to sail back and forth across the local park lake. As will be seen from the photos she is very flat under the counter, which rather detracts from her looks. I had intended to paint a blue boot topping on the hull to mark the water-line, but it looked so odd when the square aft water-line shape was emphasised in this way that I had to take it off again and settle for the blue cove line which gives her her present name Blue Flash. This is, of course, a cheat done with plastic tape rather than paint. The paint finish, on what was initially a very well made and clean wooden hull, is Sia Beran about five coats of domestic undercoat all rubbed down to within an inch of their ie ce shows a hull that, underneath its partially stripped paintwork and the later and unfortunate addition of a crude deck house, is clearly derived from Prospero. The fin is a little deeper than scale and has a slightly different form, but the canoe body is clearly from the Prospero plan.In the foreground is a single large jib. this is Above, a half size Prospero, looking the worse for wear and with unfortunate additions. She is rigged as a sloop. Photo: Clive Keeler. all that is left of the rig, but it indicates that she was certainly rigged after the fashion of the 10-raters of the early years of the century. A Commercial Toy Refurbished Final photos from Bournville are of a boat of my own, which I bought at auction as a bare hull 25 inches long, with no rig or deck fittings, I think that it is a commercial product dating from the 1920’s or possibly a little earlier. It had clearly been sailed a great deal, as is shown by the 42 Right, Blue Flash, view of stern; very flat under there and it looks very odd with a water-line painted in. MODEL BOATS lives and three coats of Humbrol enamel, again rubbed down, but not so fiercely. The final coat is rubbed down with very tired 800 grade wet and dry paper, followed by lots of elbow grease with a soft cloth and very slightly abrasive bath cleaner. This gives a fine soft matt finish, not coarse enough to pick up dirty finger marks, but not a full gloss. If you want a full gloss, follow up the bath cleaner with Brasso and even more elbow grease. These techniques are within the reach of anyone with enough patience, but they do take time and you have to have a lot of patience or inordinate amounts of pride in the appearance of your boats to apply them to hulls much bigger than Blue Flash. Before the paint job, I had to find a way amount of leverage. I suspect that the weight may not be heavy enough for the job, but Bournville did not give a fair test; all weight operated gears depend on the boat taking an angle of heel for them to come into operation. For at least 90% of the time she was on the water there was insufficient wind to be sure whether the gear was operating or not. Try again at Poole. The photos show the mix of cotton and plastic sails she was using at Bournville. I made up a mainsail, staysail and a small Blue Flash with the mast hole enlarged. of correcting the off centre mast position; I didn’t want to take the deck off as it appeared to be perfectly sound so I opened the deck hole out to an oval and devised a mast tube and cover plate that would allow me to centre up the mast position and cover the enlarged hole. The tube does not reach to the bottom of the boat and the mast loads are carried on the deck. I think this is acceptable in a boat as small as this, though it’s not sound practice in anything much larger. The foot of the tube is sealed with a gob of Plastic Padding to ensure that water doesn’t get into the boat down the mast tube. The boat had a swinging rudder when I had it, which didn’t look to be original and an old hole in the deck, long since puttied over, which at first I took for the original upper end of a suppressed rudder trunk. In fact it was in the wrong place for this purpose, as I discovered when I put ina hole and tube to serve as a rudder trunk. I had intended originally to make a small Braine gear for her but as time went by and the date of Bournville got closer without the paint work being completed, I changed my mind and made a weighted tiller gear. The component parts are shown in one of the photos and the gear finally fitted in another. The weight is made from two short lengths of brass tube set up one inside the other before the space between is filled with lead. There is a 6 BA set screw to hold the weight in the desired position on the tiller to give the right AUGUST 1991 The weighted tiller steering gear for Blue Flash. ‘MW’ Nationals and the Youth Movement At the risk of stepping into Bill Green’s territory, one brief and strictly contemporary observation. The Vane ‘M’ Nationals were held at Fleetwood over the May Day Bank Holiday and attracted a considerably larger entry than they have had for some years. A large part of this increase was made up of juniors from the Fleetwood club, who have been building a fleet of vane Ashantis over the winter. Some sailed in junior teams, others enlisted the aid of their fathers to mate for them and some were lucky enough to gather in an experienced skipper as mate. Apart from the last category, they didn’t make much of an impact on the overall result, but all of them had a lot of fun and most managed to take the odd points off leading skippers who weren’t expecting too have trouble. The youngsters are now seeking out old ‘A’ boats to fettle up and enter in the ‘A’ Week in August. This expansion of activity is a direct result of the Fleetwood