Scale Boats – How do you sail yours?

[Mark HawkinsParticipant @markhawkins71181]

Of course once you have done the day light courses you can try your hand at night!

 

[David WooleyParticipant @davidwooley82563]

In the early days of the Model Boat Convention at Ellesmere Port boat Museum there was evening   sailing events organized by Ted Potter. These where remarkable as the entire event was based on full size practice  and included docks ,   working bridges , locks and   channels { a far cry from steering around circular buoys } the whole dock system which took up two entire locks and the main sailing area   in the museum complex  was illuminated  with thousands  of miniature lights . To help the “skippers” the course out to sea was laid out using a  buoy channel with all the correct lights flashing in the right order. Another feature {today’s  Health and safety would have a field day with this one } was  a high level gantry actually spanning two locks  built from scaffolding to accommodate 4 skippers at a time , a sort of “bridge  on a ship” arrangement.   Sailing out to sea, so to speak  with a full set of navigation lights proved to be much more difficult than at first thought especially when the only part of the vessel visible was of course the lights and at distances of over 100m . Ted designed the course so vessel would pass each other down the channel  in complete darkness, save for the ships lights. It was real fun but quite demanding. This was a competition and even the team of judges were recruited from their real life occupations as  river and canal pilots  Ted had also constructed  remote control locks and swing bridges , once again with all the correct lighting for entering and leaving  the various dock systems . Following the rules of navigation  under realistic conditions, all be it in miniature form  tested both skipper’s skill and knowledge. The one single draw back was not the operation of it all or even the lack of some basic navigation skills but the crew needed to construct the whole complex and then dismantle it .It took a full 6 months to build all the dock some of which are still in use to this day by the Elsmere Port Model Boat club In the end it was just to labour intensive to repeat the whole exercise  year on year and after the fourth year it was dropped from the program for a more conventional evening sail.  This was a great pity as  all those that entered into  the event found it not just  entertaining but a real challenge  . Even the models were inspected to ensure that the lighting was correct for that vessel , probably a little OTT   but  many  models  were built  just for that event.  Those were interesting days.

Dave Wooley

Edited By David Wooley on 23/10/2009 23:05:09

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