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– Isa JOLLY-BOAT! _ Artesania Latina‘’s beginners’ kit — wis TOP SELLER REVIEWS REPORTS DANNY BOY We review Fleet Models’ erring Drifter AT GREENWICH The National Maritime Museum Model Boat Show | 9 “770144”29106 0 10> > 4 NEXUS YACHTING Curved RUSSELL POTTS returns to our pages with his model yachting column Not a Vintage boat, but too good to leave out. A diminutive cat rigged model on the lakeside at Marblehead. The mast is, I fancy, the tip of a fishing rod and the boom is lashed to it in a fixed position so the whole rig must revolve in the boat. The size is comparable to or perhaps smaller than a Little Missy. is nA Me Init mywal yrchyuyga, Rolf Haste from Stator) ewe had difficulty tedling as Apart Ae, twenty yar Above and above far right: A beautifully restored M at Marblehead. She dates originally from the late 1940s and has the full kit for a sliding rig of the type used by Gus Lassell on Sunkiss and other innovative boats of the time. star © ae ie his marks the return, after a considerable absence, of the Curved Air column. The aim, as in the past, is to deal mainly with vintage sailing models and some aspects of the history of model sailing. The column will appear perhaps six times a year, subject to the other bidders for space in the pages of Model Boats. I won’t bore you with what I have been doing in the interim, except so far as it concerns vintage models. There is a bit of accumulated backlog, some of it from a couple of trips to the US, which I shall feed in as occasion serves. One of the advantages of writing about old boats is that nothing is desperately topical and can perfectly well wait a month or a year before being released to the waiting world media. US Vintage Group Formed Far right: Mass start of one ofthe free sailing M races organised as part of the centennial celebrations. The slightly pretentious paraphrase for the readership of MB is prompted by one important event that occurred during my sabbatical which is a topical news story and which is engaged with the information superhighway that we are having thrust down our throats these days. 24 MODEL BOATS OCTOBER 96 Seductress, another M from the late 40s or early 50s, with a foneats cutaway fin, much favoured by US designers at that time. a NF DP Ta a RE EES PO SE a Be Above: A quieter reinstated. This is one of the notable differences between the US Vintage Group and our own dear shambles; most of their members are moment towards the end of the first day. (or have been) model yachtsmen and their inclination is to run competitions for their old boats. This is helped by the fact that there are many more of a class than we ever seem to get at a single meeting. At the Marblehead a hit aa SAO: CA AEBOO v.80 om senshi I meeting there was a rather informal competition for M class boats in which over a dozen boats of varying date took part. On an earlier visit to the States to give a paper at the 1993 conference of NAASH, the North American Association of Sports Historians, I managed to fit in a lot of other An X class boat getting ready to go into the water for the first time in several decades. useful and valuable visits, including one to the In May 1994 I took a few days off from my studies to attend the centenary (or should that be centennial) celebrations of the Marblehead Model Yacht Club in the USA. The club is, of course, famous as the location for the invention of the Marblehead Class Rule in 1930, and has played an important part in model yachting in the US for most of its hundred years existence. As part of their celebration the club organised a gathering of vintage boats at which there were about seventy boats aged from about a hundred to some as recent as the 1970s. A fair number of these, mainly Marbleheads from all periods of the class’s existence, took to the water at * various stages of the weekend. Out of this meeting grew the organisation now known as the US Vintage Model Yacht Group, which operates, after a few organisational hiccups, as a Special Interest Group within the AMYA. The foundation of the US Group is of great importance for the vintage movement, as it means that we now have active organisations in each of the two countries that have a substantial history of model yachting that goes back well into the 19th century. It has provided a means of bringing back into the US organisational fold some mainstream clubs, like San Francisco, which never made the switch to radio, or which have grown up outside the AMYA orbit sailing radio versions of older designs. For those of you who are in of Bill Bithell, a Boston model yachtsman San Francisco MYC. They sail on a pond in who sailed A boats in this country before and Golden Gate Park and somehow missed out on the transition to radio controlled sailing. They have a fine crop of Ms and X class boats, most of which date from the 1940s and 50s and are built in wood, together with one or two more recent designs in much the same style. The X is a US class which has a sail area limit and not much else. It produces hull forms very much like 10-raters of the 1950s, though with rather less hull to the sail area. The San Francisco club run regular competitions for each class and race them after the last war in search of the “Yachting Monthly” Cup. He mated Walter Pidgeon when he won the cup with Rangerin 1949, and again in 1951 when they successfully defended against Walter Jones and Ronnie Jurd in Boston. (See article in September issue. Ed.) | had the pleasure of meeting Bill at the Marblehead meeting and was cheered to think that an active interest in model yachting might keep me as bright and active into my eighties. In the run-up to that meeting he had made several suits of cotton sails for old boats that were being dragged out of attics for the event. More recently he has completed the building of a replica of Ranger, the boat with which he and Walter Pidgeon won the “YM” Cup in 1949. The most recent AMYA Quarterly has a good photo of her on the cover, sailing on the lake at Boston which was used for the 1951 defence and which has been brought back into use for model yachting through the interest of the USVG. It had been abandoned as a sailing site after road construction had made access difficult. The photos show some views of Redd’s Pond and the boats that I managed to catch on the side of the lake. What I can remember about each of them is in the captions, which makes me realise that there’s a difference under Braine steering in the main. Most of the skippers are relatively young, certainly younger than most of