ARYA ARCHIVES - OUR PAST

ARYA HISTORIAN Steve CREWES

shcrewes@bigpond.net.au  

 

 The Pages of our Radio Yachting History.

 

I would be on safe ground if I said the story of the Pages in Radio yachting, should be called Page 1, Page 2, Page 3 and Page 4.  Probably this might be the way to tell this story for it can become complicated doing it any other way.

 

          This is about two families, the Pages and the Pages (see what I mean), all top Marblehead skippers.  So you can see, dear reader, why I’m going to refer to them as Pages as in a book. All these people are in the top bunch of skippers this country has produced. For they appeared on the R/C yacht scene about the same time, except Page 4, who comes into the story a bit later.

 

 To give you a run down on who the Pages are, is going be something like this: - Page 1 is Phil Page on the central coast of NSW.  Page 2, 3 and 4, come from the Page family who sailed with the old Parramatta Club,  the Northern Mariners club, near Manly (NSW) and the Sydney Remote Control Yacht Club (inc). No 2 was also named Phil Page and at times it got so confusing till, legend has it that at one of our big regatta, the OOD, Bob Sheddon got so exasperated with the confusion it caused that he then and there renamed the pair of them both and somehow it stuck. They were to be known from then on as Phil (No1) and Philip (No2). Of course the confusion went on but it was not as bad, now that there was direction to it all.

 

 Of course these two didn’t start it. For another Page was there before them in the case of David Page (No3). Some would know him from his model car shop in Parramatta. Hence, him joining the local R/C sailing club at Parramatta Lake in the early 1980s (circa) with Steve Trevillion and Dennis McGoogin. With David, it was just the start of the Page phenomena in NSW. That has lasted for 25 years. In recent times Robert Page (No4) joined the throng, probably better known for his work in running State regattas in NSW as the OOD. And this year (2005) he was the PRO at the National 10 Rater event. Robert (No4) also races an IOM and a Marblehead like his brother (No2) and is President of the Sydney RemoteYacht Club (inc).

 

At some stages during regattas the people standing there must have thought that the scorer had a stutter, for the score board used to read Phil Page 1^st, Phil Page 2^nd. And wonder what was going on? At times Phil Page was protesting (you got it Phil Page).

 

          Bob Sheddon was a wonderful bloke, for his patience was endless. And he would spend time relating the thoughts of Prismatic Co -effusion till the cows come home.  But when he got into this particular State Championship as the OOD with the Pages, somehow, everything seemed to snap. You see friends the Pages were in this race, as the protest said. Phil Page was supposedly in front with Phil Page coming second, well in a twinkling of an eye Phil Page wanted to go on to another course from the other Phil Page and Phil Page sort of clipped Phil Page and so doing flipped Phil Page onto……… Well you get the drift. By this time Bob was dragging his hair out, working out who was doing what to whom. So he called a halt to the racing an made an Special Announcement, that in all future racing, from then on, the Pages would be known as Phil and Philip. A great cheer went up, for everyone was in the same boat (way).

 

          Well you would have thought that was the end of it, no way, for nobody told the Scorer or the bloke who wrote the results of Phil and Phil. History will never know if Phil Page or Phil Page won that particular championship after all ???

 

 I knew Phil (No 1) from earlier times. I first met him in Woy Woy Bay in (you guessed it) Woy Woy,(or “Woy” as Spike Milligan called it) NSW in 1976. He was sailing with Frank Russell on the Central Coast. These two formed a unique pair in that area in R/C yachting. They were into 10 Raters at the time. Later Phil went into Marbleheads as well, for he was a great participant in both classes but I thought he was pushing more for the Marbleheads. I always thought No1 was the consummate model yachtsman for he was always involved, whether as a sailor or an official, for he was doing either at most regattas.

 

Philip Page (No2) came into the sport about 1983. I first saw him when he came to the Nationals at Botany Bay and offered his help, with his brothers, David (No3) and Robert (No4). In 1984, he was declared “The Rookie of the Year” in the ACT. As we all know No2 has gone on in the R/C yachting world and won many championships including the 1988 NSW 10 Rater Champs. 10 Rater Nationals 1986 and 4 Marblehead state Championships. One of his best performances, (I ever saw), was being the leading Australian Marblehead Class boat at the 1990 National championships at West lakes in Adelaide. The winner of that event was Yanus Waliki of Germany. This was Waliki’s first visit to Australia, watching him sail those few days was awesome. No2 also won in 1993 & 1995 the Teams Trophy event in the ACT for Marbleheads.

 

*** FOOTNOTE. I had some trouble researching this story for I wasn’t quite certain if I was referring to the right Phil Page?

 

 Stephen Crewes  ARYA Historian 2005