The Model Yacht: Volume 14, Number 3 – Winter 2010-2011

LINCOLN MEMORIAL POOL, WASHINGTON, DC NEWSLETTER OF THE U.S. VINTAGE MODEL YACHT GROUP VOLUME FOURTEEN, NUMBER THREE Winter 2010-2011 Page 1 NEWSLETTER OF THE U.S. VINTAGE MODEL YACHT GROUP VOLUME FOURTEEN, NUMBER THREE Winter 2010-2011 Editor’s Welcome In this issue we feature an informative and inspirational article by George Steele on model square riggers, which we have supplemented with plans and notes from the 1930s by one Douglas J. Boyle, who was quite possible the most colorful writer ever to turn his hand to the topic of model sailboats. Mark Steele reports the results of the “smallest schooner” contest and we have an interesting narrative on the restoration of an early 1900s racing yacht. As we finish up our fourteenth year (has it really been that long?) we would like to experiment with the option of electronic distribution of The Model Yacht for those who prefer it. The advantage to you is color photos and the ability to read the issues on your portable devices, the advantage to the Group is that we will reduce the ever-growing postage costs and the advantage to me is that there will be less paper to lug around. The first step is to determine what, if any, interest there is in doing this. If you would like to download a copy of this issue in PDF format to see what it would look like, please email boebert@swcp.com and I’ll send you instructions. I do guarantee that paper copies will be available for those who want them as long as we are around. Ebbs and Flows The President’s Message Vintage Membership US VMYG annual membership is $25 for three issues of our newsletter The Model Yacht. It is $30 for members outside the US. VMYG lifetime membership is $125. To subscribe to or renew your newsletter and services membership, send $25 or $30 check (payable to US VMYG) or cash to: John Snow, c/o US VMYG, 78 East Orchard Street, Marblehead, MA 01945. For more information, call John @ 781-631-4203 or visit the US VMYG Web Site: www.usvmyg.org 2011 VMYG National Regatta 17th annual “Vintage Model Yachting Days” National Regatta for US VMYG VM, V36 and Traditional Sailing Craft / Scale models will be at Spring Lake, NJ on September 22-25. The Marbleheaders of Spring Lake MYC is the host. Contact Harry Mote at 609-660-0100 and hjmote@verizon.net for details. In March 2011, the club website will have the regatta NOR and entry information at http://web.me.com/eileen31/ Marbleheaders/HOME.html 2011 International “Challenge Cup” Regatta Earl Boebert VMYG is helping to coordinate this biennial international free-sail (vane) match racing Page 2 event on US East Coast for the first time. It involves free-sail (vane) skipper teams from UK and US pitted against each other over two successive weekends at historic model yacht locations. It will be held at original free-sailing venues at the Conservatory Lake, Central Park, NYC and Redd’s Pond, Marblehead, MA on weekends of September 30October 2 and October 7-9 respectively. Team members plan to visit the Mystic Seaport Museum in CT and Herreshoff Marine Museum / America’s Cup Hall of Fame in RI between weekends, along with potential New England fall foliage excursion at regatta end. The overall event contact is John Snow at 781-631-4203 and jsnowj@comcast.net John Tucker of the CPMYC is coordinating Cup activities at Central Park. He can be reached at 212-874-0656 in NYC. Check the VMYG website for emerging details. 2011 East Coast VMYG Activities October 15&16: Bill Bithell Cup VM Invitational Regatta (10/15) and the Marblehead MYC Chowder Race (10/16 open regatta including VMs) at Redd’s Pond, Marblehead. 1886 Puritan America’s Cup R/C Model VMYG member Bill Huizing has undertaken another unique scratch-building project as follow-on to his highly successful Charles W. Morgan R/C model. This will be a fully functioning R/C wooden model of Edwin Burgess’ 1886 America’s Cup (AC) Defender yacht Puritan in 1/20th scale. Check photo in this issue of Bill holding Puritan bare hull at Mystic Seaport Museum in October. It was carved using the bread & butter lift method. Goal is to initially launch this gaff-rigged AC winning design at the Seaport this summer. It may also be showcased at Central Park during the 2011 International Challenge Cup. Check the next newsletter for project updates. VMYG Resource Material VMYG in coordination with the AMYA has robust line-up of vintage model yachting activities in the Eastern US in 2011: April 16-17: Seventh Biennial Woods Hole Model Boat Show sponsored by Woods Hole Historical Museum at Woods Hole, MA; AMYA-VMYG model exhibit at Community Hall, with AMYA open regatta including VM models 4/16 at Eel Pond. June 11: Bill Full Cup VM Invitational Regatta at Redd’s Pond, Marblehead, MA. July 3-9 & 10-16: WoodenBoat School building planked model courses under Thom McLaughlin. July 9: Laconia MYC VM Invitational Regatta at Lily Pond, Laconia, NH. August 21-27 & August 28-September 3: WoodenBoat School model yacht building and sailing courses under Alan Suydam. September 22-25 weekend: VMYG National Regatta hosted by The Marbleheaders of Spring Lake MYC at Spring Lake, NJ; R/C VM, V36 and Traditional Sailing Craft / Scale models racing and exhibits. Early October: UK-US International Challenge Cup Regatta using UK 36R Class vane models. September 30 – October 2 at Central Park, NYC; October 7-9 at Redd’s Pond, Marblehead. Visit the US VMYG website and then click on “USVMYG Store” to order the following resource material: “Yankee III” book authored by VMYG Historian Earl Boebert on CD or downloadable. CD is $15.00 postpaid in US; $20.00 in the rest of world. $10.00 if you download your own. Book summarizes history of the America’s Cup 1930s era J Class and provides detailed modern building techniques through an available molded hull to craft of an R/C V36 model from the 1930 Yankee J Boat design, based on the original 1935 Yankee Jr. model plans of John Black. “Building Planked Models” DVD plus book with selected articles from the VMYG “The Model Yacht” newsletter. Package is $25.00 postpaid in US; $35.00 in rest of world. It is a “how to” vintage model building book by Charles Farley describing plank-on-frame methods used for 1940s designs using modern-day adhesives. “The Model Yacht” newsletter back issues in PDF format on DVD as complete set only of over 40 issues (since 1996), each having 20 or more pages of technical and historical information. The DVD is $40.00 postpaid in the US; $50.00 in the rest of the world. Page 3 John Snow The smallest schooners on Planet Earth, Giel’s Stad Amsterdam, a model of the brig Black Rose and Kiwi Derek’s ` built without plans’ Atlantide! Some months ago while in the smallest room in the house (where I often get good ideas !) it crossed my mind that I should seek to find the smallest RC and freesail schooners on Planet Earth. Through the miracles of email and the cooperative promotional effort of Marine Modelling International, Duckworks Magazine and The Model Yacht it was all on with modelmakers given three months to build and enter the Mark Steele Challenge. The two incredibly small (when measured length on deck) winners were found and my article in the February 2011 issue of MMI announced the results and showed a few of the entries, Now, here are the two victors thanks to Earl Boebert and this publication. Hans Berger and his First in class schooner. There’s a radio in that beauty! Harry Duncan’s tiny Mark Steele, First in the freesail division Page 4 In the freesail division it was Harry Duncan of New Zealand for his lovely kiwi schoonerrigged scow, built on the lines of the Alma but in a tribute to the writer given my name – I am sure I have been called a lot of names in my life but never before a schooner ! The deck length of his model was 38mm. In the RC class (which for some reason I had expected to attract more entries) there were few, and one of them was a topsail schooner Gypsy II built by Hans Berger of Plainville, Conn, USA with 3 channel control that had a deck measurement of 3.905 inches. Though I had to tell my wife that we could not eat other than a banana and four roasted peanuts each for one month, the standard was so high that I decided to give two additional medallion awards, one each for the runners up in both divisions.Peter Noble of Texas for his 42mm length on deck schooner Thumbelina in the freesail class, and Mike deLesseps of Maine, USA for his RC schooner Suzanne (the second of his two schooners he entered) became the Runners Up Peter Noble and Thumbelina Atlantide, built by Derek Nicholson from photographs only. Page 5 On to models model taken by larger. The 37m his son Richard. long motor yacht The 256’ threeAtlantide demasted Stad signed in 1930 Amsterdam by Alfred Mylne launched in the was part of the year 2000 was rescue of Allied the first clipper Forces from the ship to be built beaches at Dunin 130 years. The kirk in 1940 as photo taken by Caleta. Later Andre Ros of the when owned by fine RC model Tom Perkins she made of her by was used as a model shiptender to his wright, Giel Herreshoff Mike De Lesseps’ Suzanne, just 5 1/2 inches on deck. Geldermans was schooner Mariette taken in the and often linked Netherlands where she sails with other modin `item’ fashion to his ultra modern squareels made and sailed by members of the rigger Maltese Falcon. Hague Model Boat Club. As far as I can gather it is well nigh impossiFor those into the pirate days of old, also fans ble to get plans for Atlantide and if you are of the films Pirates of the Caribbean, the “twoKiwi Derek Nicholson you have to resort to footy” 8 gun brig Black Rose, her story a looking at photographs and producing workproduct of my imagination and the reality of ing drawings to enable you to build a model. the model the result of building skills by A good Kiwi model shipbuilder, Derek who Harry Duncan of the Waikato in New Zealives outside of Auckland and sails with the land some may have seen in the November Ancient Mariners did just that, the result issue of Marine Modelling International. shown in the photograph of the finished Stad Amsterdam, by Giel Geldermans. Nothing prettier than a square-rigger ghosting along. Page 6 yet another type of model for those perhaps bored with the typically normal boat choices. Oh yes I almost forgot the “ARRRGH !” that Imogene Flora Rose, her rum-drinking, pipesmoking woman Captain of African ancestry would no doubt have uttered, accompanied of course by a verbal barrage of foul expletives ! Come on you chaps, for windling pleasures take an adventurous step with the built of a model of `difference’, one with the WOW Factor , the model in the early stages of being fitted with RC. Harry Duncan and his Black Rose. Built for freesail, control line or RC operation, the model is near-scale and both