David Black, Ever the
Secretary.
What
is hard to do is not use superlatives and the name David Black
together. For not only has he been around in the Sport of Radio
Yachting but model yachting and every facet of it that I know
of, from President of our National Association to Secretary of
the Queensland Radio Yachting Association (inc) to buoy judge,
he has done it all.
The thing with David’s administrations is
the fact that it has been so successful over 25 years or so. For
in 2009, his state, Queensland is the most successful and
financially the best state in the ARYA. These types of things
just don’t happen over night and it takes patience and
dedication and skill to the sport to pull something like this
off.
I first met him when he came to Sydney in
the early 1980s to race EC12s. He and his mates, Bruce Sorenson,
Tom Porter stayed at my house in Sydney, for we were having a
EC12 event over Easter that year called (if my memory serves me)
the “Easter Bunny Hop”. Of course the Queenslanders just
annihilated the NSW sailors and they used their new fangled gear
called ”stay-less masts” and on deck David Black winches. But
the big winner was EC12 class.
I saw him again sometime later when I was
doing a short holiday in Queensland. I was drawn there by that
slogan, you know, ‘Beautiful one day Perfect the next’? We
actually ended up sailing opposite the Lamington Hotel in
Maryborough. There is/was a pond there for Marbleheads. Of
course they say that behind every good man there is a good
woman, in this case it is Val, his wife. They were living at
Oxley a Brisbane Suburb, in those days.
Under the house at Oxley, David had a
really good workshop and was putting out beaut little winches
and fittings. I did a historical article about them recently
(these pages). He was doing these little winches at the same
time Bruce Sorenson was putting out hulls for Marbleheads, 10
raters and EC12s. Tom Porter was the Sail maker in the group of
three. Of course when this trio arrived in Sydney to sail the
EASTER BUNNY HOP, we all wanted one of these beaut winches. I’ve
still got mine, too.
David has never shirked doing a job in the
Associations when asked. I think he did at one stage every job
there and the National President for one year. He was the Worlds
Regatta Secretary for the 1987 Worlds EC12 championships &
Nationals (combined) and the “unofficial Core sampler”. We’ve
got a picture to prove it. Just to show that he hasn’t slowed up
David was the scorer at the recent Queensland R/C Laser State
championships there in the last couple of weeks. I know the
Sydney skippers that went there were very impressed with his
expertise in scoring championship events.
And
just to bring a little thought to the plight of these helpers of
Radio Yachting. For all the years he has spent doing good for
this sport, I believe that he doesn’t qualify for the National
Life Honour. Surely in his case we could do something else?
I prize the photo of David, for I know it
was hard to get. The Author tried for sometime to get a good
photo of him from many different sources but was foiled almost
everytime for nobody has been able to get a clear shot for some
years. Ian Ashe came to help us all out. Well done. I look at it
as a conspiracy of the many friends of David Black.
Stephen Crewes. National Historian 2009.