the boats, which is cheering, as it suggests that this style of sailing will not die out completely on the West Coast. The club celebrates its centennial next year, and the USVG are talking of holding another national vintage meeting in San Francisco as part of the celebrations. While I was there I spent the better part of a day with Jane Leyland, who is now employed as an aerodynamicist with NASA at Ames, but as a schoolgirl and student was a fanatically keen A class sailor. She mated the winning boat in the USA Class Nationals in, I think, 1950, and the boatis still in the San Francisco clubhouse. She brought along to show me two of her prized possessions, a Corby vane gear imported from England at great expense for the A boat, and a copy of the gear, made not in stainless steel but in the US and not yet in touch with the USVG the organising hub of the outfit is Jon Snow. between writing these columns as I get the He can be reached at 76 Woodbine Avenue, Concord NH 03301, USA. His phone is (603) years distance. Redd’s Pond is a famous titanium at about half the weight. This is sailing site for lots of reasons, not least the invention of the M class on its waters, but it’s serious commitment, even if it was made for 224-4586. The USVG also has a Web site. For those of you who know about these things log onto http://www.swep.com/usvmyg. For the rest of us, snail mail remains a perfectly viable way of communication, even if it can be photos back from the processor at three her by a colleague in the aircraft an odd place to sail. Set up on a hill behind manufacturers she was working in during her the town and under the lee of the town graveyard, it is now fairly well surrounded by trees and the wind is a bit variable. There college vacation. It was a truly beautiful thing and the more so because I have indirect experience (through having to pay for the amazingly slow if the US Post Office is involved. I’ve not yet managed to get a look at this Web site, but I know it includes a picture of Nat Herreshoff sailing a vane controlled model in the 1920s and an article by Charley were talking to the town council about getting Williamson which appeared in a recent AMYA Quarterly. This deals with the career industry faced in forming and machining titanium when it was first coming into use in the 1950s. While I was on the other side of the the walkway restored so that serious competition for vane boats could be gentlemen who had been members of the MODEL BOATS OCTOBER 96 used to be a wooden walkway all round to permit the handling of vane boats, but this has now largely disappeared and the steep and rocky shore under the graveyard bank is no fun as a place to retrim a boat. The club equipment and the wastage as they learnt on the job) of the problems that the aircraft continent I spent time with a group of elderly 25 The,poats nearest the camera are, I think examples of-the small number of] Classwmodels in the US. These are essentially scale@ models of the yachts that contested the America Cup in the 1930s.” Top left, right and above: The outside boat Long Island MYC in the 40s and 50s. One of cover a wide range. them, Harold Kethman, didn’t merely show me a lovely vane gear, he gave it to me. It is made in aluminium, quite simply, but very accurately. The intriguing thing about it is the frame in which the vane pivot sits. This has a facility to set the pivot vertical or angled slightly either side of vertical. This is the neatest and easiest to use form of guying I Far right: In the tent a have seen for a vane and I am still looking for a suitable boat to put it on, so I can try it out. park: nearly all the boats are Ms, though their dates and styles commercial model dating, in design terms The only potential drawback I can envisage is that it gives only one option for the amount of trom the 1920s or even bias you give to the vane, where the elastic earlier. Made by the firm of Boucher, or at least using a design of bowsprit that Boucher’s catalogue claims as a patented aspect of their production. offset devices that we tend to use over here give a wide range of adjustments as to the strength of the guying effect applied. The photos show the cradle, which in use is screwed to the deck, and the vane itself, propped up rather unconvincingly on a window sill. Some Practical Stuff: Radio Conversion of Little Missy One of the things that an interest in vintage models encourages is a talent for fitting radio into boats that weren’t designed for it and particularly into spaces rather smaller than are offered by the modern plastic hull. Older readers may recall the radio installation suspended from an oval hatch four inches by two and a half on my early 10-Rater Oriane, and the radio installation in a tiny home brewed model with a hull only 24 inches long (October 1991). Over the years I have also put together a collection of smaller non-class boats that were either commercial superior toys or home brewed boats for the enjoyment of the builder or frequently his children. Some time ago Graham Bantock ventured into this area with an 18 inch boat intended for the smallest class that is sailed regularly at the Southwold summer regattas in August each year. It was, I think, also Graham’s first venture into vacuum moulded ABS hulls. 26 Little Missy as the design is called, is an interesting mix between what you would expect of a Southwold boat (a fixed rudder, to comply with local rules, a choice of two fairly large Bermuda rigs, each making use of a large jib carried on a long bowsprit.), and what you would expect from Graham in terms of construction style and detailing. I had to have one, to make a match with the older simple designs that I already had. When I saw that the instruction sheet was headed “An 18 inch yacht for free sailing or simple radio control”, I took this as a challenge. I imagine Graham envisaged the possible addition of single channel radio, but there is plenty of space for two servos. one of which can be used as a lever arm winch. The competition this would be a non-starter, but for a bit of fun, it is within the bounds of possibility. Construction variations The construction of the boat, whether for radio or not, presents a few problems and the production engineering could have been better. In particular, getting the fin in the right place on the centre line is difficult. There are no guidance marks on the hull and the deep rocker and slippery material of the bottom of the boat mean that the normal technique of stretching a thread from bow to stern simply doesn’t work. I ended up sighting along a pair of plumb lines, but it wasn’t easy. Similarly, though a much less problem is not space but weight. The design displacement is only just over 30 ounces and the radio installation I ended up with weighs critical problem, getting the deck moulding to line up with the hull was a “by eye” exercise, six ounces, adding about 20% to the displacement. In a boat for serious matching pop marks on the flanges which could have been drilled out for locating pins which could have been made easier by putting MODEL BOATS OCTOBER 96 NOTCH DECK / HULL JOINT FOR RUDDER Above left and above: Lightweight aluminium vane gear by Harold Kethman of Long Island MYC; note the facility FIG.1 to tilt the vane to give a RESHAPING OF RUDDER ON ‘LITTLE MISSY’. suying- affect. RUDDER MATERIAL TRIMMED TO NEW SHAPE, DRILLED FOR RUDDER STOCK. HULL DRILLED FOR RUBBER TUBE: POSITION OF RUBBER TUBE AS FOR AFT OF TWO SECURING SCREWS IN ORIGINAL DESIGN. 