somewhat menacing and mystery shrouded in its weathered and battled guise. She sails reasonably well by line control and represents Page 7 Mark Steele An Appreciation of Priscilla Restoring a 19th Century Pond Yacht It has been a long time since anyone showed appropriate appreciation for this pond yacht – maybe over 100 years. The history of this boat is a little murky. When I was a teenager in NH, (mid-‘60s), my father told me my Uncle, who lived in Williamstown, Massachusetts, had a sailboat model he wanted to get out of his garage. He had found it in a garage somewhere (possibly New Jersey) when he was a young man (possibly in the 1920’s or 1930’s), acquired it and did some restoration (sails, I think, and some minimal rigging; the rest looks to be original). I have no idea (and was too thoughtless to ask) whether he sailed this boat on any of the ponds in New Jersey, where he and my father grew up, or in Massachusetts. However, it remained in his garage for many years until he offered it to me. Having not the slightest idea what this was I said “Sure, I guess.” Eventually I got this 40inch green and white nondescript hull with large pieces of what looked like bed sheet sewn on sticks. I think we tried to assemble it, said “Wow! That’s big” (actually, almost 75 inches end of boom to end of bowsprit and over 65 inches high at the topmast) and then took it apart. My only concrete memory is taking the boat to a pond in Maine during a fishing trip in the 1960s (my father and grandfather were avid fly fishermen), putting up the main and jib (the only sails we could figure out how to get up) and chasing the boat in an aluminum canoe with a 4horsepower outboard motor. We struggled to catch it. Unfortunately, I can’t find any pictures of it from that time. I think we took some 16mm movies but they are long since gone. After that episode it stayed in my father’s garage for the next 10 or 15 years where the squirrels and mice chewed off the rigging and the sails rotted. Both my father (who really didn’t know much about it) and my Uncle are dead now so the history will remain murky. Other than a vague idea that the boat had nice lines, I never gave it much thought during this period, although I had read C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books and had developed a romantic notion of sailing ships. Time passed and with a move to Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay I took up my interest in sailing. My interest in the old boat model sitting in the back of the garage in New Hampshire increased as well. When the move from an apartment to a house came in 1979, there was room (just) for the boat and I had the idea that I probably ought to bring the boat back to Maryland for preservation and display (I thought it might be an antique). I set it up with the mast and topmast and the bowsprit and the rest of the pieces Figure 1. The boat awaiting restoration in the model shop. This is how I received it from my Uncle. Page 8 Figure 2. This picture shows the similarity between the traveler drawing in the 1895 Franklyn Bassford article and the one on the boat. It also shows how the blocks were attached with twisted wire and their arrangement on the boom and deck for the self-steering. Note the tiny eyes on the boom with a wire for lacing on the mainsail – another interesting period touch. piled on the deck. Even in that shape it was pretty impressive. It was finally beginning to dawn on me that this might be a rather special item that should be treated with some care and I started to give some thought to restoration. I got right on it – 30 years or so to later. I discovered the local community college had classes in wooden boat building at the local Maritime Museum. Included was a class in wooden ship modeling. I think this got me off top-dead-center (investing money is a big motivator). In October of 2010 I enrolled and started doing some research – which turned out to be a fascinating part of this restoration. I started by studying the gaff rig (the J.S. Johnston website at http://www.jsjohnston.org/ ing was the popularity of building and racing pond yachts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both in the US and UK. There are also a few film clips I found of pond yacht sailing and racing from the 1930s. As an historical note one 1939 film clip of an international competition in England has a flash of a German swastika flag over someone launching a boat. In my research I ran across the US Vintage Model Yacht Group website. With the help of Earl Boebert, I was able to focus in on a probable time period for the boat – the 1880s. His article, based on Franklyn Bassford’s 1895-6 piece in Outing magazine, contained a drawing of a self-steering device essentially identical to the one on the boat (see Fig 2). The boat probably pre-dates the development of the Braine self steering in 1905. is a great place to study the gaff cutter rig. His 19th century pictures of sailing and racing yachts are magnificent). What was surpris- Page 9 Figure 3. Two parts broken or missing. No idea what they might have been for or lookedlike. The lines of the hull are typical of a racing cutter of the 1880s as well. Two books I found on model yacht making from 1880 and 1887 have similar lines for their hull templates. The plumb stem gave way to a cutaway forefoot in the 1890s (e.g., Franklyn Bassford’s design for a racing model). This can also be seen in the pictures of pond yachts from this period. Of course, the design and construction date do not have to coincide, but there are some reasons to believe that someone in the 1880s assembled this particular boat to sail it on a pond. As a note, the name Priscilla is partially visible on the stern. I thought the boat may have been based on the lines of the America’s Cup defender hopeful of the same name, but I found the actual Priscilla was an “iron-hulled centerboard sloop” that lost the 1885 America’s Cup defender bid to Puritan, another centerboard sloop that tended more toward the cutter in hull shape and rig. The boat is closer in shape and rig to the British cutter Genesta, beaten (narrowly) by Puritan. Priscilla is not a family name so it is unlikely my Uncle put it on, then painted over part of it. I like it, so it will remain Priscilla. The boat was obviously built to be sailed, but it also had a few details (scored decking to look like planking, blocks for rigging instead of hooks and eyes typical of 19th century pond yachts, carved boom and gaff jaws instead of wire goosenecks) that might not typically be found on racing pond yachts of the period. It appears someone had put some effort into making the boat visually interesting. I decided to try to restore it to a level where it might be sailed again (although I doubt I will ever put it back in the water) and try to keep the visually interesting aspects as well. Now came the hard part. I couldn’t remember what it looked like or where any of the strings went when the sails were actually up, and the mice and squirrels had eaten most of the rigging (fortunately, the only wooden piece to be damaged was the staysail boom). The only clues I had were the positioning of some of the blocks and a few pieces of string (woven cord, actually) hanging off pieces here and there. There was the self-steering puzzle, the position of eyes and cleats fastened to the deck, and some holes here and there that might or might not have had something to do with rigging parts no longer on the boat. There were also two broken or missing items at the bow for which I still have no clue (see Fig 3). The piece nearest the mast may have had something to do with the staysail boom. The hole near the bowsprit has a plate around it screwed to the deck for … (?). Page 10 Figure 4. Detail of the finished mainsheets with smaller blocks and 2 sheets. Note the threaded adjuster near the cleats is off center from the tiller – another mystery. I spent a lot of time going over resources from the period and staring at the boat and various remaining string ends, eyes and fittings. I filled many pages of a notebook with sketches and notes and tried solutions with string. I decided to replace what was left of the original blocks, which were quite large and attached with thin, twisted wire which was scoring the wood, so I made smaller blocks (visually more pleasing, I hope) and attached them with cord wrapping (my goal was no new holes). The cord wrapping technique was used on the original boat for attaching lines to booms and masts, but the cord had deteriorated and had to be replaced (I used waxed woven “cord” from a craft shop for the rigging rather than string — tan for the running rigging and black for the standing rigging) . I saw the technique on how to make “woolding” in a book on ship models. It lends itself to quick replacement or movement of blocks and halyards, so it probably was a useful technique for the original builder as well. The rigging would use slides and hooks for adjustment and attachment similar to period pond yacht rigging guidance. The goal was to be able to disassemble the boat and assemble it like it would be done for transportation and pond racing. I made some slides (called a “euphroe” in an 1880 book and a bowsie on a model yacht fitting website) from thin nylon that work pretty well (but look a little ugly). I made the hooks from fishing line snaps. At the moment most of the lines use a rolling hitch (left over from my youthful days working for a tree service) for adjustment and tensioning. This works pretty well and I am leaning toward this solution rather than the slides. It also follows period guidance. Franklyn Bassford recommended using this type of adjustment method (I learned it as “rolling hitch” but it may be more correctly called the Midshipman’s Hitch or Tautline Hitch – anyway, very useful). Where to attach all the halyards and sheets was a knotty issue. On the simplest rig there would be the gaff halyard, throat halyard, jack yard halyard, topsail yard halyard, topsail sheet, staysail halyard, jib halyard, and, if I wanted to go that far, a flying or topsail jib halyard, all coming down the mast and requiring an anchor point. The sharp eyes of the person in the model shop spotted two small holes on opposite sides of the mast near the base. I have no idea what they were for originally but they now contain two brass eyes to anchor all the halyards, etc., and act Page 11 Figure 5. This is the disassembled boat as it came home from the workshop – ready for transport to the nearest pond (or display area) … as a stop for the boom jaws when the gaff and throat halyard are raised. I decided on a fairly simple block arrangement for the gaff and throat halyards. I could never quite figure out the original arrangement from what was left attached to the gaff. For some reason (maybe because