by Mark Steele - Auckland, New Zealand A model yacht crossing of Cook Strait, Mick Brown’s wife Marion’s schooner, and a model of the ill-fated Strathcona.

Photography from on board a model multi-hull, and a model with style and much detail.

Alan Hayes, now living in Kerikeri in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, at one stage when ultra-keen on model 1m yachts successfully rigged up a camera aboard a trimaran model of his in order to take photos of other models from the lowest possible position to the level of the water. Here (above left) is one of his shots of a 1m literally flying downwind, a photograph that I think is quite impressive. The second photograph is of one of Aucklander Roy Lake’s many models built over a lengthy period of years.

The 1/15th full size model (Flamingo) is an accurately scaled version of a 72’ steel ketch still sailing in the waters of Auckland’s Waitemata harbour called The Dove. Roy built the model around a solid timber core of building pine, the model taking 1,700 hours of work over a period of eleven months. It is incredibly detailed within the cabin and an impressive sight on the water.

`I sail my boat just for the hell of it (said the windler at the pond)
the tide is flowing so where are we going, across, behind or beyond?
then again t’is I who will say WHEN we will go wherever we are going,
and the mystery is, (cos I’m in a tizz) not even ME is knowing!’

My friend, the late John Spencer, the famous yacht designer used to say that there was nothing wrong with sailing model sailboats in salt water, indeed the launching of both of my Spencer yachts took place in ocean water in the Bay of Islands. “So long as you keep the water outside the boat and hose the model down lightly after sailing, you’ll have no corrosion problems”. This leads my memory to recall a wonderful adventure sail, a model yacht crossing of Cook Strait, that oft-infamous 25 mile stretch of ocean water separating New Zealand’s North and South Islands.

“It seemed a fun thing to do”, the late Euan Sarginson of Christchurch, New Zealand told me after it was all over, and I will always remember his cellphone call to me that night from onboard a friend’s yacht somewhere in Cook Strait, in which he told me that his 1950’s A Class model yacht, William Fraser was three quarters across heading for Wellington. It was more than that for Euan was so passionate about the older veteran model yachts and like me believed that model yachts had many roles other than racing. He loved the older boats, procured many of the four foot six class boats, restored them, treasured them and sailed them. He was a great model yacht icon who died after a short illness in 2004.

With a support crew from the Christchurch Model Yacht Club, the oldest in the country and aboard a friends yacht, cross the strait they did, the model surviving big Pacific rollers and a following, investigating shark and only having to change batteries by hanging over the side of the yacht in order to do so. It was a wonderful achievement and the weather though kind with the seas in good mood, the feat illustrated how versatile a model yacht, well built, well cared for, and well prepared could be.

If someone called you a `gongoozler’ should you be insulted? It is a person who stands around on the waterfront with his hands in his pockets, watching other people do things and the word is British Waterways slang.

Mick Brown of Essex in England is a boatbuilder for an International company building yachts where he has been employed for the last 20 or so years. A keen modelbuilder in his spare time his first yacht was a Kyosho Fairwind but don’t go thinking that he merely just slaps everything together. Take a look at the photos above of the four and a half foot long Robbe `Atlantis’ schooner, Amarantha he has just put 362 hours into building for his wife Marion also a keen model sailor. They sail together at a nice boating lake at Maldon in Essex which has recently been refurbished. Mick is now laying the decks of the Robbe model schooner Valdivia for himself to be called Blue Amazon.

Phooey claims disputed! No truth whatsoever in the belief of some folk, that you can either catch fish and sail an RC model yacht at the same time using a transmitter as Aucklander, Alexander Bartlett might lead you to believe, or that the more you sail a model yacht in the warm waters of the Fiji Islands, the longer your legs grow as a certain writer might claim. So long as you enjoy a bit of fun and don’t take sailing of the windling kind too seriously!

A photograph I have always loved is this one taken by Finn Hartvig from his folkboat D544, of Erik Andreasen at the tiller of D541 Tibbe, the latters own folkboat in force 9-10 winds on the Baltic Sea. Both boats were under full sail and carrying families with small children so one certainly senses an impending storm and the urgency to reach safe harbour. Eric is a very famous sailor in Denmark who has won the Gold Cup for folkboats on more than one occasion. This photograph which I have used once before in Windling World is again reproduced kind courtesy of him and Finn Hartvig.

In March 1977 Erik founded Folkebad Centralen A/S to build and market the Nordic Folkboat, a mould having been taken of D51 Tibbe in order to secure the future of this type of boat. To date over 1,000 folkboats (picture above, right) have left the modern boatyard built for the purpose in Kerterminde in Denmark.

I’ve seen model power boaters deliberately heading for ducks which is not a good idea for they have just as much right to use the ponds or lakes. I have only once seen a model yacht sailor `duck hunting’, not so my mate John Stubbs whom I remember took extreme care to veer off and `come about ‘ rather than go between these duckling in the first of two photos above. After all, our Auckland, New Zealand Ancient Mariners group even have an annual Footy race for the Quackers Trophy.

I have written about my good friend, Ken Impey in Falmouth, Cornwall before, but not of his schooner model, Grace Mary (above) which was modeled after the ill-fated schooner Strathcona. According to New Zealand historian and yachting writer, Paul Titchener, the 110’ Charles Bailey designed schooner having set to sea with 13 crew aboard on Friday June 13th in 1915 then hit the North Minerva reef in the Pacific on her maiden voyage. The schooner had defied superstition and her departure on that date was considered a bad omen. She was on a reach when it happened and while logging eleven knots at high tide when she ploughed through the razor sharp coral landing out of the ocean with her sails still drawing. Taken by her beautiful lines and moved by the story Ken built the model and named her Grace Mary after his daughter. The RC model faithfully captures the beautiful lines of the Strathcona and is a favourite of the builder.

It is a sizeable and heavy(ish) book full of pretty well nothing much more than an impressive and authoritative looking cover, The World Gentlemen and Scholars Windling Authority Rule Book 1894. However it does clearly list the need for sailors to be true `gentlemen’ (the word `ladies’ was added in 1907 at a special extraordinary meeting held at a Round Pond in London) and stresses the etiquette of sailing conduct required. The ‘scholars’ reference on the cover was added at the specific request of Lord Perivale `Bugsy’ Bagot who was Chairman at that meeting, though most of those that attended were unable to agree when conducting head counts in order to determine how many actually attended, since several owners had brought their dogs and it was feared that they were counted! (That speaks volumes for `scholars!’)

Included however are some interesting but unusual stories such as the one about the Carruthers Brothers whom history suggests, built a whole fleet of three foot long model sailing boats near where they lived in a town of less than three hundred in the 1800’s at what was then known as Whangaoparaonga which was a remote settlements on an eastern coast of a land in the Pacific. The father (whose own father had come out from Scotland) had died, and six sons, their mother and two husbands of their one deceased sister were made working partners, hence the reference in the company title to `others’. Their store sold all matter of goods but built up a thriving business building and exporting to the major cities of the country their fast inexpensive free-sail boats, none of which remain. The book is very rare today, (just one copy exists!), so my being aware of who owns it, even Amazon will be unable to procure one. However if a thousand people were all to ask at their local booksellers, this might well result in someone (probably me!) writing the book! On that note I will just say, don’t always believe absolutely everything I write, and I look forward to seeing you next month `where the winds blow’.

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