70 x 7 x 150mm. SAILS etc. RUDDER MATERIAL FIG.2 ALTERNATIVE SCHEME FOR RADIO INSTALLATION IN ‘LITTLE MISSyY’ ‘LID’, CARRYING SERVOS AND RADIO POT, BALSA during the assembly. The alterations from the original construction to accommodate the radio are fairly straightforward. The drawing in Fig. 1 shows how the shape of the rudder piece is altered to produce a spade rudder. Drilling it for a suitable rudder stock is a bit tricky if you don’t have a pillar drill with a sufficie ntly deep throat. One way is to cheat by drilling the hole something oversize for the stock and adjust for centrality and verticality in the course of fixing it with Araldite or a similar forgiving gap filler. Because the rudder tube has to come up through the decking in the bottom of the rearmost well in the deck mouldin g, I would strongly recommend the following method of getting it verticaFand parallel to the fin. In the bottom of the boat you can be sure of getting the hole on the centre line by lining it up with the fin. So here you drill a hole that is a fit for your rudder tube. In the decking , where being sure you have the centre line and vertical register right is more dif ficult, drill something bigger, then use a small piece of scrap material from the deck, drilled to fit the tube, both to reinforce the deck and, by sliding it about until the rudder lines up with the fin and the stock is truly vertical, to solve all the alignment problems. The other structural change that you will need to make is to adjust the fore and aft position of the lead on the end of the fin to preserve the MODEL BOATS trim of the boat after the addition of the radio + gear. Obviously, this is the last job to do and is best done by trial and error in the bath with a bit of sticky tape holding the lead in position. The ease with which you can do this is just one of the advantages of this size of boat as compared to an A. ( & HULL PERMANENT ‘BOX’ UILT INTO HULL, BALSA Radio Installation The photos show how this goes together as well as any words. There is plenty of room to mount servos and a small radio pot in the well aft of the mast. The decking is 0.8 mm ply cut to cover the well and allow a margin all round for the sticky tape that will hold it down. By the time you have the radio pot Araldited in and the small slips of balsa glued on to support the servos, it will be fairly stiff, but the encircling edge of ply will ensure this and, equally important, givea purchase for a plastic bag to be taped over the bottom of the whole thing to ensure that the water that will inevitably get into the hull doesn’t get to the radio gear. Weight is a much more important consideration than space. The radio pot is not as big as the standard item and is in fact a pot that once contained a paint sample. It will just hold a .225 amp hour battery and a miniature receiver without its case. Even so it is a push fit with nothing to spare. I would have taken the case off in any event. The switch is eliminated and contact is made and unmade by a double ended plug lead which enables me to position the battery end of the connections at the top of the pot where it can easily be reached. The rudder servo is the smallest I could find; though the one I used as a lever arm winch is a standard servo, I think on reflection that another miniature would have been man enough for the job. The sheet leads from the end of the servo arm are to a pulley on the taffrail; then the main sheet runs to a wire hoop immediat ely forward of the aft well and the jib sheet runs round the outside of the radio hatch, led through a wire loop and another pulley before passing under the wire loop forward of the mast. Because the rigs need to come off, the sheets are not fixed permanently to the booms. They pass through cord loops on the grommets and are secured and adjusted for length to get the trim right by small strips of sticky tape. On a boat as small as this there is no need for anything more substantial. OCTOBER 96 27 … The top view shows how very marginal the space is inside the radio pot, even with a miniature receiver and a .225 amp/hour battery. ee The hatch with radio gear mou “s ie ; ed. The view from _ th shows how much space’there is to spare… far, the boat is very prone to duck her nose in when a gust passes through. As the course comes off the wind, the predisposition to porpoise increases and when running before the wind (admittedly a course the original design was probably not expected to encounter at Southwold), she will put her nose down very readily and if hard pressed will stand up with her rudder out of the water. She will recover from this and sail on quite happily, but it’s not a seamanlike evolution. So essentially a boat for light weather and steady winds, but always going to be a handful to sail. At one stage I thought this was going to be a suitable present for my grandson to learn radio sailing on, but experience suggests that she is really an amusement for an experienced skipper who wants something he can throw into the nearest water for a bit of relaxation. Though this is not intended as a kit review, | have felt obliged to be a bit critical of both the production engineering and the performance of this little boat. I thought it was only fair for me to give Graham the opportunity of commenting on what I had said. His remarks are in the box below. Above: Radio installed, or at least laid in position without being taped on. This is mainly to show the sheet runs and the little bit of sticky tape that holds the sheet end in place on the boom. All photos: Russell Potts. Variants Since making this conversion, I have thought about how it might be improved. As it stands, it has two disadvantages. One is the sheer weight of the radio installation. There’s not a lot you can do about the radio gear itself, other than using miniature servos on both channels. The associated bits of wood could be better. 