it was added later) the block for the jack yard halyard was much smaller (about the size of the ones I made) than the other blocks on the boat. I replaced this (for consistency) and replaced the missing block for the topsail yard on the topmast. I also added a whip at the gaff jaws for the jack yard halyard. I think there may have been one for the original rigging but, again, it was a guess based on a piece of string hanging off the gaff near the jaws. According to period guidance the boom would typically have had two mainsheets; one for beating and one for off the wind, so I rigged two mainsheets for the two cleats attached to the deck, guessing that that was what they were for (see Fig 4). The shrouds were fairly easy to figure out with three eyes on each side of the mast – there are no attaching points for backstays so I didn’t consider putting any on. There was an eye on the bronze lower topmast cap and an eye on the bowsprit gammon for a forestay, and an eye on top of the topmast for another stay to an eye on the top of the end of the bowsprit that might have been put on at a later time, perhaps by my Uncle. The original boat appears to have had more eyes on the end of the bowsprit held on with string windings or maybe wire (magnifying glass work), but they are no longer there. I added three more brass eyes to rig the bowsprit with shrouds and bobstay to the available attaching points on the hull; my only digression from “no new holes.” So far, everything seems to work and nothing looks out of place. As it presently stands, I can disassemble the boat in less than five minutes and assembly only takes a little longer (see Fig’s 5 and 6). I made a new stand out of mahogany scraps from the boat building workshop next to the model shop with felt padding to protect what’s left of the hull paint. There is still some work to do. I haven’t decided how to rig the staysail (or foresail, or forestaysail to be nautically correct) and jib booms (held in place with string, at the moment). I am experimenting with a small brass eye in the ends of the booms through which is passed a hook attached to a stay or some other line and secured at an eye, a la Franklyn Bassford, again. According to typical rigging of the period the jib should be set free standing, not hanked to a stay, but what was left on the jib boom was not rigged this way. It has the appearance of being an addon (the string winding holding the line on Page 12 Figure 6. …and this is what she looks like assembled. which the sail was hanked with small metal rings is not as neatly done and is of a different material than the other windings on the boom – more magnifying glass work) and would require two halyards. The topmast has a hole opposite a hole in the upper cap (looks like a soldered eye came off at some point and somebody made a hole for something – possibly an eye). I used this hole to put in a brass eye to hold a block for the jib halyard. It also helps hold the topmast along with a pin through the lower cap. There isn’t enough left of the staysail boom to guess how it was attached and rigged (and no staysail) but the staysail should be laced to the boom and hanked on the forestay – pretty straightforward. I made a new staysail boom and am thinking about how to finish it so it doesn’t stand out too much. Running the sheets from the staysail and jib booms is another mystery that will probably be solved through experimentation. badly – a little flaking off the lead on the keel and some rubbing from the raw wood of the old cradle. At this time I don’t think I am going to repaint the hull. The old patina is pretty attractive and the paint job isn’t damaged too Jeff Pierson The last thing to think about is sails. It would look nice but it would block the window – not an option according to my wife, unless I find somewhere else to display the boat. However, I would like to try my hand at lacing on the sails and seeing if my rigging works… At the end of the day (if not the restoration), the boat blows me away. I can’t take my eyes off her. I have been racing sailboats (2436 foot) on the Chesapeake Bay for over 20 years (age is bringing that to an end shortly). This boat is a reminder of sailboat racing days long gone, both manned and models. But I know the intensity of the competition and the appreciation of the beauty of boats powered only by the force of the wind hasn’t diminished for racing sailors of all types. Page 13 The Saga of the Little Yankees In 1935, Gerard Lambert, owner of the J Boat Yankee, sailed her to England for a series of races against British boats. Yankee was beloved in the Boston area, and the publicity surrounding the trip was massive. As part of it, John Black, designer of the classic M boat Cheerio, published a series of articles in the Boston Evening Transcript on the construction of a 36 inch LOA model he called Yankee Jr. The grandfather of Paul E. Holmes of Plaistow New Hampshire built one, and, more significantly for us, kept the plans and articles. These are exceedingly rare because the Transcript, for some reason, is one of the few major newspapers not freely available in online archives. In 1992 Paul built his own version, shown below, and put a radio in it. In 2000, through the good offices of member Alain Jousse, copies of the plans and articles were passed to the USVMYG. I remember how excited I was to be made aware of a John Black design that we had not heard of before. I began work on a radio version that I called Yankee III. First prototypes were sailing in 2002 and our book describing the build was first published in 2004, coinciding with the major exhibit the USVMYG mounted at the Museum of Yachting. The book is still available in CD ROM format from the USVMYG store. Subsequently fiberglass hulls were developed by Nigel Heron and are available from: obeahboatworks.webs.com/yankeeiii.htm These hulls have been adopted by a New England group as a club one-design class owing to their convenient size and ability to sail in weed-infested ponds. We recently received a gracious letter from Paul Holmes informing us that his 1992 boat has been presented to the Plaistow Historical Society, a fitting retirement for the model that was the link between the 1930s and today. Page 14 Earl Boebert radio purchase. The Servo Stretchers allow end point adjustments if one uses a Spectrum DX5e radio which has no end point adjustments but is individually cheaper than a 2.4GHz radio that does have that ability. “The cost savings is about $60 for all the considered parts. I have though found that the 805/Servo Stretchers/DX5e system presents complications in set up for novices to understand, and have reverted to HiTec 815’s and an end point adjustable transmitter for my course recommendation.” The photo below shows the setup on his V36 model using the HiTec 815, tidy as all Thom’s work is. Bill Huizing holds the hull for his Puritan. Vintage Model Radio Installations Thom McLaughlin has kindly furnished these pictures of his tidy radio and servo installations. The photo at the bottom of the page shows the setup he has used in the VM designs used in his WoodenBoat School Course. About this he writes: “The rectangles attached to the sides of the ‘electronic box’ are Servo Stretchers from Servo City. Those allow the HiTec 805 to do the work of an 815, not a cost savings there though. But the cost savings comes in the Page 15 Earl Boebert The late and much lamented Berkeley pond, 1946. This is where I fell in love with model yachts in the 1950s, and didn’t have a chance to do anything about it until forty years later. Photo by Alma Baumgarten. A Sea Scout on its way to the pond, location unknown, sometime in the 1930s. Probably just after Church. Photo by John Borner, provided by Rod Carr. Page 16 How About a Square-Rigged Class? There is nothing like a modern racing sloop to get to windward. Almost all the AMYA classes are racing sloops with a catboat and perhaps a trimaran thrown in. But who would like to start a square rigged class? Say a few brigs, and some ships and barks. At least these could sail in an open class not as racers but as “lookers”, some in ballast, others fully loaded with an unseen cargo. Of course the vessels from Steel, Chapman & Hutchinson Ltd. would fit in here, but we want to encourage the home builders so this would not be a racing class, but a number of character ships sailing not in races but in rallies. Who has the most ingenious arrangement of sails, rigging etc. Who has the best looking vessel? Now there might develop some “class” divisions, say warships as opposed to pure unarmed cargo carriers or some hybrids like Cook’s Endeavour, and Mayflower, Pinto, Nina. And, perhaps, members might want to add maneuvers such as some of those that the tug boat folks enjoy. Finally, perhaps there would be no racing (it is just for looks and pleasure.) Take a look at An Introduction to Radio Controlled Scale Sailing Models by P. V. Williams, ISBN 1 900371 20 O. This will give you a good overview of the topic. (There are a few errors that the proof readers missed; see if you can find them on pages 19, 20, 23, 82. and in the glossary.) So where will you get these boats? One place to start your search is on the web. Try several of the sellers of boat kits, plans, parts and materials. These may give you lots of ideas, but probably not the right ready-to-sail boat that you want. Unfortunately, you probably cannot buy what you want so you are left with the last alternative: “build your own.” Now that will be a challenge. It means a work bench, tools, skills, energy and time. Luckily, there are plenty of books with small scale plans to give you ideas. See The Story Of Sail Illustrated with 1000 scale drawings ISBN 1 55750 896 8. That will give you a start. After that you can read through The Heyday of Sail. The Merchant Sailing Ship 1650-1830. ISBN 1 55750 360 5 and Merchant Sailing Ships, Sovereignty of Sail 1775-1815 ISBN 0 87021 418 7 and Merchant Sailing Ships 1815-1850 ISBN 0 87021 941 3 and Sail’s Last Century The Merchant Sailing Ship 1830-1930 ISBN 0 7858 1416 7 and look also at The Tea Clippers 1833-1875 ISBN 0 87021 884 0. Since you may want to limit the size and weight of your model for the sake of your back you may limit your ships to the smaller originals. The problem with all these ships is their complexity. Another possible approach is illustrated in The Ships of Christopher Columbus ISBN 1 55750 755 4. If you select the Nina you can build two hulls and rig one with a square rig and the other with a lateen rig. The final approach before you build from scratch is to see if you can find a seller of fiberglass hulls that approximately fills your needs. Look on the web for Loyal Hanna Dockyard and similar sites. Other sources of inspiration may be John Leather’s book Barges ISBN 0-229-11594-2. Especially