club making a positive effort to grow themselves a younger generation and can’t be bad for the club. It is also good news for model yachting generally and is an example that could usefully be followed by other clubs. The mast tube fitting for Blue Flash. jib headed topsail in cotton, using sticky back terylene to bind the stressed edges. These sails are more or less sure to be right and as the mast can’t be moved, adjustments to the balance of the rig will be made by altering the size and position of the headsails. As well as the jib seen in the photo there is a larger staysail that tacks further out on the bowsprit, which might be used as an intermediate rig between the two headsails shown and the single staysail. The yard topsail shown in the photo was also made in plastic, because I was not sure how much additional area the boat would carry or whether the calculated sizes of the topsails and jibs would in fact result in the Centre of Effort staying sufficiently in the same place for effective sailing. Again, this needs a further trial in a rather more steady winds than we had for Vintage day. The final appearance with the mast tube fitting installed. Contact Addresses MYA Matters; Ian Taylor, 115 Mayfield Avenue, London N12 9HY. Tel: 081 446 1625. Vintage Group. Old Boat Queries, Curved Air Press; Russell Potts, 8 Sherard Road, London SEQ 6EP. Tel: 081 850 6805. 43 Nick Weall moves into his second series with the accent on how to improve your sailing his series is aimed at the Radio Controlled Model Yacht racer who has got to grips with controlling the model and who is now familiar with the cut and thrust of club racing. With any luck you will have read my first series and managed to digest most of the basic rules set out. You also will have a good idea now how to keep your yacht moving, although no doubt there is still plenty of room for improvement. rate of improvement in that case is likely to be very slow. The person that spares the time to think a little after the event is over to rerun the day’s events in their head and to try and analysis failures and successes is getting far more out of their experiences. They are consequently likely to progress at a faster rate to find their natural ability level. The person that goes further than this and spends time training or studying books so as to learn from other peoples accumulated experience is giving Tight manoeuvres at Eastleigh. This series will be looking at the options available to you over different parts of the usual Olympic type of race course in much the same way as the first series. The first question you have to ask yourself is do you really want to improve upon your present standard of sailing? If so, how much effort do you want to put into it? The reason I ask is because usually any improvement in a sport requires an investment in terms of time and a commitment to want to improve. It is quite possible to simply enjoy a sport by participating in it and giving it no more though until the next game or race. Ones 54 themselves an even better chance of developing their ability fairly quickly to their natural level and then beyond and above their natural level as they draw on the experience of others. . Then there is the psychological side of human nature too. Some of us can’t resist the temptation to race the other yachts, to try to do better, go faster and win races. It is in our nature. Some of these types will become totally obsessive about their chosen sport and will spare no expense or time in their investment to get to their goals. Others have a more relaxed attitude, whilst still maintaining a high level of interest in their chosen sport. Some people like to participate in sport for its own sake without necessarily wanting to win at all, although no doubt being quite pleased to get the occasional win. Others almost seem to like to lose. Most people though are usually quite keen to improve their standards of sailing according to their particular parameters. Metre boats chasing off a wandering RM at the Eastleigh Novices event. Yacht racing is one of those sports that money alone cannot guarantee success. Whilst it is certainly true that the sport can be extraordinarily expensive (someone once described it as being like standing in a very cold shower, tearing up twenty pound notes and throwing them down the plughole!) all that investment in material goodies will achieve absolutely nothing in terms of winning races unless the owner has invested in recruiting the very best of experienced crews to Skipper and sail the thing. In our world of Radio Controlled Model Yachts you can see the same situation time and time again, someone invests in the very best of boats around, no expense is spared., but… they forget to invest time and energy in getting themselves up to scratch so as they can get the best from their super duper yacht. They then rapidly lose interest in the sport, because they are not achieving the results they think they deserve! What we need is a balanced approach to the whole thing. Yacht racing is what we are interested in and in particular as regards this series of articles radio controlled model yacht racing. We therefore need a fairly competitive model yacht and we need reasonable rigs and sails. They do not have to be new. There are people sailing very old hulls around the place and still doing well. Certainly the hull should be as water tight as possible, it should be symmetrical each MODEL BOATS side of the centre line running from bow to stern and it