By Gareth Jones, with a lot of help from his wife Elizabeth
My interest in model boats started about 10 years ago when my wife Elizabeth bought me the plans for a TID tug. She soon began to realise that unless she came out to the shed, she very rarely saw me except for meals and bedtime. After watching me cutting out pieces of plywood, she thought if he could do that, then so could she.
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So, Elizabeth decided to have a go at model boat building herself but wanted to do something different from my scale models and for her first project chose a Thunder Tiger Victoria yacht, which she built with a little help from me and it sailed very successfully. Her next project was the restoration of a vintage Marblehead yacht which our next door neighbour had bought from an antique dealer. Six months later and with a bit of help with the radio gear, Pond Princess had her maiden voyage after about 40 years of lying derelict. We are both active members of Goole MBC and Elizabeth was then keen to build a powered model, preferably one that could be used by children as a ‘have a go boat’ on club open days or when visiting other club sites and a Springer tug seemed ideal for the purpose.
The Springer tugs
These are easy to build and sail. They have a defined hull shape, 18 inches long by 8 inches wide, plenty of room to install the motor, battery and controls and the superstructure can be anything your imagination allows. Elizabeth decided she would build two Springers with identical hulls and interchangeable superstructures.
The first was built with built some help from me and the second, 100% on her own. The target date for finishing the first was the club night sailing event and Knight Sailer emerged from the shed in May 2010. Sunseeker, the second Springer emerged a month or so later and was especially designed and constructed as a demonstration to the one or two sceptics who had ill-founded doubts her boat building ability. Sunseeker is perhaps a bit on the risqué side for use as a kids have-a-go boat, so an alternative lid was built on the suggestion of our daughter.
Onion Barge E appeared on the scene later in 2010 and despite now being well on its way to being two years old, is still carrying its original onions! Elizabeth then took a break from building Springers for a while and concentrated on restoring a 1950’s Sharpie, Secret Princess, whose hull was bought on Ebay and needed extensive repairs and the construction of a new mast, sails, rigging and Braine steering gear. Her next project was Moonbeam Princess, a replica pond yacht from the Metcalf Mouldings kit and this is a lovely yacht to sail in light winds.
By the summer of 2011, Elizabeth had a list of about a dozen potential Springer superstructures on the workshop notice board and the next lid to be completed was the Mouseboat. This has a hamster wheel driven by a small geared motor under the lid, controlled by the main motor speed controller. When the boat goes in reverse the wheel changes direction and by a brilliant stroke of design (or luck), the mouse’s tail catches in the treads of the wheel and the mouse turns round as well! This model always attracts a lot of attention, particularly when sailed in public parks. Indeed, at the Kirklees MBC regatta in July 2011, a short sighted spectator was worried that the mouse might fall off the boat and drown!
The next lid to be built was the Container Ship version, usually filled with a mixture of Smarties and Haribo sweets for kids or visitors to the club stand at shows. This was followed by the Learner lid, the first one to be dedicated to being used as a have-a-go boat. The latest variants on the Springer theme are the Pumpkin and ‘Be Afraid’ lids which were special adaptations for the Hull MBC evening sailing event at the end of October 2011.
The future?
Elizabeth believes that many of the highly detailed scale models that are displayed by clubs are very daunting to a child or newcomer to the hobby, who may well think they could never build anything like that, so there is no point in trying. The Springer design and construction is visibly simple and an ideal introduction to model boating. It is easy to adapt and if you first build a pusher tug, you only need a new lid to turn it into a fishing boat or a fire boat. There is no need to go to the expense of new running gear or radio control equipment. Springers have proved very popular with children, being fun and easy to sail, attractive, resistant to damage and safe to operate in close proximity to other boats on the pond. They are compact and take up little space in the car and we usually take one with us when visiting regattas or other club sites so that we can let someone have a go.
Elizabeth’s current project is the restoration of a 100 year old ketch which she bought from an antique shop. This has been a very interesting exercise in understanding how the hull was originally constructed, probably from Hennessy cognac cases. She has acquired a number of new skills in the process including planking a deck for the first time. Mind you, her next project is sitting on top of the wardrobe in our son’s bedroom and it’s a 55 inch long wooden hulled pond yacht given to Elizabeth by a member of the Goole Mariners Association. It was used for many years as a training aid for Goole Sea Scouts, but Elizabeth has a rather ambitious plan to rebuild it as the J class yacht Britannia using a set of plans acquired from a modelling friend. The story of that should make a really good article for this magazine, assuming our marriage survives the stress of sharing a workshop for another couple of years!