interesting are the big barges 130 feet long, schooner, barquentine and barque rigged, see chapter 4. These are attractive as you can simplify their shape to have sharp chine‘s and thus simplify construction. Another alternative rig is the ancient one masted square rig. See The Past Afloat by Anthony Burton ISBN O 233 97433 4 and 0 563 16480 8. lf you are interested in colonial ships read the books of William Baker and you can buy a copy of his plans for an eleven inch Mayflower II from Plimoth Plantation. Stability When you scale down a real man carrying 130 foot cargo carrying ship to a three or four foot long model of that ship you come up against the laws of nature. The net result is that the scale model has much less righting moment than you might expect. It will heel over very easily in a little breeze. Thus the model is very tender (tippy). So what can you do to alleviate this problem? The explanations of the problem and its solution are complex enough so that the mathematics usually confounds me, but the true answer is that the model needs a lot more stability than you would expect. Usually the answer is a non-scale deep keel with lots of lead at the bottom. Of course this may also require a somewhat deeper hull to carry the added weight of the lead. The alternative is to reduce sail area on windy days, perhaps to topsails, a jib and spanker. Since the sails generate the driving force a reduction in sail area might mean less “engine power” driving force even though the wind speed is higher. Page 17 That is what you want to reduce heeling, but it may also reduce forward thrust needed to “punch” through the waves. This gets you to the difference between the older ships with large topsails and the later ships with upper and lower topsails. Putting a reef in the larger topsails of your model could be a bit of a chore and make an unsightly and unrealistically large bundle of reefed sail, but then furling the upper topsails might be equally troublesome. (If you “hang“ the yards by a hook to an eye on the mast and have a quick release fittings to secure the braces, sheets etc. and then use another yard with a dummy sail tightly furled thereon can make a much better and more realistic looking furled sail.) You will have the usual problem: make or buy? There are very few buy options. lt is possible that you could buy a tugboat hull and rig it as a brig. The stern probably would not look “right” unless you modified it. But it would save a lot of construction work. Thus you are left with designing and building your sailing vessel. A quick review of Working Boats of Britain ISBN 0 85177 277 3 provides an extensive review of the various ends of many vessels. My inclination is for a square ended barge hull with flat up-sloping ends. Thus a boat of quarter inch exterior grade plywood could be a “fast build“ boat, say four feet long on deck and about one foot wide and with a ship or brig rig with a fin keel with lead on the bottom should get me sailing the soonest. An alternative would be a 3 ft by one foot by 1/2 foot box with carved balsa ends glued on. These would be more shapely, however buying balsa surfboard planks may include a $300 shipping cost! I would start with a sheet -to-tiller arrangement with the possibility of installing radio control later. The local pond is small enough that RC is not a requirement.) George Steele The Eileen O’Boyle Editor’s Note Some of the earliest technical material we put up on the USVMYG Web site in 1996 was a series of articles on model square-riggers by Douglas J. Boyle, and it’s still there: ing. Several have been built and by all reports they sail as well as Boyle asserted. One modeler built a model of the Pamir using Boyle’s techniques, and documented it in a long chain on an Internet forum: www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread. php?t=743611 www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread. php?t=761962 including videos: www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread. php?t=756572 (you’ll have to “unwrap” the URLs into a single line for them to work). I thought that a revisit to the Eileen O’Boyle would make a nice complement to George Steele’s article, especially since the “last century” scans on the site are pretty rough. So here are high-resolution plans and diagrams, plus an excerpt from Boyle’s work describing her sails. The rest of the material, too long to include here, can be obtained from the site. Earl Boebert Square-Rigger Sails www.usvmyg.org/squarerig/sq1.htm And now for the sail dimensions of the ” Eileen O’Boyle.” and they are delightful. Boyle’s masterpiece was the Eileen O’Boyle, designed as a free sailing pond model with the emphasis on sail- The lower edge of each squaresail can be taken as being the same in length as the upper edge of the sail below. In more seamanlike Page 18 language, the foot of an upper sail will be the same in length as head of the sail beneath it. Depths are the perpendicular depths. In using these sail-dimensions, builders should be careful to remember that there are two factors to keep in mind, if they are to place their trusses at the right distances apart. These factors are the thickness of the yards themselves, and the length of the slings they are using. Judgment will be necessary. Squaresails Head of sail given first, dimensions in inches. Foremast. — Foresail or fore course: 13 by 4.3 by 13.7. Lower fore topsail: 12 by 3.2. Upper fore topsail: 11 by 3. 2. Fore topgallantsail: 9.6 by 4.5. Fore royal: 8 by 3.1. Fore skysail: 6.4 by 2.9. Mainmast. — Main Sail, or main course: 13.5 by 5 by 14.5. Lower main topsail: 13.6 bv 3.7. Upper main topsail: 12 by 3.4. Main topgallantsail: 9.6 by 4.8. Main royal: 8.6 by 3.6. Main skysail: 7.1 by 3.4. Moonsail: 6.4 by 2.5. Mizzen Mast. — Lower mizzen topsail: 11.4 by 3 by 11.75. Upper mizzen topsail; 10.5 by 2.8. Mizzen topgallantsail: 9 by 4.2. Mizzen royal: 8 by 3.1. Mizzen skysail: 6.5 by 2.75. Fore and Aft Sails Combined inner and outer jib: 18 by 9 by 12. Angle at the tack is about 36 degrees. Fore topmast staysail: 13 by 7 by 10. Angle at the tack is about 52 degrees. Main topmast staysail: 13.5 by 7.75 by 11. Angle at the tack is about 63 degrees. Main spencer: 7.2 by 5.3 by 6.8 by 8.3. Angle at the throat 136 degrees. Angle at the tack 80 degrees. The Spanker: 6.5 by 4.5 by 7.75 by 8.5. Angle at the throat is 138 degrees. Angle at the tack 80 degrees. It must be remembered that the sails will have to sit tightly. The beautiful bulging sail of the sixteenth century carrack must be avoided at all costs. You will never sail to windward with those! The best thing to do is — first of all, to place your trusses or cranes on the mast, in the positions they will have to occupy, before ever you cut out a single sail at all. Then get your yards hung up on these cranes, to dangle freely. The distances of the cranes from one another can easily be estimated from the saildimensions given. Allow, say, 3 or 4 tenths of an inch for half the thickness of the yard, and the length of the yard sling, adding this amount to the given depths of the squaresails to get the positions of the cranes. Then go over your own ship, sail by sail, with a ruler; for it is fairly certain that the saildimensions here given will not exactly fit upon your ship. They should be used as a guide; not followed slavishly, since you want your sails to fit tightly, and a tenth or two can easily mean a flabby sail, which is exactly what you do not want. Page 19 Sections at 1/2 Size. Remember that your yards will be just one inch longer than the head of the squaresail which is attached to it, that half an inch of the yard must jut out from its own sail at each end. You will not have to worry about the transverse dimensions, when shaping your yards. That will of necessity be a simple matter. Add one inch to the length of the head of the squaresail to get the required length of the yard which is to carry it. But the distances apart of these yards, vertically, is a matter which you will have to be careful about. You want a tight fit. Therefore, when you have hung up all your yards on their trusses, in such a way that the resulting sail-plan, when the sails are bent on to the yards, will be something like the drawing, and of approximately the same dimensions as are here given, measure up your own sails to fit nicely upon the yards as you have placed them. There is bound to be a slight difference between the sail-dimensions as here given, and the sail-dimensions which you will actually have to use. That is nothing to be frightened of. You need tight sails. Therefore, if the depth of your squaresail has to be a tenth or two more or less than the dimensions given, you need not worry. The necessary allowances wiH put you into the way of using judgment in the matter. The thing to remember is that you need a tight sail, where the squaresails are concerned. Each squaresail must be pulled down firmly at the clews, and sit flat. Thus your measurement of the depth of each squaresail must be one you have made your own self from your own ship. Page 20 Douglas J. Boyle (1932-1933) 1/4 Size Plans LOA 36 3/8 LWL 30 Beam 8 1/2 Draught 5 1/2 Disp 18.56 lbs Keel 6.25 lbs Page 21 Not to scale. See text for sail dimensions. Page 22 Page 23 Marblehead Model Yachts The Model Yacht is published three times a year by the U.S. Vintage Model Yacht Group. Copyright 1998 to 2011 U.S.V.M.Y.G. Reproduction for noncommercial purposes permitted; all other rights reserved. Other copyrights are maintained by the original holders and such material is used here under the fair use provisions of the relevant copyright acts for nonprofit research and educational purposes. Editorial Address: 9219 Flushing Meadows NE Albuquerque NM 87111 Email: boebert@swcp.com Phone: 505 823 1046 Officers of the U.S. Vintage Model Yacht Group: President: John Snow Eastern Vice-President: Ben Martin Western Vice-President: Dominic Meo, III Midwest Vice-President: Tom Pratt Southeastern Vice-President: Thom Mclaughlin Vintage M Class Coordinator: John Henson Vintage 36 Inch Coordinator: Al Suydam A Class Coordinator: Rod Carr U.K. Coordinator: Graham Reeves Canadian Representative: Doug McMain Historian: Earl Boebert Archivist: Jim Dolan Pond boats made by the Marblehead Model Yacht firm are some of the rarest around, and we are indebted to member Dave Thibodeau for locating the 1925 advertisement on the facing page, which is the first complete set of pictures of these boats we have located. At the Bridge The painting below was done by the Swedish landscape painter Johan Tiren in 1895. It is set on Lake Orsa, which lies to the Northwest of Stockholm. Earl Boebert Page 24 Paul Fiske was a naval architect who sailed out of the Berkeley club. Plover was designed in the late 1940s and is a good example of early use