ought to be relatively free of ripples, blemishes and the like. The fin and rudder should posses a good airfoil shape and be free of ripples and blemishes. The lead weight at the bottom of the fin should present a smooth shape and be faired well in to the fin. Weighty Matters The amount of weight at the bottom of the fin and of the whole yacht are subjects of great debate. In some classes of course they are strictly controlled, which saves a lot of thinking. It is often thought, especially amongst Marblehead Skippers, that the lighter the better. One cannot go to extremes of course without suffering in another way. At the moment the weight of lead for a Marblehead popularly ranges from eight to nine pounds. Yachts having a fin and bulb weight rely on the combination to resist lateral movement through the water and the heeling motion introduced by the pressure of the wind upon the sails. The longer the fin and the heavier the weight bulb at the bottom of the fin, the more resistance to the heeling motion. The square area of the fin presents the main resisting force to sideways be far more sensitive to increase in wind speed, resulting in earlier heeling. One way to compensate for that is of course to increase the fin length, but that in turn brings new disadvantages: more fin depth equals more wetted area equals more drag. More fin depth equals more draft, thus more chance to go aground or to collect low lying weed. A yacht that has a heavier bulb than the class average, will accelerate slower but will retain kinetic energy longer in a lull or when tacking. All weights of yacht will eventually move at the optimum speed of the class in relation to wind speed and wetted area. Sail Size Another aspect that tends to confuse people is sail size. I think that for any given wind speed there is an optimum size that harnesses enough of the wind’s energy to overcome the resistance of the water upon the wetted area and accelerate the yacht up to the maximum speed, governed by the boat’s length and the efficiency of the sail shape. Any sail area over this optimum size is largely wasted. The only time it might be of help is initially moving the Sail makers such as Graham Bantock, Martin Roberts and Peter Wiles all sail using their own sails to the highest levels. As such you cannot do better than to ask your own sail maker for their advice on such matter as sail ratios, sail shape, slot setting etc. If you get the opportunity have a look at how they set up their sails when racing at a water near to you. How do you get to know when such people are likely to be sailing near you? Get a copy of the M.Y.A. Year Book from Dave Hackwood, 10 Grangewood, Coulby Newham, Middlesbrough. TS8 ORT enclosing a quid. In the year book you will find amongst other valuable bits of information a list of all the major regattas. You will invariably find the top names attending each RM Ranking Race for example. Peter Wiles lives in Poole, Martin Roberts in Birkenhead and Graham in deepest Essex, thus they all can be found on occasions at their local club, Poole, Birkenhead and Chelmsford respectively. So boat and sails, whilst they need to be in good condition, do not need to be the latest design! Barry Jackson came to the 1988 RM Nationals using an ancient boat and sails, he still managed from memory to finish in the top ten! Electrics Model yacht racing is about people too! Part of the crowd who enjoyed Eastleigh’s early March One Metre thrash-about! Tony Abel with his new One Metre Magpie, reviewed last month, was the eventual winner of the day. Participation was far more important though! motion. At the 1990 RM Worlds the keel weights ranged from 3.15kg to 4.5kg! The length of keel varied from 39cm to 55cm! The English team had bulbs ranging from 3.64kg to 3.73kg and fin lengths of between 42 and 48cm. The team did very well in a week including all strengths of wind. At the Gosport Club it was once proposed that weintroduced a handicap system based on weight for Marbleheads to give the back markers a chance to shine! That idea was quickly dropped when after weighing the all up weight of all of the club’s racing Marbleheads it was found that mine was the heaviest! A light weight yacht relative to its classes’ mean weight will tend to enjoy better acceleration away from the standing start or after a tack. In other words it will respond quickest to increase in the wind’s speed. The down side is that it will lose its kinetic energy quickest in a lull, and it will AUGUST 1991 yacht from a standing start up to optimum speed. It would certainly become a hindrance if the wind picked up in strength a little. Thus the idea that the more sail you have up must mean the more speed you are going to enjoy does not necessarily hold true. Sail shape and the quality of that shape : are far more important in enabling you to use some of the wind’s energy to power your vessel through the water. By quality of shape I mean setting the sail so as to present a smooth airfoil shape to the wind, rather than some of the baggy, flappy shapes it has been my misfortune to see. (Sometimes my own on occasions!) Mast stiffness is most certainly important, which is why carbon fibre masts are so popular in the Marblehead class amongst others. The reason is that a stiff mast holds its given shape better than a weak bendy mast. The mast is the means by which we hold the sails up in the air and its stiffness enables us to introduce into the sails the shape that we desire, (provided the sail maker cut the