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NOVEMBER 1988 £1.40 [nse MODEL MAGAZINE Detuiled building ) instructions Styrene hull available. i == SHIRLEY- ANN Morthoe. smal nehores asternfaraov AN ARGUS SPECIALIST PUBLICATIO and twoorthree i Sicp or %in. |_ tan sail flat ana re-cut to ‘Ain. hem,i.e. oversize, depending on size of _or ‘hein. Trim corners. Cloth lines \W7 points Outline stitch exposed 1/4″or 3/8″ Step 5 Reef tapes i —— 2S SSS — Crossover to — form eyes A First fold A to A Sew all round, or one seam at a time and tie off Glue spots under tape 642 Step 7 Step 6 Mast hoops Reef cords Step 9 MODELL BOATS Class Associations A couple of months ago I wrote about the proposed changes in the “A” Class Rules that IMYRU are considering. At the recent MYA “A” Class championships at Gosport the assembled fleet decided that the time had come to form an “A” Class Association, which would be able to givea stronger voice to the owners who actually sail the class. The Chairman pro tem is Peter Maskell (the MYA’s Chairman and three in a row “A” Class Champion) and the Secretary is Vic Bellerson. The committee includes representation of both vane and radio “A” skippers. If you own an “A” and have not yet joined get in touch with Vic at 192 Sutton Road, Walsall WS5 3AH. He will shortly be approaching the other nations that sail the class, inviting them to participate, as the Association is not intended to be merely a British organisation. A parallel Class Association for the 6-m is also being formed and this is being run by Bill Green. You can contact him at 80 Buryfield Road, Solihull B91 2DQ. Video Funds have been provided to get the “A” Class Association show on the road by raffling off a video transfer of a collection of home movies of “A” Class meetings in the 1930s. This video is an absolutely fascinating record of the boats and personalities of the thirties. At present it is just as the movies were found, but the long term aim is to make copies available with a commentary that will identify as much of the action as possible and make a more meaningful entertainment. Considering how long ago the film was shot and the condition in which it was found in a boathouse cellar, the quality of the images is very good and the Kodacolor film used in 1939 has held up well, so much so that the owner of the laboratory where the transfer to video was done was overjoyed with it. He is just as obsessed with the technical history of film as I am with the history of model yachting so we got on very well. Those who are interested in having a copy of the dubbed version should get in touch with me as the numbers will determine whether it is worth doing the work and the more orders there are the cheaper each copy will be. top class competition for many years, held some time ago at Birmingham and was won by Mick Harris. John Gale, sailing a new Lewis design boat that he had built in real wood, was second after the tie at the top of the score sheet had been resolved bya sail off. Fleetwood’s First starting at Bradford in 1926 and still in the top half of the fleet in Detroit where he competed in the Robertson Cup meeting in 1939. The other boat, that was intended to be the main subject of the photo, is number 8 – Plover – owned by Dawson, the Commodore of the Leeds and Bradford Club. She finished third. The boat was a Daniels design and build and in the hands of WJD himself had been successful in other important meetings. In the background is the original Fleetwood boathouse that was erected almost as soon as the lake was built in 1930. It shouldn’t have been too difficult to find the necessary funds and manpower to do this as the club had over a hundred members as soon as the council announced its intention to build the lake and 240 by the end of 1931. This must have been one of the last National meetings to use pin-on racing numbers as a means of boat identification. As registration numbers on the sail became universal in the early 1930s they were used for calling up boats. Only the different needs of radio racing : National Championship And when was that? Not, as you might initially guess, the “A” Class Championship in 1933. The previous year the 6-m meeting was held there and Iam able to bring you two photos of that event taken by Eric Shaw. The meeting, held over a single day, attracted 12 entries, but only 9 started after three of the five Scottish entries failed to turn up. The first photo shows on the far left, partially — obscured by some flaring on the negative, the eventual winner, sail number 10, Fred Le Flufy’s OD boat Fredith. She was a 38in. lwl 22 pound displacement boat with 1093saq. in. of sail. Le Flufy was a member of a club in Cork and manager of the local brewery. He sailed the boat successfully in Nationals Results Very