0.8 ply is lovely stuff and good for all sorts of jobs, but it is surprisingly heavy. The same thing done all in 2 mm balsa might be a bit lighter, but would need more dope and varnish to make it waterproof. It would also be vulnerable to casual damage in a way that ply is not. A solution that would reduce the amount of woodwork and produce a design that would make the use of balsa more acceptable is to reduce the size of the hatch to the minimum needed to carry the servos and make it as a lid to fit over a permanent box mounted in the well. This would permit part of the well to be decked with fabric as intended in the original design. This would also be a more elegant looking solution to the installation problem. Sailing So far as I can determine from informal sailing alongside a free sailing version built straight out of the box, the additional weight doesn’t affect the performance very significantly. The main problem, which affects both free and radio versions, is that the rig, with its big jib, is a lot for a hull as small as this to handle, and there is very little reserve buoyancy forward to cope with gusts. Even when close hauled and with a rig chosen so that she doesn’t lie over too 28 Graham Bantock replies Little Missy – An 18 inch Yacht for Southwold We took an order for some 18 inch yachts for the Southwold competition with no real idea of how we would make them. The vacuum moulding route gave us the opportunity to test, and learn about, a medium we had not explored before. About twenty kits were eventually sold. Having learnt a bit about the material we developed the slightly larger yacht Tactic, as a more serious commercial product. Although not the subject of Russell’s article, this slightly larger yacht at 600 mm long is intended primarily for radio control, though a free sailing version is also available. We do have a few Little Missy kits on the shelf, but we have no plans to produce any more. So if you want to emulate Russell’s remarkable achievement, don’t wait too long! Tactic is still in production, hence the comments below reflect what we learnt from Little Missy and were able to incorporate into Tactic. Russell’s comments about the standard of engineering are perfectly correct. We found the same problems when assembling the deck and marking out the fin position. Both were addressed in Tactic by making simple adjustments to the deck and hull mouldings. Likewise, positioning the rudder stock is made very simple by moulding a recess into the hull into which the tube is glued. The deck moulding of Tactic is also designed to make radio installation straightforward, no messing about with ply or plastic pots. The comments about the size of the jib and the effect on performance also ring true. The tradition for most of the competitions at Southwold is to stage races on reaching courses. The successful designs tend to be boats with a large lead (not the weight on the bottom, but with the rig placed well forward of the lateral area of the hull) and the rigs on the free sailing Little Missy and Tactic reflect that trend. The RC version of Tactic has a more conventional sized jib and performance is as normal as can be expected in any micro yacht. There are two reasons why small yachts don’t perform as well as their larger sisters. One is scale effect, well documented in many of the books on model yacht design, which rapidly reduces the ability of smaller yachts to hold up their sail area. The second is that the power of the gusts, relative to the mean wind speed, is much larger at low wind speeds and when close to the surface. Both effects conspire to make sailing a 36 inch Restricted Class a good deal more demanding that a 10-Rater. By the same token, mastering a Little Missy would be even more challenging. Tactic is a relatively well engineered yacht kit which produces a good looking and performing miniature yacht but a model of this type is not exactly the sort of thing which SAILS ete are renowned for and we do not have the ability to market it as well as the design merits. If anyone is interested in licensing the production and marketing of Tactic from SAILS ete we should be delighted to hear from them. MODEL BOATS OCTOBER 9 RADIO YACHTING small YACHTS It’s all racing this month says MIKE KEMP s part of a festival of model boating taking place in Weymouth over the weekend of July 20/21st two classes of Radio controlled multi-hulls came together for almost two full days of racing in the Radipole lake adjacent to the town’s harbour and marina. With a need to share frequencies and water with scale and fast electrics and one eye on possible interference with and from off shore power boats operating in the nearby sea, racing time was somewhat limited. Despite this the organisers had negotiated some relatively generous time slots for these impressive examples of model sail powered craft. I had been brought in to provide an attention with fast electric races and the Portsmouth Scale display team. The ‘Mini 40’ yachts were all trimarans, although catamarans are permitted by the rule, and there was a mix of conventional and swing rigs. Stefano Sesso had made the with a yacht that is 2 metres square and has a mast top some two and half metres above the water carrying something approachinga fully battened bedsheet. The fact that these yachts are light enough to be picked up quite easily in one hand, despite their awkward shape and dimension, means that once they get a hint of a breeze they go at a quite alarming rate! It also means that like their smaller sisters they have very little momentum to carry them through the large number of light patches on this water. Thus racing tended to be a somewhat stop and go affair: but while they were going they were not the sort of thing one should get in the way of! This became relevant whenevera scale ship strayed ‘over the border’ from their protected area: it had to be removed smartly for its own safety. Indeed the rescue boat was in danger of being collected during one race when it was taken out to provide a local press photographer with a closer view he nearly got a much closer view than he expected as he was rowed across the course. It seemed that everywhere he was taken he was in the firing line as the multis hurtled around journey all the way from Milan, joining up with _ the double triangle course I had set. the French coach