sails and stitched them up to make such a shape.) Sail makers of course have a very good idea as to what shape a sail ought to be. The things that do need to be in tip top condition are the electrics. If you cannot retain control of your boat at all times you are going to be handicapped. Vast improvements have been made in the quality and reliability of Radio Transmitters and receivers in recent _ years. Provided you manage to keep them dry they should be perfectly reliable. Winch servos from either Dave Andrews or Tony Abel are rugged reliable pieces of kit which can stand a certain amount of exposure to water, although of course it is recommended that they too are keep perfectly dry. An ordinary servo is the final piece of the kit. Here there are many different models of varying quality available from the dirt cheap to the £50.00 plus. I confess to using the dirt cheap, sealing up all water entry points with Evostick or silicone sealer. Round the top I smear Vaseline to try and prevent water entering via the drive shaft. I have tried the expensive servos complete with double ball races etc. They are wonderful and give very precise control, but if you get then wet they seem to conk out far quicker than the cheapies. So called water-proof servos are available (my expensive ones were meant to be!) but having never tried the most obvious choice from Dave Andrews, I cannot comment. If they are as good as his winch then they are well worth the money! Rechargeable batteries are the final link in the chain and again particular attention should be made to them, checking them at least once a year for corrosion and possible black wire problems in the leads. I always use a pack of six wrapped up well with insulation tape. Before I wrap the batteries up, I smear all the exposed metal bits with Vaseline. This helps to stop corrosion across the battery links. Aerials on receivers should be replaced annually if your receiver lasts that long. Despite using a plastic pot to hold the receiver and battery pack, Lindsey my beloved, managed to get through four receivers last year! Yes, water got into her pot that many times. Of course I get the blame along with 55 the comment that it is very funny that it only happens to her boat! It is a Hush Hush by the way, a very popular design from the Sails Etc camp, moulded by Ian Cole of Sails Etc and put together by yours truly. As such it naturally uses one of Graham’s famous plastic pots, but if you do not tighten the lid down tight, in rough weather water can creep in! Again Vaseline around the threads of the lid helps enormously. The other little tip is to use tissue paper (toilet paper) to pack out the pot. The tissue will then soak up any minor ingress of water. It will not however soak up gallons of the stuff! In rough weather you do need to check your pot in warlike manoeuvres at times! Anyone still awake? Lets get on with it! We now have a boat that we have more or less got used to. We know its turning circle which is very important, because now we know just how close we can get to other boats or obstructions before having to take evading action. We also have a pretty good idea of just how close to wind we can sail. In the first series it was very convenient to assume that all boats could sail close hauled at forty five degrees to the wind and no higher. In real life — of course — most of our Radio Controlled racing yachts can point much higher than that. It has to be appreciated though that higher pointing you know to be good and see how they compare. Are you pointing up as high as the other yacht? Or at any rate do you feel that you are pointing as high as your yacht likes to go? Are your sails full and drawing on all points of sail? Does the boat appear water tight? Do you have the right sails up for the conditions? Sail the boat across to the distant marks and sail around each mark in a couple of circles to try and fix in your mind’s eye the relative size of the buoy to yacht and to surrounding features. In fact try to sail into the buoy so as to be sure you have the scale of the buoy fairly well fixed in your mind. If you have the time try a couple of windward beats between each race! The other problem we encountered with Lindsey’s pot was the outlet for the aerial. This originally was simply a little hole drilled into the side of the pot with another little hole drilled up through the deck so as the aerial could be lead out of the pot, up through the deck and finally taped along the deck. The holes were of course sealed with silicone sealer but Lindsey thought that was where the trouble lay. So we put a little plastic tube in between the pot and the deck and stuck it in place both ends, filing it off flush with the deck once the glue had set well off. This was a major improvement in so much as it allows for very quick aerial changing. Which is essential if you are in the habit of running through receivers each race! Even this has not entirely solved the problem. The final thingI still have to do is follow Graham Bantock’s advice and paint a line-up spot on the top of the lid and the deck to show Lindsey when she has her pot lid fully battened down! Since receivers seem to be going up in cost at an alarming rate, | hope this will do the trick. (Whether it will stop her throwing good receivers into the lake, just because the aerial has broken off?) Anyway the point of all this preliminary chat is simply to try and put across to you that at this stage of your racing career,trying to win club races,you