Wednesday, February 19, 2014

South Gippsland Yacht Club - Australian Classic Wooden Dinghy Regatta

ICWDR

It doesn't take long when perusing this blog to catch on that the blogmeister sails a Classic Moth and that he also tends to feature those regattas that highlight the diversity and/or the history of dinghy sailing. Click on the following Earwigoagin links for regattas like the WOOD regatta, CBMM's Small Boat Festival, the Archipelago Rally, and the Bosham SC Classic Revival - UK. South Gippsland YC, southeast of Melbourne, held probably the first Australian Regatta featuring the great Australian wooden dinghies from yore. Here (was) a great video - Oops! I guess this longish video was a pre-production version, not meant for general viewing on the Net-Toobs and has now been taken down. Not to worry. There is a very good slide show of the regatta and also a video short of the GoPro view of father/daughter sailing on the double plank VeeJay..

Some class logos I recognize; JB for the Uffa Fox 19' Jollyboat, the Circle R of the Rainbow scow, also there is the M logo on the red sails of the regular Mirror dinghy as well as M logo with the halo of the Mirror Miracle, the Bell of the GP 14, the Heron of the Heron class, the red ball of the Fireball, the Butterfly logo of the Moth and the three bars of the Contender class. I've also been promised some pics from the regatta which I'll post when I receive them.

The slide show: (Oops again! they've now made the slide show so I can't embed. Jeez this is a moving target!) Click here for the slide show:

Click here to go to Drifts Media GoPro of VeeJay sailing

3 comments:

Dieharddinghysailor said...

Thanks for that Rod, it was good to see a VJ again - it was the first boat I bought in 1965 when I emigrated to Australia - with cotton sails, I bought it for $10, threw away the planks and sailed it solo from a rudimentary trapeze until it gradually fell apart...! Loved the part in the video when they both fell backwards, coudn't stop laughing! And love the old 16ft skiffs. We used to see them out on Lake Illawarra, I was crewing in a Lightweight Sharpie then, fun....

Mike (Scott) Whidbey Island

Tweezerman said...

Mike,

You were one of the lucky ones to see it before it was taken down. I hope they put at least part of it up again, particularly the piece on the 1934 16-foot skiff. A well done video. How is your Pandamaran coming along. Send pics and I'll post them up here.

Dieharddinghysailor said...

Wonder why they removed it. Still the slide show was interesting - I spotted a twin plank Skate - larger version of the VJ, and what I believe is the old Heavyweight Sharpie (10 sq m) before the Ozzies started building them out of plywood and calling it Lightweight Sharpie, and , boy, did they fly - fast as a Dutchman.
Pandamaran progress great, helps to have precut parts, and an interesting history, altho' I had to dig deep to find anything about them. As a big Jack Holt fan, I considered it my duty to resurrect the boat that had been sitting in someone's basement for 30+ years...Should be ready April.
I'll send pics in due course.
Mike