trip somewhere along the way. He took a few races to settle into a successful sequence of good finishes with his swing rig equipped Piranha which would take him through the two days and into first place overall. As Saturday wore on Stefano drew out a commanding lead with his only real challenge coming from Peter Wiles who was While there was considerable variation in the designs of craft represented in the Mini 40 fleet there was not much variety in the bigger class with almost all the yachts coming from the board of Loac Madec who was himself sailing one his Maxi 200 designs. Whether this is because it is the only yacht we have yet, much as we see in other classes, or because Multihulls at Weymouth. Eric *Messan’s Two Metre named Ville de Thiais shows the terrific scope these large yachts have for graphics. Far right: It’s a very delicate balancing act to hold a swing rigged trimaran on one float and under control; Stefano Sesso was very good at it, holding this attitude for great sections of the ana 8 FRA 1g € THIAIS Ye iaen BV ie windward leg. ‘independent’ Race Officer and my first challenge was to set a course which could, at the same time, be seen by the competitors and spectators, but leaving the harbour end of the lake free for the almost continuous operation of scale model boats. For the majority of the yachts, the ‘Mini 40’s, this was not too much of a problem but for their larger cousins, the Two Metres, the water we had to offer was really little more than a puddle. What was particularly frustrating was that beyond the road bridge that crosses the lake and formed one of our barriers to operation was some wonderful wind – all clearly in sight and sampled by the one or two yachts that went out of control. I had been expecting sufficient ‘Mini 40’ yachts to need to run a two heat EORS race for them which would have meant we would have had three heats for each ‘race’ – two for these and one for the big brothers. In a way it was fortunate that some of the British skippers that had promised to come along didn’t turn up for that left us with fourteen of the smaller yachts which was just about manageable on the water we had to play with. After an initial ‘trial race’ we settled into a two of one class, two of the other, sequence; fitting in with the time slots where we had to share frequencies and public sailing Ian Jay’s Panic centre hull/Ghost Train float combination equipped with one of Peter’s Marblehead rigs. Unfortunately Peter couldn’t return for the second day’s sailing so Stefano was left with few worries at the start of the second day of sailing. British Model Multi-hull Association chairman, Andy McCulloch, took some time to get into the swing of sailing his new ‘Ghost Train’ but eventually began to put together enough effective races to mount a credible challenge by the time the last sailing session started at 2.00 pm Sunday. Had the event been able to carry on for the Monday it is likely that Andy would have been able to prevent the Italian going home with the major trophy – but it didn’t and he did! The strong French presence completed the international flavour of this Mini 40 event and just about made the event for the Two Metre multi-hulls. Only Mike Howell had a British registered Two Metre, and that was of French origin: it was relatively new and Mike had yet to completely master its operation. These yachts are best described in one word, HUGE! While many of the ‘old hands’ in the model yachting world will be familiar with Ten Raters and A class yachts of 2 metres or more in length, none of them will have had to grapple there has not been too much development I don’t know. What is apparent is that there is terrific scope in this development class to try all sorts of combinations – even mixing hulls of different designs. There were several examples of yachts using the floats from Andy McCulloch’s latest design but only one complete example of the design. I hope to be able to expand on the ideas around this in a future issue. There can be no doubt that there is a lot of scope for ingenuity and home design in these classes and you get a lot of boat for your money – even if it doesn’t weigh very much! One thing became abundantly clear during my spell watching these craft: it pays not to get together! This strategy is beneficial in the sort of yachts we are usually looking at in this column: with two or more multi-hulled yachts it is just about mandatory if you wish to continue to the successful conclusion of a race. Once these things get together the chances of them coming apart without outside assistance is pretty remote. It’s not that they have more than the usual bits of string and wire to hook onto, it just seems that the floats seem to ride up over each other much more easily, indeed some of them are more or less permanently out of the water on one tack or the other. Once MODEL BOATS OCTOBER 96 a float has mounted a float or centre hull of another yacht it gets itself caught on one or other bit of the riggine and the two yachts beets a pirouette down & leeward until they come ON a Georges Lucroie to rest against some obstacle or the resome boat catches mp – itself not an easy job – and they are separated. By which time the winners multi make theme bit have usually made their way to the finish. inelotormanhandie, We all know that one is not supposed to touch a mark of the course while racing – don’t we? With a multi-hull this is another source of potential delay as it appears to be extremely easy to pass one of the hulls to the inside of a mark which then catches on a cross beam to bring the yacht to halt. In this case there seems a much better chance that the yacht will free itself, albeit after some delay, Leading skipper mmite and the skipper will then have to find some clear with a dozen of these ‘square’ yachts about is even more difficult than it seems to be with a mono-hull. can manage in their language we had very few moment the yachts went out for their first race particular a chance to show off their potential including some ‘flying of the centre hull’. A truly amazing sight at close range. Despite a determined attempt by Andy to spoil what looked like becoming a very diplomatic solution to the Mini 40 competition Stefano held on to his lead, in the absence of Peter Wiles. The larger yachts were not really dominated by any one skipper and the regular printouts of results were being studied with by reminiscent of the Fleetwood receptions and speeches given too and from various participating groups. It was a good opportun ity for sitting down and having a chat though ever