briefly, some updating on the results of the nationals that I didn’t manage to attend. The vane “A” nationals were won for the third successive year by Peter Maskell. This is getting to be very, very boring, and the rest of the vane “A” fleet really must do something about it. The R10-r event which was to have been held at Poole had to be transferred at very short notice to Gosport, because of weed problems on the Poole lake. Gosport very kindly agreed to make their water available and the Poole club transferred the whole event and did the chores. The Gosport ladies turned out to man the canteen and a good time was had by all 18 entrants. Ian Cole won it with Chris Jackson, Chris Dicks and Roy Burgess in the next three places. Fifth place was filled by a newcomer, Ron Hill from the Torbay club, competing in his first national championship. The vane 10-r event was NOVEMBER 1988 Top, Pio ver and ; °Ompetito r, at Fh.th at the 7 9 5 twood ;n7 4 6-m Naz; 1932. als Photos i foun Ove, esy Eric Shane 6. 655 and the onset of four figure numbers have driven us back to the use of short, large and easy identifiers, now carried on the jib. Notice also the large crowd of spectators round the lake; they can’t all be family and friends of the skippers and it’s a reminder of the attraction that model yachting has been in the past which made seaside resorts look kindly upon it. Now there are too many competing attractions and too many alternative uses for boating lakes for our sport to loom very large in plans of local authorities trying to attract trade to the town. The second photo shows some of the assembled entrants and crews. The second boat from the left is Grenadier, a W. J. Daniels design and build for Lt. Col. Dennistoun. WJD is standing beside her in the white trousers and blazer. He only managed a fourth place this time, but it was the boat’s very first day on the water. Next to Grenadier is a very different style of 6-m, a long keel boat which was one of the Scottish entries, probably Roderick’s Edna. Scots at Fleetwood The tradition of Socts descending on Fleetwood for major competitions used to be very strong in the 30s and in the immediate post-war period, but had fallen rather into abeyance more recently, so it’s a real pleasure to report that they were down in force for the Wade and Windsor Cup weekend at the end of July. Bob Brown from Inverleith won the Windsor, but the thing that most impressed Alistair Law, my informant, was that the all four of the Peterhead boats managed to stay in the A fleet throughout the meeting. Considering that they are so far away from other clubs that they get little chance to sail against opposition outside their own club, this is a very encouraging result. It reflects the extremely serious attitude to competition typical of the Peterhead club and the fact that, having set out to be competitive, they have replaced the old RMs that they started with by several examples of the state of the art, mainly from the Bantock stable. Far North I spent a week or so during July in Shetland with Chris Mackenzie, having a look at what goes on in the model yachting scene up there and in Orkney. The findings will be incorporated into a survey of the sport as it is and has been practised in the more remote parts of Scotland. I hope I can persuade John to accept this for a future issue of Model Boats, but to whet the appetite, they range from photos of model sailing in the 1880s to some very up to date RMs sailing on a loch on Yell. There are RMs on the more northerly island of Unst, which is the most northerly inhabited bit of the British Isles, but there is as yet no club and I didn’t get to see them. The model yachtsmen in the Northern Isles couldn’t have done more to make us welcome and to show us as much of their activity as could be fitted into the time available. Passing through The New Zealand entrants to the RM Worlds spent some time in England on 656 from the late 1870s or early 1880s; originally rigged as a LOA Class hull from Bradford, probably Photos courtesy Trevor Shaw. cutter and converted to a schooner. their way to Berlin and I was able to make some small recompense to my opposite number Kevin Fields, Secretary of the NZMYA, who put me up when I was in Christchurch. The other entrants are Bruce Edgar, who I met when we were both in Australia and who was hoping to sail in a meeting at Dovecote before leaving for Berlin, and Geoff Smale. Bruce won the NZ nationals with a more or less standard No Secret, but Geoff has designed his own boat. Starting from the Stollery Bee design, he has retained the master section amidships but has made fairly severe changes to both the fore and after bodies, flattening out the forward rocker and widening the transom. The boat is at present a one off in balsa and