do not need to invest in high technology. Instead you will find that investment of your time in studying tactics, over all strategy, wind behaviour and your opponents will show a more immediate improvement in your results. Strategy and Tactics If you are anything like me you will get continually confused as to what the difference is between tactics and strategies. Strategy in my book is the overall picture, it embraces your main objectives, to win for example is obviously your overall objective, whilst it is also a good strategy to enter every race during the day’s racing I suppose. Tactics are the means you employ to achieve the former. Luffing your opponent is a legitimate tactic. Strategy is also defined as the “Art of a Commander in Chief”, the art of projecting and directing the larger military movements and operations of a campaign. Our campaign is the day’s racing or even the season’s racing; if competing in a club championship league for example. Tactics is also defined as the “Art of arranging naval or military forces in order of battle and of performing warlike manoeuvres. Well we certainly engage in 56 Entrants at the Eastleigh event show remarkable style off the water at lunch! Notice two frying pans full of goodies and the beer upon the table! ability is often, if not always, gained at the expense of up wind speed! Thus one has to be aware that whilst on some occasions the ability to point as high or higher that the rest of the racing fleet is a decided advantage, at other times it may well pay to sail slightly below your highest possible course and gain or maintain more speed. It all depends on what is going on around you. This becomes a strategic appreciation of the windward beat.Your tactics will keeping each time well to one side or the other of the windward course. Can you spot any advantages that one side has over the other? Are there any wind bends on the windward beat to take advantage of? Check the lay of the start line for the same thing! Come off the water and switch everything off. Now, if you have already objective will to be to get to the windward You will be able to glance down at the back of your hand every now and then as not done so, check the course that you are going to be sailing. If you find such things hard to remember, try writing it on the result upon that appreciation. Your back of one of your hands. mark before as many of the other boats as possible and to be approaching the windward mark in such a way as other boats, theoretically behind, have no opportunity to barge in or otherwise get in you are racing to check the course out. Imagine how bad you would feel if you are lucky enough to be in the lead and you front of you. The place to start a race you may well think is on the water a minute or two before the gun goes! If you wish to win, your start will have been in fact long before that moment! Even if we discount all of the preparation that has got your boat in racing trim ready for the day’s racing, there are still other things that have to be considered before we chuck our boat on the water for its first battle of the day. If we had had the time before the start of the meeting we would have put our boat on the water and just made sure that everything was working well and that the set of the sails and booms looked right. Every yacht on its own can look fast! If possible sail it against any other yacht warming up that throw it all away by sailing towards the wrong mark or by rounding a mark on the wrong side! It happens, even to the best of us, at times! After having studied the course and noted down any details you feel you need, you must have a look at the sailing instructions! You may well be asking what on earth are sailing instructions? Well they are exactly what they sound like — instructions on the way you will conduct the day’s sailing. They should set out things like the fact that you will be racing using the current International Yacht Racing Rules as amended by Appendix 16,1989-92 version. The racing instructions may choose to amend one or two rules in the [YRR’s in which case such amendment must be included in the sailing instructions. As an aside a moment Appendix 16 of MODEL BOATS the Racing Rules was finally published this January as the 1990/1991 supplement to the IYRR’s. It should be recognised that this is the result of around ten’s years hard effort by Norman Hatfield, Chairman of the International Yacht Racing Union — Model Yacht Racing Division and other committee members to have Model Yachting recognised as a serious part of the International Yacht Racing scené. Subsequent publications of the International Yacht Racing Rules 1993-96 will have the supplement included within them. Our grateful thanks must be extended to all those who played a part, however small, in getting the rest of the yachting community to realise that we take the sport as seriously if not more seriously than them. Because we are controlling our yachts from the bank, we are able to look down on the entire race and evaluate fairly easily what is going on. It is very much more difficult on full sized craft to appreciate fully what is going on at any moment in time as regards all the racing yachts. You will know what is going on in your immediate vicinity, but will find it difficult to evaluate the rest of the action properly. Fundamental Rules At the front of the rule book are four Fundamental rules, that frankly are all too often overlooked or plain forgotten. Listed A,B,C & D they go as follows: A) Rendering Assistance Every yacht shall render all possible assistance to any vessel or person in peril, when in a position to do so. B) Responsibility of a yacht. It shall be the sole responsibility of each yacht to decide whether or not to start or to continue to race. C) Fair Sailing. A yacht, her owner and crew shall compete only by sailing, using their speed and skill, and, except in team racing, by individual effort, in compliance with the rules and in accordance with recognised principles of fair play and sportsmanship. A yacht may be penalised under this rule only in the case of a clear cut violation of the above principles and only when no other rule applies, except rule 75, Gross Infringement of Rules or Misconduct. D) Accepting Penalties A yacht that realises she has infringed a rule shall either retire promptly or accept responsibility is yours alone, not the Race Committees. Rule C is, along with Rule 75, a rule that if you are disqualified under should make you extremely ashamed of yourself, and indeed should make you question yourself very seriously as to how you are going to change your attitude if you wish to continue in the sport. I dare say there might be the odd technical fault that escapes my imagination at present that might excuse the sufferer under this rule. But basically it applies to cheats and I have only once had the misfortune to be on a protest committee where we found someone guilty of breaking rule C. I do hope the person involved thought long and hard about the circumstances of his disqualification after the event! Sailing Instructions These will also tell you things like the fact your boat should have a current measurement certificate and conform to measurement requirements. They will tell you the racing system you are racing under and the time of the first and last race. They should mention the course, starting and finishing procedures, time limits after the winner has finished for the remainder of the fleet to finish, penalty turns, observers duties, protests, appeals, transmitter compounds etc. In the absence of sailing instructions, all the standard rules will apply in full! Rule 3 sets out the requirements for Sailing Instructions and Appendix 12 sets out a guide. All clubs should have a standard set of sailing instructions pinned up on their notice board, that apply for all club races, but few if any have! The M.Y.A. is at present issuing a standard set of sailing instructions that will be used for Ranking Races. If club members wish to improve themselves up to the standard required to compete well at Ranking Races they would be well advised to ensure that their club has a bash at issuing a set of standard sailing instructions and a standard protest form. I How to rescue a sunken treasure. Les Robins has just dived to the bottom of Guildford’s water to retrieve his RM at last November’s Mermaid event. Peter Stollery in the rubber duck takes over the rescue while Les strikes out for the shore… As regards the application of rules and their enforcement it has always therefore been much more difficult in full sized yachting as opposed to radio controlled model yachting. In full sized they have had to rely much more upon the honesty of the yachtsmen involved or nearby witnesses to the incident. On the water umpires are being introduced now for some types of yacht racing. The most well known type of event this occurs with is match racing, where it is very easy for an umpire to see exactly what is going on. We simply use observers who stand or walk with the controlling skippers calling out incidents as they happen. It is still worth pointing out that we are still obliged to accept a penalty it we alone know that we have done something wrong, such as hit a mark, that no one else has spotted. We are sailing on our honour too! AUGUST 1991 an alternative penalty when so prescribed in the sailing instructions. Remember these fundamental rules! Rule A would be rarely used by us, mainly because any threat to life is remote and also because most times we have a rescue boat to rescue any out of control yacht or a convenient bank for that yacht to run aground on. If you do have the opportunity to turn around a run away yacht and put it on a heading back to the control bank, you should consider carefully if it is necessary and prudent to do so. If you do so decide, make sure you notify the observers immediately of your decision and ask them to note your current position in the race. Do your good deed, again making plain your intended actions to other nearby and approaching yachts. Once the deed is done if possible rejoin the race. After the race you may claim redress under rule 69(b) and it will be awarded. Rule B hardly applies either, other than to point out to you that if you decide to launch your yacht in a force twelve wind and it subsequently sinks, the am happy to help any club that requires assistance to resolve these two problems. It is up to club members themselves as to how the rules are applied, but again, if any club members wish to progress to competing in Open Events and above, they should be used to using the rules and doing penalty turns when so required. There will always, I suspect, be certain elements within a club, who do not show any interest in the rules and are most reluctant to do penalty turns after any incident. All too often they get away with it. I don’t suppose they win any cups, they certainly wouldn’t win any open races. Their attitude is probably summed up as “who needs rules” — “we