of the sliding rig. Page 25 LINCOLN MEMORIAL POOL, WASHINGTON, DC NEWSLETTER OF THE U.S. VINTAGE MODEL YACHT GROUP VOLUME FOURTEEN, NUMBER THREE Winter 2010-2011 Page 1 NEWSLETTER OF THE U.S. VINTAGE MODEL YACHT GROUP VOLUME FOURTEEN, NUMBER THREE Winter 2010-2011 Editor’s Welcome In this issue we feature an informative and inspirational article by George Steele on model square riggers, which we have supplemented with plans and notes from the 1930s by one Douglas J. Boyle, who was quite possible the most colorful writer ever to turn his hand to the topic of model sailboats. Mark Steele reports the results of the “smallest schooner” contest and we have an interesting narrative on the restoration of an early 1900s racing yacht. As we finish up our fourteenth year (has it really been that long?) we would like to experiment with the option of electronic distribution of The Model Yacht for those who prefer it. The advantage to you is color photos and the ability to read the issues on your portable devices, the advantage to the Group is that we will reduce the ever-growing postage costs and the advantage to me is that there will be less paper to lug around. The first step is to determine what, if any, interest there is in doing this. If you would like to download a copy of this issue in PDF format to see what it would look like, please email boebert@swcp.com and I’ll send you instructions. I do guarantee that paper copies will be available for those who want them as long as we are around. Ebbs and Flows The President’s Message Vintage Membership US VMYG annual membership is $25 for three issues of our newsletter The Model Yacht. It is $30 for members outside the US. VMYG lifetime membership is $125. To subscribe to or renew your newsletter and services membership, send $25 or $30 check (payable to US VMYG) or cash to: John Snow, c/o US VMYG, 78 East Orchard Street, Marblehead, MA 01945. For more information, call John @ 781-631-4203 or visit the US VMYG Web Site: www.usvmyg.org 2011 VMYG National Regatta 17th annual “Vintage Model Yachting Days” National Regatta for US VMYG VM, V36 and Traditional Sailing Craft / Scale models will be at Spring Lake, NJ on September 22-25. The Marbleheaders of Spring Lake MYC is the host. Contact Harry Mote at 609-660-0100 and hjmote@verizon.net for details. In March 2011, the club website will have the regatta NOR and entry information at http://web.me.com/eileen31/ Marbleheaders/HOME.html 2011 International “Challenge Cup” Regatta Earl Boebert VMYG is helping to coordinate this biennial international free-sail (vane) match racing Page 2 event on US East Coast for the first time. It involves free-sail (vane) skipper teams from UK and US pitted against each other over two successive weekends at historic model yacht locations. It will be held at original free-sailing venues at the Conservatory Lake, Central Park, NYC and Redd’s Pond, Marblehead, MA on weekends of September 30October 2 and October 7-9 respectively. Team members plan to visit the Mystic Seaport Museum in CT and Herreshoff Marine Museum / America’s Cup Hall of Fame in RI between weekends, along with potential New England fall foliage excursion at regatta end. The overall event contact is John Snow at 781-631-4203 and jsnowj@comcast.net John Tucker of the CPMYC is coordinating Cup activities at Central Park. He can be reached at 212-874-0656 in NYC. Check the VMYG website for emerging details. 2011 East Coast VMYG Activities October 15&16: Bill Bithell Cup VM Invitational Regatta (10/15) and the Marblehead MYC Chowder Race (10/16 open regatta including VMs) at Redd’s Pond, Marblehead. 1886 Puritan America’s Cup R/C Model VMYG member Bill Huizing has undertaken another unique scratch-building project as follow-on to his highly successful Charles W. Morgan R/C model. This will be a fully functioning R/C wooden model of Edwin Burgess’ 1886 America’s Cup (AC) Defender yacht Puritan in 1/20th scale. Check photo in this issue of Bill holding Puritan bare hull at Mystic Seaport Museum in October. It was carved using the bread & butter lift method. Goal is to initially launch this gaff-rigged AC winning design at the Seaport this summer. It may also be showcased at Central Park during the 2011 International Challenge Cup. Check the next newsletter for project updates. VMYG Resource Material VMYG in coordination with the AMYA has robust line-up of vintage model yachting activities in the Eastern US in 2011: April 16-17: Seventh Biennial Woods Hole Model Boat Show sponsored by Woods Hole Historical Museum at Woods Hole, MA; AMYA-VMYG model exhibit at Community Hall, with AMYA open regatta including VM models 4/16 at Eel Pond. June 11: Bill Full Cup VM Invitational Regatta at Redd’s Pond, Marblehead, MA. July 3-9 & 10-16: WoodenBoat School building planked model courses under Thom McLaughlin. July 9: Laconia MYC VM Invitational Regatta at Lily Pond, Laconia, NH. August 21-27 & August 28-September 3: WoodenBoat School model yacht building and sailing courses under Alan Suydam. September 22-25 weekend: VMYG National Regatta hosted by The Marbleheaders of Spring Lake MYC at Spring Lake, NJ; R/C VM, V36 and Traditional Sailing Craft / Scale models racing and exhibits. Early October: UK-US International Challenge Cup Regatta using UK 36R Class vane models. September 30 – October 2 at Central Park, NYC; October 7-9 at Redd’s Pond, Marblehead. Visit the US VMYG website and then click on “USVMYG Store” to order the following resource material: “Yankee III” book authored by VMYG Historian Earl Boebert on CD or downloadable. CD is $15.00 postpaid in US; $20.00 in the rest of world. $10.00 if you download your own. Book summarizes history of the America’s Cup 1930s era J Class and provides detailed modern building techniques through an available molded hull to craft of an R/C V36 model from the 1930 Yankee J Boat design, based on the original 1935 Yankee Jr. model plans of John Black. “Building Planked Models” DVD plus book with selected articles from the VMYG “The Model Yacht” newsletter. Package is $25.00 postpaid in US; $35.00 in rest of world. It is a “how to” vintage model building book by Charles Farley describing plank-on-frame methods used for 1940s designs using modern-day adhesives. “The Model Yacht” newsletter back issues in PDF format on DVD as complete set only of over 40 issues (since 1996), each having 20 or more pages of technical and historical information. The DVD is $40.00 postpaid in the US; $50.00 in the rest of the world. Page 3 John Snow The smallest schooners on Planet Earth, Giel’s Stad Amsterdam, a model of the brig Black Rose and Kiwi Derek’s ` built without plans’ Atlantide! Some months ago while in the smallest room in the house (where I often get good ideas !) it crossed my mind that I should seek to find the smallest RC and freesail schooners on Planet Earth. Through the miracles of email and the cooperative promotional effort of Marine Modelling International, Duckworks Magazine and The Model Yacht it was all on with modelmakers given three months to build and enter the Mark Steele Challenge. The two incredibly small (when measured length on deck) winners were found and my article in the February 2011 issue of MMI announced the results and showed a few of the entries, Now, here are the two victors thanks to Earl Boebert and this publication. Hans Berger and his First in class schooner. There’s a radio in that beauty! Harry Duncan’s tiny Mark Steele, First in the freesail division Page 4 In the freesail division it was Harry Duncan of New Zealand for his lovely kiwi schoonerrigged scow, built on the lines of the Alma but in a tribute to the writer given my name – I am sure I have been called a lot of names in my life but never before a schooner ! The deck length of his model was 38mm. In the RC class (which for some reason I had expected to attract more entries) there were few, and one of them was a topsail schooner Gypsy II built by Hans Berger of Plainville, Conn, USA with 3 channel control that had a deck measurement of 3.905 inches. Though I had to tell my wife that we could not eat other than a banana and four roasted peanuts each for one month, the standard was so high that I decided to give two additional medallion awards, one each for the runners up in both divisions.Peter Noble of Texas for his 42mm length on deck schooner Thumbelina in the freesail class, and Mike deLesseps of Maine, USA for his RC schooner Suzanne (the second of his two schooners he entered) became the Runners Up Peter Noble and Thumbelina Atlantide, built by Derek Nicholson from photographs only. Page 5 On to models model taken by larger. The 37m his son Richard. long motor yacht The 256’ threeAtlantide demasted Stad signed in 1930 Amsterdam by Alfred Mylne launched in the was part of the year 2000 was rescue of Allied the first clipper Forces from the ship to be built beaches at Dunin 130 years. The kirk in 1940 as photo taken by Caleta. Later Andre Ros of the when owned by fine RC model Tom Perkins she made of her by was used as a model shiptender to his wright, Giel Herreshoff Mike De Lesseps’ Suzanne, just 5 1/2 inches on deck. Geldermans was schooner Mariette taken in the and often linked Netherlands where she sails with other modin `item’ fashion to his ultra modern squareels made and sailed by members of the rigger Maltese Falcon. Hague Model Boat Club. As far as I can gather it is well nigh impossiFor those into the pirate days of old, also fans ble to get plans for Atlantide and if you are of the films Pirates of the Caribbean, the “twoKiwi Derek Nicholson you have to resort to footy” 8 gun brig Black Rose, her story a looking at photographs and producing workproduct of my imagination and the reality of ing drawings to enable you to build a model. the model the result of building skills by A good Kiwi model shipbuilder, Derek who Harry Duncan of the Waikato in New Zealives outside of Auckland and sails with the land some may have seen in the November Ancient Mariners did just that, the result issue of Marine Modelling International. shown in the photograph of the finished Stad Amsterdam, by Giel Geldermans. Nothing prettier than a square-rigger ghosting along. Page 6 yet another type of model for those perhaps bored with the typically normal boat choices. Oh yes I almost forgot the “ARRRGH !” that Imogene Flora Rose, her rum-drinking, pipesmoking woman Captain of African ancestry would no doubt have uttered, accompanied of course by a verbal barrage of foul expletives ! Come on you chaps, for windling pleasures take an adventurous step with the built of a model of `difference’, one with the WOW Factor , the model in the early stages of being fitted with RC. Harry Duncan and his Black Rose. Built for freesail, control line or RC operation, the model is near-scale and both somewhat menacing and mystery