When I started this column in July 2006, I said that modeling was about `people’ – of course it is, for models and the sailing of them can’t happen without human involvement. As this is the month of Christmas, just as a reminder to each and every one of us who sail at whichever lake or pond we sail on, in whichever land we may happen to be domiciled, not one of us is immortal. Each day we sail is one day less that we have left in our sailing calendar and we know not when nor where we will be called upon to finally slip our moorings.

Many have died in the past few years and I choose to honour those who like ourselves found pleasure in each others company while enjoying the sailing of model yachts, and to do so by way of two fallen fellow model sailors both friends-never-met of mine, and another friend who wrote books on boats, built models, drew plans, painted pictures of square-riggers and was a master at marine photography. David Blinkhorn of Lancashire, England seen below (top left) died some years ago, as did Sandy Cousins of Scotland (below lower left) and my dear friend, Clifford Hawkins of Auckland (below lower right) stand for all those others who built beautiful models and sailed the many lakes and ponds before slipping the surly bonds of earth. I choose not to mention others who died but let us quietly remember all those no longer with us whom each of us had the good fortune to know. Cliff died aged 93 on March 13th this year and his lovely painting found at the top of this column last year as well as his photographic study of the South Seas schooner, Tiare Taporo at rest are reproduced to honour him and all those no longer with us.

Sensible advice I think, that given by the locals (for those visiting the island of Saint Marten in the Dutch Caribbean) is simply to

`lay on de beach an laaf and smile plenty’

Robin Redhead of London was a long term reader of my now ended magazine Windling World, and around 1940 was photographed (above) launching a 3-masted barque bought in Hamleys famous toy shop as a 3-masted Bermudan schooner. How many of us today can unearth that kind of priceless photo of ourselves sailing a model yacht when we were very young? It was steered free with a swing rudder and the photo of Robin was taken at the Round Pond in Kensington. These days Robin sails one or more of a trio of lovely Southwold-style model yachts that he owns.

I just love it! Larry Pullen wrote in Duckworks: “My pappy told me, boy if you fool around with the wind, sooner or later you’re going to get blowed!” True or false? Think about it, I reckon Larry’s dad was right on the mark!

	The HUIA re-created

The Huia re-created. Sailing colleague and fellow Auckland Ancient Mariner, Derek Nicholson (seen above with his earlier model of the schooner Creole has done it again, this time creating a wonderful sailing replica of the once famous New Zealand topsail schooner Huia. It's appearance I have to tell you brought on an immediate and prolonged case of `Drool Dribble', that malady that afflicts some of us upon inspection of stunning model sailing ships made by others. The first three photos above show the model. Take a quick look, now scroll down quickly! That's it, you should be relatively safe.

A writer's favourite

Were I ever to select and rate six top models as my favourites, Richard Gross’s lovely schooner, Maggie of Matakana (seen above) would certainly be well up in the selection, she just sails so well, looks so damn good and always commands the attention of onlookers strolling the pondside pavement at our Onepoto lake,. home of the Auckland Ancient Mariners group. Because this model is so attractive in style I think I should warn you, this is not a boat for the raw beginner to attempt to build and I say that because I know that many will instantly feel `that’s the boat for me!’

Richard Gross is very `handy’ in the model building area – an ex Dental surgeon he is used to intricate work. He and his wife have a beach house north of Auckland where the sailing around the Hauraki Gulf is wonderful. There he was to notice a certain schooner with clean lines and a very `different’ look about her. She was Maggie of Whitford, (seen above under sail) a New Zealand built scow-like Chesapeake Bay gaff schooner, and she became the boat of which he would construct a new model. With side plans of the fullsize 80’ long boat (and some approximate measurements but no frame shapes), after using a computer boat design package downloaded free of the internet this then provided him with hull panels in flat format. Enlarging of the plan to the required size, Richard then stitched the panels together using copper wire ties, then glued them with resin on the inside removing the ties before the glue set totally.

The sails are made of polycotton and are on longer masts for better light weather performance, the winch, servo and rudder are below the deckhouse floor and as the windows of the deckhouse floor clear, the inside has been made as close to the fullsize boat as possible. Maggie of Whitford was built and is owned and sailed by Brian Owen of the Mahurangi Cruising Club. The length of Richard’s model is 1150mm, 1480 including the bowsprit. She carries 3.5kg on the keel and has an all up weight of 8kg.

On Cape Horn, Bernard Moitessier in his book The Long Way wrote: `A great Cape, for us, can’t be expressed in longitude and latitude alone. A great Cape has a soul with very soft, very violent shadows and colours. A soul as smooth as a child’s, as hard as a criminal’s. And that is why we go!’

At the time that the late Rex Cotterell his 1/9th scale model, the real gaff-rigged square topsail schooner, all 85’ of her, was based in the North Island of New Zealand’s Bay of Islands, the fullsize boat launched in 1985. Rex was a ship-loving model yacht fanatic and in 1988 he set out to build a larger than usual model of the R Tucker Thompson. Two metres long plus a 660mm bowsprit he wanted to sail it in the same estuary where the original was launched. The model was huge and really impressive on the water. When sailed in a good breeze Rex needed an outboard powered dinghy in order to keep up with her.

Rex and his model of the schooner

Now stop bloody falling over man!

I remember meeting Rex on arrangement for the first time at the Panmure basin in Auckland some years ago, where the rigging time for the model I discovered was over an hour and launching the model required a small trailer which went into the water. With some 60lbs of ballast aboard and carried internally, with the amount of sail she carried, just launching her was more than a handful. The model was made of fiberglass over a ply frame and I remember seeing a wonderful photograph of the model blasting along somewhere, her nylon cloth sails filled, her bow cutting the water. After Rex died the model was placed in Modelworld where the lack of sufficient water and space was insufficient to get her to really perform under sail, but these photos (most of them mine) taken earlier are testimony to a much remembered and admired model.

Lloyd 'Swede' Johnson of California with his Garden `Toadstool’ design schooner (top left), Buck McClellan of Maryland, USA's model of the famous schooner Atlantic, (below left) and to the right of that, Aucklander, Tom Simpson with Thistle, another truly lovely and good performing model.

This was an event of fantasy, one that evolved out of the mind perhaps of Larry Blotta, the model yot spotta whose best-seller-to-be book intended to compete with Harry Potter also never came to reality. (A bit of a dreamer Larry is!) Drawn for me by my friend, Derek Cookson it depicts what might have eventuated were a model yacht ocean race held with all skippers operating from on board the same boat! That one, and the second drawing `borrowed’ from the US Vintage Model Yacht Group’s publication, The Model Yacht which accurately portrays how wrong non-model yacht sailors can be about our hobby, are included just to remind each other of the importance of not taking ourselves too seriously!

Think about it, but without our fertile imagination, each of us is no more than a small and scrawny, dull and boring underground Ethiopian coffee bean termite! All that is left for me to do, is to wish everyone who journeys with me each month into the world of model sailing boats, as well as others who may have just chanced upon the column, a very happy Christmas and a healthy and equally happy 2008. To Chuck Leinweber, my Publisher and friend, as well as to his wife Sandra, warmest greetings and thanks for providing my writings with a home over the last eighteen months. Gosh, is it already that long?

Good Grief, I must get back home to practice for my annual home concert where I sing and play Danny Boy on the strings of my wife’s egg slicer and the neighbours cat immediately migrates to Marbella!