G'day All,
As I've built the odd 'yacht or 2, I was just curious to see if anyone would like to see some of the development of the last 35 years or so that I've had something to do with.
I'l only ramble on if someone is interested.
Learning from someone else's experience is always easier and less painful than learning from your own so I would love have the pickings from your brain. Please fire away and I promise I will not get bored.
Cheers Cisco.
G'day All,
My first landyacht was built by my father (Pat) in Jan 1972, when I was 15 (Yes, I was sailing B4 I could drive). The design was a local development that was the basis of a number of 'yachts in the original Adelaide Landyacht club of the late '60s early 70s.
It was about 14ft long & around 10ft wide & had a full size quick-cat mainsail of some 130sq ft. It was a bit on the heavy side, but it had a holden bench seat (adjustable no less!) suspension on the rear axle (by means of a pin through axle & a rubber block on the inner end inside the axle tube). Sheeting was by winch & a cable direct to the boom & was a real handfull in a decent wind.
The wheels were industrial with high speed bearings & 600x6 aero tyres.
It took a bit to get going, but at one stage we got 45 mph out of it while following in a car.
It was a good 'yacht of it's time, but the mast used to come crashing down when Dad's home invented stay fittings let go, and it was very heavy & cumbersome to cart around, however it kept me going until 1974, when together with Chris Malcolm, I built my first design, the 'Eliminator'.
Finally a photo, many thanks Gizmo.
I cheated & just took a photo of an album page as some of these photo's negs are a bit hard to find...
Hope you can see enough!
There is a story connected with this first yacht, in that the local hang glider guys at the time heard about me sailing through Dad, and came & had a sail when I had the yacht sailing at the Morphet Vale high school oval. I took a couple of them for a screaming run across the oval then- Bang! a stay went & we copped the mast, sail etc. as often happened, but it didn't seem to bother them at all.
This had happened so often that we had actually modified the yacht by using a universal joint at the mast base so the rig would suffer less damagewhen it fell over!
When it happened, you were also able to lie down on the bench seat & avoid having all the paraphenalia hitting you...
The upshot of the hang glider visit turned out to be that when they went to the US for a competition, they came across a Manta landyacht built by the Manta hanglider manufacturer, and brought a number of the little yachts back to Adelaide.
This sparked a spin-off copy by Free Flight hang gliders here in Adelaide & these yachts triggered renewed interest both here and also in Safety Bay WA, where Pat Coffee kicked the sport off over there with them.
G'day again all,
The 'Eliminator',
This yacht was built by myself & Chris Malcolm in their driveway. Chris lived in Morphet Vale right next to the school & had a big landyacht (I can't remember how he came by it) that he used to keep in the corner of the oval next to their place. He was still too young to drive at the time I first met him, and so I took my yacht up there & drove up to join him for a sail on the weekend.
Both our yachts were big & cumbersome to handle, & the oval was a bit small for them. I decided we could build a smaller yacht that was easier to cart around & so I came up with the 'Eliminator'. This yacht was about 10 ft long with an 8ft axle. Most of the tube came from the local dump for 40c. & a plastic kitchen chair was scrounged for a seat. The front end was simply the biggest jockey wheel with fork I could afford & it was mounted bolt upright as it came on the front of the main chassis tube. It actually worked suprisingly well, considering all the fork geometry was wrong!
The first sail I made for it was on an old sewing machine out of poly tarp. It was about 4.5 sq metres (I'll go metric from now on!) and was a bit small for the yacht. We had more success when we used it with the jib from Chris's yacht, but I eventually got some sailcloth and made a sail of about 5.5 sq metres.
We also kept bending masts ( made of steel tube) which were dropped into the mast step like today's class 5s & so we ended up shortening the mast step & putting stays on it.
Chris & I also made a second one for one of the local kids, but we didn't see it often.
The Eliminator was quite successful & the smallest yacht around locally that we knew of. It pre-dated the arrival of the Manta copies (1974). Unfortunately for my old yacht, we had used it's back axle stubs & wheels for the Eliminator & the wheels & axles I replaced them with were bigger & heavier. The old yacht never went very well after that & ended it's days crudely converted into a trailer. At least the back end did - some time later I built a small yacht using the old yachts front end as well.
The next yacht I built was an American yacht called the Mirage....
Some shots of the Eliminator; if you look closely you will see the change to mast / stays.
Sorry about delay,
I'm gathering up some of the pictures that are a bit buried, bear with me, I'll continue soon....