shrouded in its weathered and battled guise. She sails reasonably well by line control and represents Page 7 Mark Steele An Appreciation of Priscilla Restoring a 19th Century Pond Yacht It has been a long time since anyone showed appropriate appreciation for this pond yacht – maybe over 100 years. The history of this boat is a little murky. When I was a teenager in NH, (mid-‘60s), my father told me my Uncle, who lived in Williamstown, Massachusetts, had a sailboat model he wanted to get out of his garage. He had found it in a garage somewhere (possibly New Jersey) when he was a young man (possibly in the 1920’s or 1930’s), acquired it and did some restoration (sails, I think, and some minimal rigging; the rest looks to be original). I have no idea (and was too thoughtless to ask) whether he sailed this boat on any of the ponds in New Jersey, where he and my father grew up, or in Massachusetts. However, it remained in his garage for many years until he offered it to me. Having not the slightest idea what this was I said “Sure, I guess.” Eventually I got this 40inch green and white nondescript hull with large pieces of what looked like bed sheet sewn on sticks. I think we tried to assemble it, said “Wow! That’s big” (actually, almost 75 inches end of boom to end of bowsprit and over 65 inches high at the topmast) and then took it apart. My only concrete memory is taking the boat to a pond in Maine during a fishing trip in the 1960s (my father and grandfather were avid fly fishermen), putting up the main and jib (the only sails we could figure out how to get up) and chasing the boat in an aluminum canoe with a 4horsepower outboard motor. We struggled to catch it. Unfortunately, I can’t find any pictures of it from that time. I think we took some 16mm movies but they are long since gone. After that episode it stayed in my father’s garage for the next 10 or 15 years where the squirrels and mice chewed off the rigging and the sails rotted. Both my father (who really didn’t know much about it) and my Uncle are dead now so the history will remain murky. Other than a vague idea that the boat had nice lines, I never gave it much thought during this period, although I had read C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books and had developed a romantic notion of sailing ships. Time passed and with a move to Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay I took up my interest in sailing. My interest in the old boat model sitting in the back of the garage in New Hampshire increased as well. When the move from an apartment to a house came in 1979, there was room (just) for the boat and I had the idea that I probably ought to bring the boat back to Maryland for preservation and display (I thought it might be an antique). I set it up with the mast and topmast and the bowsprit and the rest of the pieces Figure 1. The boat awaiting restoration in the model shop. This is how I received it from my Uncle. Page 8 Figure 2. This picture shows the similarity between the traveler drawing in the 1895 Franklyn Bassford article and the one on the boat. It also shows how the blocks were attached with twisted wire and their arrangement on the boom and deck for the self-steering. Note the tiny eyes on the boom with a wire for lacing on the mainsail – another interesting period touch. piled on the deck. Even in that shape it was pretty impressive. It was finally beginning to dawn on me that this might be a rather special item that should be treated with some care and I started to give some thought to restoration. I got right on it – 30 years or so to later. I discovered the local community college had classes in wooden boat building at the local Maritime Museum. Included was a class in wooden ship modeling. I think this got me off top-dead-center (investing money is a big motivator). In October of 2010 I enrolled and started doing some research – which turned out to be a fascinating part of this restoration. I started by studying the gaff rig (the J.S. Johnston website at http://www.jsjohnston.org/ ing was the popularity of building and racing pond yachts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both in the US and UK. There are also a few film clips I found of pond yacht sailing and racing from the 1930s. As an historical note one 1939 film clip of an international competition in England has a flash of a German swastika flag over someone launching a boat. In my research I ran across the US Vintage Model Yacht Group website. With the help of Earl Boebert, I was able to focus in on a probable time period for the boat – the 1880s. His article, based on Franklyn Bassford’s 1895-6 piece in Outing magazine, contained a drawing of a self-steering device essentially identical to the one on the boat (see Fig 2). The boat probably pre-dates the development of the Braine self steering in 1905. is a great place to study the gaff cutter rig. His 19th century pictures of sailing and racing yachts are magnificent). What was surpris- Page 9 Figure 3. Two parts broken or missing. No idea what they might have been for or lookedlike. The lines of the hull are typical of a racing cutter of the 1880s as well. Two books I found on model yacht making from 1880 and 1887 have similar lines for their hull templates. The plumb stem gave way to a cutaway forefoot in the 1890s (e.g., Franklyn Bassford’s design for a racing model). This can also be seen in the pictures of pond yachts from this period. Of course, the design and construction date do not have to coincide, but there are some reasons to believe that someone in the 1880s assembled this particular boat to sail it on a pond. As a note, the name Priscilla is partially visible on the stern. I thought the boat may have been based on the lines of the America’s Cup defender hopeful of the same name, but I found the actual Priscilla was an “iron-hulled centerboard sloop” that lost the 1885 America’s Cup defender bid to Puritan, another centerboard sloop that tended more toward the cutter in hull shape and rig. The boat is closer in shape and rig to the British cutter Genesta, beaten (narrowly) by Puritan. Priscilla is not a family name so it is unlikely my Uncle put it on, then painted over part of it. I like it, so it will remain Priscilla. The boat was obviously built to be sailed, but it also had a few details (scored decking to look like planking, blocks for rigging instead of hooks and eyes typical of 19th century pond yachts, carved boom and gaff jaws instead of wire goosenecks) that might not typically be found on racing pond yachts of the period. It appears someone had put some effort into making the boat visually interesting. I decided to try to restore it to a level where it might be sailed again (although I doubt I will ever put it back in the water) and try to keep the visually interesting aspects as well. Now came the hard part. I couldn’t remember what it looked like or where any of the strings went when the sails were actually up, and the mice and squirrels had eaten most of the rigging (fortunately, the only wooden piece to be damaged was the staysail boom). The only clues I had were the positioning of some of the blocks and a few pieces of string (woven cord, actually) hanging off pieces here and there. There was the self-steering puzzle, the position of eyes and cleats fastened to the deck, and some holes here and there that might or might not have had something to do with rigging parts no longer on the boat. There were also two broken or missing items at the bow for which I still have no clue (see Fig 3). The piece nearest the mast may have had something to do with the staysail boom. The hole near the bowsprit has a plate around it screwed to the deck for … (?). Page 10 Figure 4. Detail of the finished mainsheets with smaller blocks and 2 sheets. Note the threaded adjuster near the cleats is off center from the tiller – another mystery. I spent a lot of time going over resources from the period and staring at the boat and various remaining string ends, eyes and fittings. I filled many pages of a notebook with sketches and notes and tried solutions with string. I decided to replace what was left of the original blocks, which were quite large and attached with thin, twisted wire which was scoring the wood, so I made smaller blocks (visually more pleasing, I hope) and attached them with cord wrapping (my goal was no new holes). The cord wrapping technique was used on the original boat for attaching lines to booms and masts, but the cord had deteriorated and had to be replaced (I used waxed woven “cord” from a craft shop for the rigging rather than string — tan for the running rigging and black for the standing rigging) . I saw the technique on how to make “woolding” in a book on ship models. It lends itself to quick replacement or movement of blocks and halyards, so it probably was a useful technique for the original builder as well. The rigging would use slides and hooks for adjustment and attachment similar to period pond yacht rigging guidance. The goal was to be able to disassemble the boat and assemble it like it would be done for transportation and pond racing. I made some slides (called a “euphroe” in an 1880 book and a bowsie on a model yacht fitting website) from thin nylon that work pretty well (but look a little ugly). I made the hooks from fishing line snaps. At the moment most of the lines use a rolling hitch (left over from my youthful days working for a tree service) for adjustment and tensioning. This works pretty well and I am leaning toward this solution rather than the slides. It also follows period guidance. Franklyn Bassford recommended using this type of adjustment method (I learned it as “rolling hitch” but it may be more correctly called the Midshipman’s Hitch or Tautline Hitch – anyway, very useful). Where to attach all the halyards and sheets was a knotty issue. On the simplest rig there would be the gaff halyard, throat halyard, jack yard halyard, topsail yard halyard, topsail sheet, staysail halyard, jib halyard, and, if I wanted to go that far, a flying or topsail jib halyard, all coming down the mast and requiring an anchor point. The sharp eyes of the person in the model shop spotted two small holes on opposite sides of the mast near the base. I have no idea what they were for originally but they now contain two brass eyes to anchor all the halyards, etc., and act Page 11 Figure 5. This is the disassembled boat as it came home from the workshop – ready for transport to the nearest pond (or display area) … as a stop for the boom jaws when the gaff and throat halyard are raised. I decided on a fairly simple block arrangement for the gaff and throat halyards. I could never quite figure out the original arrangement from what was left attached to the gaff. For some reason (maybe because it was added later) the block