are here to enjoy ourselves”. Fair enough, but where do they draw the line. I often wonder how they would react if a yacht on port sailed at full speed into the side of their starboard tack yacht at the start and sank it! Who needs rules? Ah, they will say, that is b***** stupid! But where do they draw the line? Such Skippers in my opinion should confine their activities to 570 and 590 sailing, where they can have a lot of fun racing in fairly undemanding conditions with a model that is robust enough to stand up to the occasional clunk! Once you have read the sailing 57 have some members of the top quality, from club to club and from year to year. instructions,noted the course and checked your boat, you might reasonably think that now you can relax and enjoy a chat before the first race is called up. Just remember to check that you are on the allocated crystal and that you are in the first race! Then you might spare a thought as to whom you are going to be up against in the first race. Let’s say there are twelve boats racing in each race out of a total entry of fifteen boats. The other three in each race are acting as Race Officer and observers. Do you know all of the skippers racing and their usual order in the pecking system? Do you know your own order in the pecking system? You should do, unless you have very recently joined a new club. Now the people you have to worry about are the ones that usually beat you, the ones that you are pretty evenly matched against and the ones that are completely unpredictable who have got bored with the Ranking Firstly if you are lucky enough to have any of the highly ranked skippers in your club you should be grateful. I realise on the one hand, everyone groans if they turn up to an internal club cup race say, because everyone else realises their chances have just gone out the window. On the other hand it is an excellent chance to pace your yacht against one of the best in the land in fairly uncrowded relaxed conditions. (Well the Ranked Skipper is probably fairly relaxed at any rate!) Imagine being in a club such as Chelmsford, Graham Bantock, Phil Playle, Ian Cole, Brian Bardoe, Norman Hatfield, etc. Wow! What hope has any aspiring national champion got? Well of course the true answer is the best chance in the World, because the novice has the chance to race fairly often against top quality competition. There is no better way to improve your sailing! Provided you look and listen. The other thing of course is any skippers on the Ranking List are always going off to sails elsewhere and thus leave the remaining club members in peace to win some races themselves! It certainly is fun to win the odd race, so it is a good thing that the big names get out of the way now and then. In fact these days a club may not see the top rankers (with an R) for in their actions especially at the start. You know, the ones that run down the line on port or stall on the line or tack from starboard to port immediately the gun goes off right in your water! The unpredictable ones, if any, you will need to keep well clear of, since there is little point is getting set up for a good start if a disaster like that threatens. The ones you usually beat, whilst needing attention spent on them, need less attention than those who usually beat you. They are the target. Their yachts are the yachts you either want to be in front of or Circus or who simply haven’t got the time to spare for all that. There are some full sized skippers of vast experience who race the odd race at club level, so don’t think that the Ranking Lists catalogue everyone’s current ability! Most clubs though probably don’t have more than a small handful of skippers battling it out for the honour of winning. We shall be concentrating on trying to win every race that we enter, although of course the tactics we employ will serve just as well in most instances for the mid-fleet skipper who is simply keen to beat the chap just above him, who to date has almost always beaten him! Next month we shall actually get the boat on the water and around the starting area. If anyone has any comments to make on this current series or the last, please write to me care of Model Boats, all of your letters are welcomed, read and if necessary answered, either in this column or privately. If you would like the problem corner re-introduced, you had better write to me about that as well. I am not convinced that enough people enjoyed it. Any letters concerning specific incidents are always welcomed too. The incident and my opinion may be published, but it must be stressed that any opinion expressed is my personal opinion and in no way reflects upon the protest committee who heard the case and whom may have been in possession of facts not made available to months at a time. Lots of clubs don’t have any members entering either Ranking Races or Opens and yet they may still be lucky enough to near to. Now obviously the standard of a club member’s current sailing ability varies me. PROTEST FORM Show 1 Direction of wind : DIAGRAM rae to next Mar k ourses of yach ts involved prior to inci Where possible show yach ts sailing tre“ethen e He the diagram. Pp ofd One square 6quals one boat length . Protesting Yacht Jib No r Protesting Yacht Skippe yacht(s) protested ses (Jib numbers) nt on course i.e. which Mention position of incide Description of incident. leg RESERVED FOR THE PROTEST COMMIT TEE Protest heard by: Rule(s) infringed Facts found : DECISION OF THE COMMITTEE RACE 58 HEAT MODEL BOATS
