ARYA ARCHIVES - OUR PAST

ARYA HISTORIAN Steve CREWES

shcrewes@bigpond.net.au  

 

WE GOT THE CHOP AT ALBERT PARK  (circa 1974)

 

Someone handed me recently in Sydney, a small cardboard folded program of an event that took place at Albert Park Model Yacht Club.

 

It was the National Marblehead  “Bournville Trophy” event on the 13/4/74 or at the Easter long weekend. This little folding card, quite nicely made, with the initials of the Albert Park Club on it, was given to each of the competitors to mark their scores in, or a scorecard. It has all the names of the competitors inside, with their boat rego numbers. Of course the person who owned the card at the time, had his name at the top under the heading of Skipper. At the end of each race, one was suppose to get your opponent to sign your card. This didn’t happen though, because one was too busy getting ready for the next board (set of races).

 

                In this National Marblehead Championship that year, 12 starters came to the starting line. They were: Tom Cologon (Sydney Model Yacht C KA93), George Patterson (Northern Mariners KA98), Graham Clothier (Albert Park MYC KA79) Alan Dawson (Bayside MYC KA51), Paul O’Brien (Canberra MYC KA47), Adrian Brewer (APMYC KA97), Bill Dailey (APMYC KA96), Ron Fox (SMYC KA94), David Middleton (Model Ship & PowerBoatClub KA53), Harold Wotherspoon (CMYC KA55), Ron Dunster (CMYC KA40) and Stephen Crewes (SMYC KA95). Eight of the twelve boats were Flipper keels. That means they weren’t bulbs, one, the ‘TURI’ from Sydney had a kite keel or a cross between a bulb and a flipper keel. (I call a parallelogram keel a flipper). Ron Fox’s KA 94 was a yellow Stollery ‘March Hare’ design.

 

This was the time that National Championships were still raced by individual classes at separate venues and at different times throughout the year. At this time of the year in Melbourne, It was particularly hot. (Even though it was winter) The wind was tending to be moderate to light.  The lake at Albert Park was being perverse, as sometimes it is to us “Foreigners”, or as some people say ‘Bloody Lumpy’. This Lumpy condition has the ability to stop a Marblehead almost instantly. The wave formation appeared to be about 9” high and 9” between each wave.

 

                About this time there were some really good Marblehead sailors in vane sailing, especially in this fleet, also a couple of new designers like Adrian Brewer who was only into his first or second design at this stage. Ronny Fox of Sydney was having a ‘dabble’ at that time too. I would say the top blokes of the fleet would have been Ron Dunster, Jim Dailey and perhaps Adrian Brewer.

 

The course on this day; the starting line was from the bottom end (I think it is called the city end) of the lake. Beating, up to and past the then sailing club where there was a wind shadow and on up to halfway round the big bend, for the top finish line. Where the boats would be taken out to set the spinnakers up for the race back to the other end. Now, of course Albert Park club told us that we needed mates on the opposite bank to tack or turn the boats but it was not at times possible to get a mate to travel to Melbourne to just tack boats. The Club made endeavours to provide ‘limited assistance’. Now ‘limited assistance’ could mean some novice who had never seen a vane gear before, turning your boat off the other bank??? And you’re trying to win a National Championship; it could become a lottery.

 

There was an answer to this and it came in a form of an agreement between the skippers. Ron Dunster and I were good mates and we agreed to ‘mate up’ the opposite bank occasionally, if there was no one available to turn our boats off, of course we could gye these boats so that they tacked automatically at a certain distance from shore. But at this particular venue this was not certain (because of the chop) the boat would do that. At times the wait would be excruciating, hoping for the boat to gye. I bet the skippers that sail at Albert Park today could tell you all about this chop?

 

It was normal at those National Championships for all the clubs to bring their club flags and these were flown from flagpoles on the side of the course. In Albert Parks’ case they were flown near the Women’s Rowing Club, near the little fence. Whenever we raced at Albert Park, the hospitality of the Model Yacht club was outstanding, even to the extent of ‘Billeting’ competitors at times. Hot cups of tea were provided at almost any time. Just this, was a rarity for most Model Yacht Clubs, so us interstaters took advantage of it. The club had a really good ladies auxiliary going and included from memory, Myrtle Thompson and Rhonda Brewer among others.

 

 In the early days of the association (it was called the AUSTRALIAN MODEL YACHTING ASSOCIATION) then, there was some rule that said wherever the National Marblehead Championship was held, then the Annual General Meeting for the Association was held at that venue at the same time. In those days it was not a meeting one would entertain too many times. These meetings got better when Max ‘Wicky’ Griggs took over as president but that’s another story. Also at this meeting, there was the ongoing discussion about letting R/C into the National Events.

 

(Anyway back to the story). We found out the hard way, of course that to sail vane in the Albert Park ‘lump’ was not to point too high. If the yacht was put off a bit then results were better. I managed to come third in the Nats in 1974, sailing a Doug Billing’s ‘TURI ‘design, Alan Dawson coming second with a Stan Witty’s ‘GOLDEN ARCHER’ and Ron Dunster sailing a Charlie Adams’ ‘FOXTROT’, beating me by two points and winning again.

 

Stephen Crewes.  Historical Officer.  ARYA 2004