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Our Past by ARYA HISTORIAN Steve CREWES
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VALE DOUGLAS VINCENT BILLING. 2009.
I first met him when he knocked on my car window one night in 1965 in Loftus in Sydney. I had been making a 36 Restricted yacht at the time and it was on the back top of the car seat at the back window. Anyhow he introduced himself and enquired if that was a model yacht on my back window.
Well, after that he introduced me to model yachting. Right from the first moment, he was into making his own boats. And he made everything on the boat from the top of the mast to the bottom of the keel, it was all made by Doug. Not only was he into building but into the hard to come-by Vane gears that steered the Marbleheads in those early days. He didn’t have the “inferior” normal type but designed himself a Billing Moving Carriage Type ( I managed to get one recently). Of course it didn’t stop there, for while the boats that were around in those days like Witchcrafts, China Boys, and Vegas by Stan Witty to name a few, he reckoned he would like to design his own, which he did. The first one was a M called “Stealer”. It went really well but Doug wasn’t happy with it, “for it had a problem”, he said. The “problem” was that he had to put a stealer plank in the hull when he was building it and he thought it somehow spoiled the appearance of the boat. It went marvelously, for it did everything really good and it was the fastest boat on the pond down wind with Doug’s little orange inner flat spinnaker on it. But to Doug, Nope ! It had to go!
So back to the drawing board
Doug went, for he was a Draughting Engineer for the NSW
Government Railways and he said he had time to draw. So he took
his time and came up with another M called “Boomerang”. This was
even better than Stealer for the performance was excellent both
to windward and down wind. This is the first boat I ever saw
planning to windward.
Later, when he was thinking about doing 10 raters, he decided to do a boat with the same sections as “Boomerang” but to lengthen the distance between the section spacings from 5” to (I think) 6.5” and stretched the boat right out to become “Wattle”. A little time later Doug said he was doing another A Class boat called Kia Kia, this was successful as well. (He had built a planked hull previous of the Lewis’ design called “Vital Spark” (Circa 1970). The “Kia Kia” featured a ventral spine running between the Keel and the Skeg Rudder under the hull. He used this A Class design to draw up a Marblehead with this ventral spine on it. The M “Turi” also featured lots of tumblehome and with his famous experimental Kite Keel, that he had been working on. This boat won the 1970 Australian Nationals. From the lines of the M he again lengthen the Section Spacing to design a 10R called “Ranger” It had all the features that “Turi” had but the performance was “startling”. It won the Australian National 10 Rater Champs in 1970 with Doug skippering and me being the mate (offsider). I skippered the boat the following year (1971) and won the National 10 rater Champs with Doug as my mate. This boat had the habit of running with a spinnaker, faster than we could run after it (this is why a mate was needed). In a normal run the mate would start running, (from halfway down the course), when the boat under spinnaker was released at the top end of the course. Sometimes the mate wasn’t quick enough to catch the boat before it got to the other end of a 800 ft course. That Friends, was one of the joy of running “Ranger” as a 10 Rater. I think that Doug’s joy in Model Yachting was the designing bit. He loved doing A class and I do remember him and Ben Lexcen discussing A class & 10 raters and I will always remember Doug saying how Ben gave him some tips on Bustles in yacht designs.
Doug moved to Laurieton the North Coast town NSW and joined the Foster -Tuncurry Club and settled down to design, build and sail 10 raters.
All his boats were planked out of Western Red Cedar. I estimate he must have done about 20 in his lifetime. All are of high standard that would not look out of place in any museum. He first started in wood doing model yachts on a cold mould using thin cedar veneer to a “Bewitched” design by Dick Priest of the UK.
Doug was one of the founding members of the old Sydney Model Yacht Club (Circa 1965). The third club to join the AMYA as it was known then. Served on the steering committee as well as serving as President, Secretary and Measurer of it at different times of the old Sydney Model Yacht Club.
My memory of Doug was that he always carried a slide rule in his pocket and he was always thinking about designs and his favourite saying to me was “HOW DO YA RECKON………….. would go as an A class”?
I always put him down as a complete model yachtsman. Long may he be remembered.
Doug is survived by his wife Peggy and their 4 children and lots of grand children. Doug hadn’t been well for a long time.
Douglas Vincent Billing 1925 to 2009 RIP
Stephen Crewes, National Historian ARYA 09.
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Doug,
as he was known grew up in the inner south suburb of Rosebury in
Sydney. He used to inhabit the old model sailing venues in Moore
Park’s Kippax Lake and Centennial Park. Later coming to the old
Model Sailing clubhouse in Scarborough Park in Kogarah in the
1940s.