greater interest as the afternoon drew to a close. Ultimately it was Laurent Bourgouin with his yacht ‘Titi’, a Maxi 201, that came out on top, followed by Eric Messan with his Maxi 200 very graphically named ‘Ville de Thiais’. there were so many different groups taking part there seemed little opportunity for much The prizes were presented at about 4.30 pm by the deputy Mayor of Weymouth, Councillor Sunday morning saw all back in nob ee 8 them! sehutely oe pba ee a peiMes cok ee Ceane : weekend became our control van to house pit eo early arrival CC aaa a 2h ace ranks of scale boaters, fast electric racers and specialist display teams all MODEL BOATS OCTOBER 96 celebrate by dumping him in the lake! Above: British Model then packed away their ‘bits’, said their goodbyes and began to make their way home after what would appear to have been a most Ellison, sailed this successful weekend of multi-hull sailing. I hope that the other sections of model boating involved in the festival felt that it had been equally successful. I also hope that I get the chance to see the Two Metres when they are in action on a less restricted piece of water with just a touch more constant wind, I am sure there are some absolutely fabulous Multi-hull Association Secretary, James Graupner Butterfly. It was a little underpowered for the very light wind conditions but is the only true, over-thecounter kit to fit the Mini 40 Class rule. photographs awaiting in those conditions! Sunday the 14th of July saw the One Metre ‘circus’ set up camp at the side of Rickmansworth Aquadrome, the home of the Three Rivers Club, to sort out the MYA Metropolitan and Southern District One Metre Rankings for 1996. What faced them was a rather indeterminate breeze and another, Skipper 1st Country Stefano Sesso Aiull/Filoats Italy Designer Piranha Total Score P Gonnet 24.8 Andy McCulloch 3rd a England Jean-Paul Guimard France 4th Jean-Paul Henrion 5th France Gerard Escorihuela FranceA his caravane suitably Peed at theba of our gather, off camera, to Place sees ee nes outthat | 2nd am start was a 9.30 am session for his trophy while the French contingent Top Five Mini 40 Multi-hulls at Weymouth putting us all to shame with their early | co. . ect ES aa eee the Mini 40 class, Stefano Sesso receives guess this is more of tradition in continental Europe where the water is normallya little warmer than around our shores. Everyone few breaks it stayed that way throughout the Sunday sessions, giving the Two Metres in just that the Babel Fish was sounding a bit loud! Saturday evening saw the majority of earnest; our continental contingent in a sufficient state of undress to ‘take a dive’. He almost spoiled the French team’s fun by going most of the way under his own steam! I the wind filled in enough to produce some of the speeds I had been hearing about. With a Saturday afternoon it sounded as if we had the Mayor of Weymouth. There was a tasty buffet, served in an orderly fashion Having received their prizes the winners of each class were subjected to a tradition beloved ofthe French – they were deposited in the lake! In fact Stefano, having seen the Two Metre winner treated thus, received his trophy altogether but, with amazing timing, the acquired a ‘translating echo’ – or perhaps it was Above top: Winner of Beer. seemed as if the wind had deserted us called his continual translation of the sixty second countdown to halt on Sunday morning. I guess the regular ten second counts rounded off with a ten, nine, eight ete. eventually get translated into time signals in the brain which don’t really need language. Certainly during participants in the festival gather in the Pavilion for a fairly low key reception given “ getting ready to do their bit. Compared to problems in organising the racing. Our old friend Gilles Vuillemin was sailing one of the Two Metre yachts and did a wonderful job as interpreter although his fellow countrymen got Laurent these the model yachting compound must have seemed pretty ‘laid-back’ with the Two Metre yachts parked bow down and resting on their mastheads. WhenI went out on the water to try and make some adjustments to the course it Despite the majority of the French skippers being able to converse in English as well as I and Metre. i class was was on His Way t6’the lake also;scoultfesy Of fiis team mates, water to exonerate with a turn. Finding clear water was up early wo Bourgouin wid PHS asi 201 flamed Titi, Moments Jater . Ghost Train Skipper Ist 2nd 3rd__—— 4th 5th : Countr Laurent Bourgouin France Eric Messan Pierre Gonnet Loac Madec _ Gilles Vuillemin : France France France France 44.7 R Tsuroupa Cobra/Adhesiv T Pauvert/ RTsuroupa d-Zif/Ad-Zif modified Escorihuela-Bellot _ Top Five Two Metre Multi-hulls at Weym outh Place A McCulloch Tsuroupa Hull/Floats i tines : Maxi 200 Maxi 200 Maxi 200 68.4 fs — Design Maxi 201 Dimitri 56.1 61 _ _L Madec Total S 12.4 LMadec 20.2 _L Madec 38.7 _ PLucas/P Gonnet L Madec 23.1 45 67 Gerry Weston-White of the Swanley Club has produced this Zip’ One Metre to his own design. It has a fashionable slim hull with a very distinctive above the water shape. The conditions did not suit it and Gerry finished way down the fleet. hidden, hurdle to successful yacht racing – what the Italians once referred _ to as ‘salad’. Stringy green stuff just waiting to wrap itself around fins and rudders at the ‘wrong’ time: is there ever a right time for this stuff? Race Officer, Peter Popham, was set the problem of trying to set a satisfactory course with not much to go on. In the end he managed to get us a sort of a beat to the first mark, although on some occasions it came about because of bending and fragmented breezes. We started off with a more or less traditional triangle and sausage configuration which was reduced as the day wore on to a triangle and then, for the last the last A heat, to a ridiculous reach up to the windward mark and back to the start line. This heat would probably have been better decided by drawing raffle numbers from a hat! For most of the day however the course was pretty “One man and his boat Cndiasiond “member Ruper Idfenes cats quick glance at the oppesitiotes == dimhe one of his good considering the conditions and there was indeed wind out there if one could only spot it. The weed played more of part than it should and struck just about everyone at some time or another: some almost adopted a standard course via the launching jetty to check and remove the offending stuff. It was sometimes quicker to do this and sail out to catch up and often pass those who had elected not to do so, or