for the jack yard halyard was much smaller (about the size of the ones I made) than the other blocks on the boat. I replaced this (for consistency) and replaced the missing block for the topsail yard on the topmast. I also added a whip at the gaff jaws for the jack yard halyard. I think there may have been one for the original rigging but, again, it was a guess based on a piece of string hanging off the gaff near the jaws. According to period guidance the boom would typically have had two mainsheets; one for beating and one for off the wind, so I rigged two mainsheets for the two cleats attached to the deck, guessing that that was what they were for (see Fig 4). The shrouds were fairly easy to figure out with three eyes on each side of the mast – there are no attaching points for backstays so I didn’t consider putting any on. There was an eye on the bronze lower topmast cap and an eye on the bowsprit gammon for a forestay, and an eye on top of the topmast for another stay to an eye on the top of the end of the bowsprit that might have been put on at a later time, perhaps by my Uncle. The original boat appears to have had more eyes on the end of the bowsprit held on with string windings or maybe wire (magnifying glass work), but they are no longer there. I added three more brass eyes to rig the bowsprit with shrouds and bobstay to the available attaching points on the hull; my only digression from “no new holes.” So far, everything seems to work and nothing looks out of place. As it presently stands, I can disassemble the boat in less than five minutes and assembly only takes a little longer (see Fig’s 5 and 6). I made a new stand out of mahogany scraps from the boat building workshop next to the model shop with felt padding to protect what’s left of the hull paint. There is still some work to do. I haven’t decided how to rig the staysail (or foresail, or forestaysail to be nautically correct) and jib booms (held in place with string, at the moment). I am experimenting with a small brass eye in the ends of the booms through which is passed a hook attached to a stay or some other line and secured at an eye, a la Franklyn Bassford, again. According to typical rigging of the period the jib should be set free standing, not hanked to a stay, but what was left on the jib boom was not rigged this way. It has the appearance of being an addon (the string winding holding the line on Page 12 Figure 6. …and this is what she looks like assembled. which the sail was hanked with small metal rings is not as neatly done and is of a different material than the other windings on the boom – more magnifying glass work) and would require two halyards. The topmast has a hole opposite a hole in the upper cap (looks like a soldered eye came off at some point and somebody made a hole for something – possibly an eye). I used this hole to put in a brass eye to hold a block for the jib halyard. It also helps hold the topmast along with a pin through the lower cap. There isn’t enough left of the staysail boom to guess how it was attached and rigged (and no staysail) but the staysail should be laced to the boom and hanked on the forestay – pretty straightforward. I made a new staysail boom and am thinking about how to finish it so it doesn’t stand out too much. Running the sheets from the staysail and jib booms is another mystery that will probably be solved through experimentation. badly – a little flaking off the lead on the keel and some rubbing from the raw wood of the old cradle. At this time I don’t think I am going to repaint the hull. The old patina is pretty attractive and the paint job isn’t damaged too Jeff Pierson The last thing to think about is sails. It would look nice but it would block the window – not an option according to my wife, unless I find somewhere else to display the boat. However, I would like to try my hand at lacing on the sails and seeing if my rigging works… At the end of the day (if not the restoration), the boat blows me away. I can’t take my eyes off her. I have been racing sailboats (2436 foot) on the Chesapeake Bay for over 20 years (age is bringing that to an end shortly). This boat is a reminder of sailboat racing days long gone, both manned and models. But I know the intensity of the competition and the appreciation of the beauty of boats powered only by the force of the wind hasn’t diminished for racing sailors of all types. Page 13 The Saga of the Little Yankees In 1935, Gerard Lambert, owner of the J Boat Yankee, sailed her to England for a series of races against British boats. Yankee was beloved in the Boston area, and the publicity surrounding the trip was massive. As part of it, John Black, designer of the classic M boat Cheerio, published a series of articles in the Boston Evening Transcript on the construction of a 36 inch LOA model he called Yankee Jr. The grandfather of Paul E. Holmes of Plaistow New Hampshire built one, and, more significantly for us, kept the plans and articles. These are exceedingly rare because the Transcript, for some reason, is one of the few major newspapers not freely available in online archives. In 1992 Paul built his own version, shown below, and put a radio in it. In 2000, through the good offices of member Alain Jousse, copies of the plans and articles were passed to the USVMYG. I remember how excited I was to be made aware of a John Black design that we had not heard of before. I began work on a radio version that I called Yankee III. First prototypes were sailing in 2002 and our book describing the build was first published in 2004, coinciding with the major exhibit the USVMYG mounted at the Museum of Yachting. The book is still available in CD ROM format from the USVMYG store. Subsequently fiberglass hulls were developed by Nigel Heron and are available from: obeahboatworks.webs.com/yankeeiii.htm These hulls have been adopted by a New England group as a club one-design class owing to their convenient size and ability to sail in weed-infested ponds. We recently received a gracious letter from Paul Holmes informing us that his 1992 boat has been presented to the Plaistow Historical Society, a fitting retirement for the model that was the link between the 1930s and today. Page 14 Earl Boebert radio purchase. The Servo Stretchers allow end point adjustments if one uses a Spectrum DX5e radio which has no end point adjustments but is individually cheaper than a 2.4GHz radio that does have that ability. “The cost savings is about $60 for all the considered parts. I have though found that the 805/Servo Stretchers/DX5e system presents complications in set up for novices to understand, and have reverted to HiTec 815’s and an end point adjustable transmitter for my course recommendation.” The photo below shows the setup on his V36 model using the HiTec 815, tidy as all Thom’s work is. Bill Huizing holds the hull for his Puritan. Vintage Model Radio Installations Thom McLaughlin has kindly furnished these pictures of his tidy radio and servo installations. The photo at the bottom of the page shows the setup he has used in the VM designs used in his WoodenBoat School Course. About this he writes: “The rectangles attached to the sides of the ‘electronic box’ are Servo Stretchers from Servo City. Those allow the HiTec 805 to do the work of an 815, not a cost savings there though. But the cost savings comes in the Page 15 Earl Boebert The late and much lamented Berkeley pond, 1946. This is where I fell in love with model yachts in the 1950s, and didn’t have a chance to do anything about it until forty years later. Photo by Alma Baumgarten. A Sea Scout on its way to the pond, location unknown, sometime in the 1930s. Probably just after Church. Photo by John Borner, provided by Rod Carr. Page 16 How About a Square-Rigged Class? There is nothing like a modern racing sloop to get to windward. Almost all the AMYA classes are racing sloops with a catboat and perhaps a trimaran thrown in. But who would like to start a square rigged class? Say a few brigs, and some ships and barks. At least these could sail in an open class not as racers but as “lookers”, some in ballast, others fully loaded with an unseen cargo. Of course the vessels from Steel, Chapman & Hutchinson Ltd. would fit in here, but we want to encourage the home builders so this would not be a racing class, but a number of character ships sailing not in races but in rallies. Who has the most ingenious arrangement of sails, rigging etc. Who has the best looking vessel? Now there might develop some “class” divisions, say warships as opposed to pure unarmed cargo carriers or some hybrids like Cook’s Endeavour, and Mayflower, Pinto, Nina. And, perhaps, members might want to add maneuvers such as some of those that the tug boat folks enjoy. Finally, perhaps there would be no racing (it is just for looks and pleasure.) Take a look at An Introduction to Radio Controlled Scale Sailing Models by P. V. Williams, ISBN 1 900371 20 O. This will give you a good overview of the topic. (There are a few errors that the proof readers missed; see if you can find them on pages 19, 20, 23, 82. and in the glossary.) So where will you get these boats? One place to start your search is on the web. Try several of the sellers of boat kits, plans, parts and materials. These may give you lots of ideas, but probably not the right ready-to-sail boat that you want. Unfortunately, you probably cannot buy what you want so you are left with the last alternative: “build your own.” Now that will be a challenge. It means a work bench, tools, skills, energy and time. Luckily, there are plenty of books with small scale plans to give you ideas. See The Story Of Sail Illustrated with 1000 scale drawings ISBN 1 55750 896 8. That will give you a start. After that you can read through The Heyday of Sail. The Merchant Sailing Ship 1650-1830. ISBN 1 55750 360 5 and Merchant Sailing Ships, Sovereignty of Sail 1775-1815 ISBN 0 87021 418 7 and Merchant Sailing Ships 1815-1850 ISBN 0 87021 941 3 and Sail’s Last Century The Merchant Sailing Ship 1830-1930 ISBN 0 7858 1416 7 and look also at The Tea Clippers 1833-1875 ISBN 0 87021 884 0. Since you may want to limit the size and weight of your model for the sake of your back you may limit your ships to the smaller originals. The problem with all these ships is their complexity. Another possible approach is illustrated in The Ships of Christopher Columbus ISBN 1 55750 755 4. If you select the Nina you can build two hulls and rig one with a square rig and the other with a lateen rig. The final approach before you build from scratch is to see if you can find a seller of fiberglass hulls that approximately fills your needs. Look on the web for Loyal Hanna Dockyard and similar sites. Other sources of inspiration may be John Leather’s book Barges ISBN 0-229-11594-2. Especially interesting are the big