GRP. Geoff came second in the NZ Nationals at the first attempt, after only a couple of years as a radio sailor, but he had many years of dinghy experience to build on, including winning the 14 footer PoW Cup in 1958 and representing New Zealand at the Olympics in the FD. Kevin is sailing a foam planked boat that appeared in a part-built form in a column some twelve months ago. I haven’t had a chance to see this in her finished form as he has had his boat freighted direct to Germany, rather than face the hassle of lugging it round the rest of his extended holiday trip. He will be stopping off on the way back from Berlin as well and will be writing a full report on the World Championship which should appear in next month’s MB. Toy Boats Once I get started on a particular line of historical chat, it seems that new material keeps coming in steadily. Something very similar to the zebra planked model that I included last time has turned up in an illustration of the Clyde Model Dockyard’s latest model in the Model Engineer for April 1900. The style of boat is very similar as is the steering gear, described as “a new patent quadrant steering gear”, though the illustration shows a reversed tiller. The construction is describec as being “teak and pine planks riveted to ash ribs”, where mine is a heavy sawn frame construction. The engraving shows the zebra planking going right down to the lead, while the boat I have has a solid wooden plate fin and skeg. That said, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the model in last month’s photo is a home built version of the Clyde production. Also pictured is a Clyde model of a year earlier in similar style vf construction, but with a MODEL BOATS ‘ AN Far left, Clyde Model Dockyard model of 1900. Left, Clyde Model Dockyard model of 1899, available in sizes from 18in. to 5ft. hull very clearly influenced by the Linear Rating Rule that came in for full size boats and for the avant garde of model yachtsmen in 1897. The 1899 boat came in sizes from 18in. to 5ft. long, the latter intended to race as a 10 rater, but there are no prices. The 1900 paragraph gives no sizes but says that the boat is available in a variety of sizes at a price of 12 shillings a foot, though I doubt whether such prices could be read across to the 10-r size of boat. Even more schooners An older and more serious boat has turned up recently in Bradford and is shown in the last two photos. She is reputed to be over 100 years old and could very well be so. Though only just over 48in. long, the beam is 13in. and the displacement is reported to me as being “massive”. The hull is carved, none too elegantly, from a single block of wood and, as can be seen in the three quarter rear view, the turn of the quarters is very hard. The deck view suggests that she was originally rigged as a cutter and converted to her present schooner rig at a later date. The hull has a mid-19th century cutter look about it, rather than a schooner, though the practice of switching between schooner and cutter rigs was very common and some boats were fitted out to change from one to the other at will. There is a very substantial lead keel and the rudder is, and always has been, fixed. All this suggests that she was built more than 100 years ago as, by 1888, the Bradford clubs were sailing 10 tonners rather than the loa class that this boat seems to belong to. Some of her spars and sails survive, and she is in good enough condition to be worth the trouble of restoring to her original state. A New Club? Stoke on Trent has for a long time been a hole in the pattern of MYA affiliated clubs and I am pleased to hear that a new club is trying to get off the ground there. They have the use of a suitable piece of water for radio boats at a local dinghy club and the membership at present is just about enough to justify the trouble of being a club rather than a group of people who happen to meet when they are sailing their boats. Anyone interested in joining them should contact Paul Eden, 3 Astor Close, Weston Coyney, Stoke ST3 6QE. Telephone 0782 310 467. Contact address: R. R. Potts, 8 Sherard Road, London SE9 6EP. Tel: 01-850 6805. ra …WE DESTROY THE ¢ ;OPPOSITION! ¢ ¢ eee ae a a “2 x ro $ ° ¢ fina » ae a af re cS, o ake Ry. eS SKY no? : .”Y é UK – 12 issues £15.60 es Europe — 12 issues £20.00 Middle East – 12 issues £20.10- 4= REE Far East – 12 issues £21.80 . Rest of World – issues £20.40 ege\ Air mail rateson request Se x ee ed al Ss © ai8 ES ad Ry es & Se # Ser de a Send your remittance to: atic: Ss o Fe : a” .° ee. ; FokRy 3 en are” INFONET LTD., 5 River Park Estate, BT Pat: a oe. cieilicehiah eal Berkhamsted, Herts HP4 1HL ee >’ ee Sa ‘2 Pa. Wee eya AT st th Sy awOOO oF Cy & SE NOVEMBER 1988 r oO &2 hak al om o * Pm oh F FP PMP EPHOY wes RES ae SS Cae ¢ ¢