who had caught some later on 7 the course. In general the racing was of a good standard and there was not too much trouble for Peter to have sorted out. There were some particularly close races which brought considerable satisfaction to the participants and at” ag watchers alike: one that sticks in my mind was where Nigel Gilson and I led the field with our Dann-3 yachts, weed robbing me of what I thought was a secure first place from Nigel in second. The last sprint to the finish saw Nigel soar past to take the race; it’s good to see him back with the One Metres after his unfortunate problems at last year’s nationals. Nigel Gilson’s Dann-6 Radio 6-Metre would seem to have its ballast attached back-to-front. It isn’t and it seems to be for the task of controlling this yacht. more than adequate _ Place Skipper Peter Stollery Chris Harris RS Chris Dicks Gordon Sears Graham Bantock Mike Kemp K Binks John Bush 8th 9th Jono Knight 10th Paul Jones Club Guildford Bournville Clapham Market Bosworth Chelmsford Two Islands Eastbourne Doncaster Leicestershire Doncaster The five, three heat, races after the seeding heats saw five different winners with Peter Stollery taking number two, Nigel Gilson number Design Designer Total Score Metrick Magick Metrick Magick Tinto Dann-3 Ragtime Metrick Magick Widget Red Wine C Dicks C Dicks G Bantock N Gilson GBantock —_C Dicks C Dicks G Bantock 227 24.7 28 30.7 33 34.7 Sif 43 Tonic Tonic A Austin A Austin 6 Metre Owners Association Match Racing Championship Result Place Skipper Nigel Gilson 1st 2nd __— Tony Riley Robert Harrison 3rd Mick Shillington 4th Mike Robinson _5th Charles Chambers 6th Jim Macdonald 7th Paddy Chambers 8th Denis Brett 9th 68 Design Yacht Dann-6 J-Sann 4 Again Again Red Oktober = Dann-6 Caprice Caprice Revival Rival Renaissance Clementine Petrel No Name Renaissance Nimrod Renaissance Black Adder Designer N Gilson T Riley N Gilson W Sykes G Bantock G Bantock J Lewis G Bantock G Bantock 10.4 19 Total Score 48 40 40 38 36 33 30 25 15 three, Chris Harris the fourth, Paul Jones the penultimate and Paul Tickner the aforementioned scramble to win race six. Chris Dicks, Keith Skipper and Graham Bantock were the seeding heat winners. Apart from his one victory Peter Stollery managed to maintain a position close to whoever was leading the other races and emerge as the winner of the overall event with a total of 10.4 points after one discard. Alistair Law almost certainly would have won the furthest travelled award, had there been one, to finish the day in seventeenth position after a frustrating day of ‘ups and downs’. ‘Full-sized’ skipper from the Midlands, Jono Knight seemed genuinely surprised to find himself in ninth place with his Widget after a fairly lowly series of ‘A’ heat finishes: it’s being consistent that does it. It was nice to return to the club that introduced me to ‘class’ radio yacht racing back in those days of my Seahorse, their Trappers and that sort of sponsored fleet of Oliver Lee 1.5 metres. It was also nice to meet up with some of the club members who are still there, like Stan Cleal, who are just as friendly and courteous as they were then. Match Racing Championship The annual 6 Metre Owner’s Association two day match racing championship returned to the Cotswold Club for 1996. It happened two weeks earlier than planned because of a switch with the MYA Radio 6 Metre National Championships which were originally going to coincide with a Bon Jovi concert at the National Bowl in Milton Keynes, close by. The event dates were switched so that the Championship would not impinge on the concert! Well, actually it was to overcome access problems caused by temporary road closures and accommodation problems with lots of fans coming into the area. There was also a side benefit that the Match racing Championship no longer clashed with the Fairford International Air Display and its attendant access problems in and around the Cotswolds. Despite all these attempts to avoid clashes the entry for the event was disappointingly low with only nine boats taking to the water on Saturday and less on Sunday when one failed to return. I was as guilty as any by not sailing to defend the championship I won twelve months earlier: I had already promised myself that I would not be doing so as I was to be involved with the ‘Weymouth thing’ and was then prevented from turning out on the Saturday by a different combination of circumstances. I was fortunate enough to be able to go along and witness the sailing on Sunday which took place in very light conditions; not a time when these yachts are seen at their best. I missed the wild excesses of the Saturday weather when it rained, hailed, and was generally pretty nasty for a short while – and didn’t even turn up the wind very much! Lunch was taken early on Sunday when the wind died to just about nothing at around eleven. By just after 12.00 it had returned to a level which disturbed the wind socka little, though the direction was subject to almost continual changes from the apparent prevailing off the shore arrangement. This direction sees the breeze passing across one piece of water, occupied by jet-skis, and over a noise reducing earth bank and then some shrubs and low level trees. By the time it reaches the radio yacht sails it is suitably confused and twirling making sailing very tricky and a little frustrating at times. In the absence of Mike Wareham the skipper to beat turned out to be Nigel Gilson sailing his latest design, Dann-6, in its familiar yellow livery. This yacht appears to owe a lot less to the banana than its predecessor and looked to be a generally hotter prospect. This was borne out by the performance of the second yacht to the same design in the hands MODEL BOATS OCTOBER 96 Top Ten 6 Metres at the Nationals Place ist Skipper Graham Bantock 2nd _—s Richard Rowan of Peterborough skipper Robert Basen. With Nigel in the ‘hot seat =”=r=eme was trying to better his performamee aeltedy Gia through the three complet] Seandis Ghat were sailed. Paddy Chambers tad gut Is eiess Renaissance ‘Nimrod @aaae grety Guackiy, but not consistently enowe® In much the same war Geatiner Charles was also having a less Gham successful time in the light Sunday airs altiheagh Saturday was a little ard 4th Sth 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th Nigel Gilson Keith Skipper Gordon Price Mick Shillington Robert Harrison Robert Rooney John Daines George Beacroft Club Chelmsford Paisley Gipping Valley Chelmsford Paisley Yacht Renaissance Perfect J-Sann 4 Manx Maid Rebel with “Rival: Sanday in particular was ‘Revival’ weather. Tony Riley was also doing better than he had expected in Sunday’s light airs with his latest design ‘Again’ which had been ‘optimised’ for heavier airs and was consequently several pounds heavier than most of the fleet. Tony was finding that the momentum gathered when the breeze did pick up carried his yacht well into and often through the light patches: a factor not unknown in the world of International A class sailing. Although Saturday had seen best part of two boards completed, all but for half a dozen matches, Sunday only allowed the processing of one more complete round of matches after the middle board was completed. This was despite the fact that there were now two byes in each board because of the retirement of Denis Brett after the first day. At the end of the first round, mid-way through Saturday, Nigel was two points, one match, clear of Mick Shillington who started well with the superb Bill Sykes designed and built ‘Caprice’. Mick had a one point lead over Robert Harrison who, in turn, was one point in front of a trio: Tony Riley, Charles Chambers and Mike Robinson all on twelve points. By the time they packed up to tuck into the Saturday evening barbecue Nigel had stretched into a four point lead over new second place skipper Tony Riley. Robert Harrison and Mick Shillington were tied on twenty one points and Charles was in fifth with twenty. Of course this wasa little artificial for some had not met during that second round of matches. At the Sunday lunch break and the end of the second round Nigel was five points clear of new second place skipper Robert who was two points ahead of the third place pair, Tony and Mick. Charles was still in fifth, just one point ahead of Mike Robinson. The Sunday afternoon racing saw a real needle match develop between Tony and Robert as they left Mick two points behind while Mike Robinson overtook Charles to finish in fifth. Tony Riley eventually emerged as runner-up by having won two of the three matches between Robert and himself. Radio 6 Metre Nationals Once again I have to rely on third party information for a short report of the National Championship for radio 6 metres. Originally Total Score Revival 51.8 Renaissance Dann-6 Renaissance Limited Edition Bournville Caprice Peterborough Paisley Two Islands Lee Valley Caprice Red Oktober Optimum Vie Brilliance Dann-6 Optimum Renaissance Renaissance better. Current Match Racing series leader, Mike Robinson. was having a pretty good time of it Design from the west on day two to provide Graham with an opportunity to show that the Renaissance can ‘produce the goods’ in such conditions; even when chased by a well sailed Revival. Richard Rowan s yacht was the only Revival being sailed in this event, there were no fewer than seven of its sister design Renaissance making Graham Bantock responsible for the origin of half the fleet. A total of twenty one races, including the seeding heats, were sailed in a two heat EORS system under the watchful eye of Race Officer Jack Day, builder of that light airs greyhound Revival named ‘Lady Luck’, sadly not competing in this event. The skippers gave Jack a pretty gentle time with only a couple of protests; perhaps the fact that all observing was done by members of the host club had something to do with this. Jack had recently had a spell in hospital and it was great that he was able to be out and on the mend for the event. The BBC Eastern Region camera came along and filmed a ‘staged’ race where all but one of the entry went on the water to try and increase the spectacle a little. This move did not meet the total eae a all the entry i it was soon over and resulted in some muc needed exposure on the Sunday evening ‘Look East’ spot. When the time came to wind up proceedings Head Ranger Gordon Redford from the Milton Keynes Parks Trust, under whose guiding eye we operate on this lake at Furzton, was on hand to present the prizes and said some complimentary things about the model yachtsmen. 18.4 60.8 63.5 74.1 100 107.7 117 120.7 142 . Top Ten Radio Clubs Club 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Woodspring Chelmsford 4 Bournville Guildford Score 970.9 727.6 685.9 587.6 5th Birkenhead 6th Market Bosworth 448.9 7th Fleetwood : 435.5 Falmouth 301 Hamble 294.7 8th Oth 10th Leicestershire i 582.9 f 399.6 ak é Top Ten Radio individuals 2nd Skipper Paul Tickner Keith Skipper Score 208. 3rd Chris r 4th Ns arris Martin Roberts 169.7 5th 162 Paul Jones 6th Gordon Maguire 153.2 151.2 Peter Stollery 149.7 1st 7th Harri 8th Gordon Sears 9th David Taylor 10th Anthony Corbett Gordon Sears (47) and Keith Skipper (90) are 199.2 about to glide away from me (07) during one of my weed catching races at Three Rivers. ; The fleet charge away from a start during the One Metre Ranki oe at fs ian od, 134.3 Pahwaoidee a4: 117.1 1 peer oil sot Files 116 conditions! The League There is less of a change in the MYA Radio League positions this time; the biggest change has been in the individual competition where Keith Skipper has leaped over Chris Harris and into second spot less than ten points from current leader Paul Tickner. By the next time I report we shall have the results of one or more National Championships which will undoubtedly make some changes – to the scores at least. It is quite possible that some places will change too, with scores being as close as this. In the Club competition the top three have stretched out their lead and moved a little closer together. Below them not much has happened but watch out for those Nationals. scheduled for two weeks earlier and then swapped with the Match Racing Championships to avoid other ‘events’ this brought it into a ‘clash’ situation with the Weymouth Multi-hull meeting. Yet again | missed an opportunity to get involved with a class I love. Nevertheless the event went ahead with a total of sixteen skippers including a group of five who made the considerable trip from the Paisley club. Thus the 1995 race long battle between Richard Rowan and defending champion Graham Bantock was rejoined although the final scores suggest that it was a little more one sided this year but with the same result: Graham won and Richard was second again. Also featuring well this year was Nigel Gilson who managed to split his way into a trio of Renaissances with his Dann-6 design. Unfortunately, for a venue which has been known to come up with some scary winds on the appropriate occasions, the wind was generally light throughout the weekend. Not quite sure where it wanted to settle on Saturday it finally did a light and variable job MODEL BOATS OCTOBER 96 69