barges 130 feet long, schooner, barquentine and barque rigged, see chapter 4. These are attractive as you can simplify their shape to have sharp chine‘s and thus simplify construction. Another alternative rig is the ancient one masted square rig. See The Past Afloat by Anthony Burton ISBN O 233 97433 4 and 0 563 16480 8. lf you are interested in colonial ships read the books of William Baker and you can buy a copy of his plans for an eleven inch Mayflower II from Plimoth Plantation. Stability When you scale down a real man carrying 130 foot cargo carrying ship to a three or four foot long model of that ship you come up against the laws of nature. The net result is that the scale model has much less righting moment than you might expect. It will heel over very easily in a little breeze. Thus the model is very tender (tippy). So what can you do to alleviate this problem? The explanations of the problem and its solution are complex enough so that the mathematics usually confounds me, but the true answer is that the model needs a lot more stability than you would expect. Usually the answer is a non-scale deep keel with lots of lead at the bottom. Of course this may also require a somewhat deeper hull to carry the added weight of the lead. The alternative is to reduce sail area on windy days, perhaps to topsails, a jib and spanker. Since the sails generate the driving force a reduction in sail area might mean less “engine power” driving force even though the wind speed is higher. Page 17 That is what you want to reduce heeling, but it may also reduce forward thrust needed to “punch” through the waves. This gets you to the difference between the older ships with large topsails and the later ships with upper and lower topsails. Putting a reef in the larger topsails of your model could be a bit of a chore and make an unsightly and unrealistically large bundle of reefed sail, but then furling the upper topsails might be equally troublesome. (If you “hang“ the yards by a hook to an eye on the mast and have a quick release fittings to secure the braces, sheets etc. and then use another yard with a dummy sail tightly furled thereon can make a much better and more realistic looking furled sail.) You will have the usual problem: make or buy? There are very few buy options. lt is possible that you could buy a tugboat hull and rig it as a brig. The stern probably would not look “right” unless you modified it. But it would save a lot of construction work. Thus you are left with designing and building your sailing vessel. A quick review of Working Boats of Britain ISBN 0 85177 277 3 provides an extensive review of the various ends of many vessels. My inclination is for a square ended barge hull with flat up-sloping ends. Thus a boat of quarter inch exterior grade plywood could be a “fast build“ boat, say four feet long on deck and about one foot wide and with a ship or brig rig with a fin keel with lead on the bottom should get me sailing the soonest. An alternative would be a 3 ft by one foot by 1/2 foot box with carved balsa ends glued on. These would be more shapely, however buying balsa surfboard planks may include a $300 shipping cost! I would start with a sheet -to-tiller arrangement with the possibility of installing radio control later. The local pond is small enough that RC is not a requirement.) George Steele The Eileen O’Boyle Editor’s Note Some of the earliest technical material we put up on the USVMYG Web site in 1996 was a series of articles on model square-riggers by Douglas J. Boyle, and it’s still there: ing. Several have been built and by all reports they sail as well as Boyle asserted. One modeler built a model of the Pamir using Boyle’s techniques, and documented it in a long chain on an Internet forum: www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread. php?t=743611 www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread. php?t=761962 including videos: www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread. php?t=756572 (you’ll have to “unwrap” the URLs into a single line for them to work). I thought that a revisit to the Eileen O’Boyle would make a nice complement to George Steele’s article, especially since the “last century” scans on the site are pretty rough. So here are high-resolution plans and diagrams, plus an excerpt from Boyle’s work describing her sails. The rest of the material, too long to include here, can be obtained from the site. Earl Boebert Square-Rigger Sails www.usvmyg.org/squarerig/sq1.htm And now for the sail dimensions of the ” Eileen O’Boyle.” and they are delightful. Boyle’s masterpiece was the Eileen O’Boyle, designed as a free sailing pond model with the emphasis on sail- The lower edge of each squaresail can be taken as being the same in length as the upper edge of the sail below. In more seamanlike Page 18 language, the foot of an upper sail will be the same in length as head of the sail beneath it. Depths are the perpendicular depths. In using these sail-dimensions, builders should be careful to remember that there are two factors to keep in mind, if they are to place their trusses at the right distances apart. These factors are the thickness of the yards themselves, and the length of the slings they are using. Judgment will be necessary. Squaresails Head of sail given first, dimensions in inches. Foremast. — Foresail or fore course: 13 by 4.3 by 13.7. Lower fore topsail: 12 by 3.2. Upper fore topsail: 11 by 3. 2. Fore topgallantsail: 9.6 by 4.5. Fore royal: 8 by 3.1. Fore skysail: 6.4 by 2.9. Mainmast. — Main Sail, or main course: 13.5 by 5 by 14.5. Lower main topsail: 13.6 bv 3.7. Upper main topsail: 12 by 3.4. Main topgallantsail: 9.6 by 4.8. Main royal: 8.6 by 3.6. Main skysail: 7.1 by 3.4. Moonsail: 6.4 by 2.5. Mizzen Mast. — Lower mizzen topsail: 11.4 by 3 by 11.75. Upper mizzen topsail; 10.5 by 2.8. Mizzen topgallantsail: 9 by 4.2. Mizzen royal: 8 by 3.1. Mizzen skysail: 6.5 by 2.75. Fore and Aft Sails Combined inner and outer jib: 18 by 9 by 12. Angle at the tack is about 36 degrees. Fore topmast staysail: 13 by 7 by 10. Angle at the tack is about 52 degrees. Main topmast staysail: 13.5 by 7.75 by 11. Angle at the tack is about 63 degrees. Main spencer: 7.2 by 5.3 by 6.8 by 8.3. Angle at the throat 136 degrees. Angle at the tack 80 degrees. The Spanker: 6.5 by 4.5 by 7.75 by 8.5. Angle at the throat is 138 degrees. Angle at the tack 80 degrees. It must be remembered that the sails will have to sit tightly. The beautiful bulging sail of the sixteenth century carrack must be avoided at all costs. You will never sail to windward with those! The best thing to do is — first of all, to place your trusses or cranes on the mast, in the positions they will have to occupy, before ever you cut out a single sail at all. Then get your yards hung up on these cranes, to dangle freely. The distances of the cranes from one another can easily be estimated from the saildimensions given. Allow, say, 3 or 4 tenths of an inch for half the thickness of the yard, and the length of the yard sling, adding this amount to the given depths of the squaresails to get the positions of the cranes. Then go over your own ship, sail by sail, with a ruler; for it is fairly certain that the saildimensions here given will not exactly fit upon your ship. They should be used as a guide; not followed slavishly, since you want your sails to fit tightly, and a tenth or two can easily mean a flabby sail, which is exactly what you do not want. Page 19 Sections at 1/2 Size. Remember that your yards will be just one inch longer than the head of the squaresail which is attached to it, that half an inch of the yard must jut out from its own sail at each end. You will not have to worry about the transverse dimensions, when shaping your yards. That will of necessity be a simple matter. Add one inch to the length of the head of the squaresail to get the required length of the yard which is to carry it. But the distances apart of these yards, vertically, is a matter which you will have to be careful about. You want a tight fit. Therefore, when you have hung up all your yards on their trusses, in such a way that the resulting sail-plan, when the sails are bent on to the yards, will be something like the drawing, and of approximately the same dimensions as are here given, measure up your own sails to fit nicely upon the yards as you have placed them. There is bound to be a slight difference between the sail-dimensions as here given, and the sail-dimensions which you will actually have to use. That is nothing to be frightened of. You need tight sails. Therefore, if the depth of your squaresail has to be a tenth or two more or less than the dimensions given, you need not worry. The necessary allowances wiH put you into the way of using judgment in the matter. The thing to remember is that you need a tight sail, where the squaresails are concerned. Each squaresail must be pulled down firmly at the clews, and sit flat. Thus your measurement of the depth of each squaresail must be one you have made your own self from your own ship. Page 20 Douglas J. Boyle (1932-1933) 1/4 Size Plans LOA 36 3/8 LWL 30 Beam 8 1/2 Draught 5 1/2 Disp 18.56 lbs Keel 6.25 lbs Page 21 Not to scale. See text for sail dimensions. Page 22 Page 23 Marblehead Model Yachts The Model Yacht is published three times a year by the U.S. Vintage Model Yacht Group. Copyright 1998 to 2011 U.S.V.M.Y.G. Reproduction for noncommercial purposes permitted; all other rights reserved. Other copyrights are maintained by the original holders and such material is used here under the fair use provisions of the relevant copyright acts for nonprofit research and educational purposes. Editorial Address: 9219 Flushing Meadows NE Albuquerque NM 87111 Email: boebert@swcp.com Phone: 505 823 1046 Officers of the U.S. Vintage Model Yacht Group: President: John Snow Eastern Vice-President: Ben Martin Western Vice-President: Dominic Meo, III Midwest Vice-President: Tom Pratt Southeastern Vice-President: Thom Mclaughlin Vintage M Class Coordinator: John Henson Vintage 36 Inch Coordinator: Al Suydam A Class Coordinator: Rod Carr U.K. Coordinator: Graham Reeves Canadian Representative: Doug McMain Historian: Earl Boebert Archivist: Jim Dolan Pond boats made by the Marblehead Model Yacht firm are some of the rarest around, and we are indebted to member Dave Thibodeau for locating the 1925 advertisement on the facing page, which is the first complete set of pictures of these boats we have located. At the Bridge The painting below was done by the Swedish landscape painter Johan Tiren in 1895. It is set on Lake Orsa, which lies to the Northwest of Stockholm. Earl Boebert Page 24 Paul Fiske was a naval architect who sailed out of the Berkeley club. Plover was designed in the late 1940s and is a good example of early use of the sliding rig. Page 25