A Potted History of the Early
Australian EC12 Class.
We all
know that the EC12 is no longer an International class. But it
has hung around for quite a long time. The latest information
coming in from the United States is, it is one of the largest
classes there.
I was present when
this class first came to Australia, being a member of the Old
Sydney Model Yacht Club then. I want to tell you about how it
started and not to include myself in it too much.
The main persons involved
with this right from the word GO were two Qantas employees Kevin
Byrnes and Max Lewis of Sydney, there were others involved too.
Kevin had a contact in America called Buddy Black, anyway this
American put out EC12 hulls from the TREASURE TOOLING mould.
This mould was the Official Mould for it was written into the
early US rating rules.
Kevin sent over for
one of these hulls and told Buddy (the manufacturer) to make it
heavy for they wanted to mould from it, so in due course the
hull arrived in Australia through Qantas, I can’t say if anyone
paid duty (to protect the guilty). Kevin put this hull into the
hands of a local person to do the moulding, Kevin Humphreys of
Aero Mini Marine near Scarborough Park in Sydney.
Now in the mean time, there
was an argument raging within the club (as always) on who was
going to have the number #1 hull out of the mould. This went on
for sometime. The mould maker, Aero Mini Marine had produced the
mould and took the first boat off.
I went down and
saw Aero Mini Marine with my money in my hot little hand and he
said, “we’ve got a problem, I promised Kevin and Max the first
two hulls out of the mould but they haven’t come up with any
money, yet”. Now in this early time Aero Mini Marine hadn’t got
the ‘number’ stickers in the hulls, so he put small ink dots in,
5 dotes is number #5 etc. I would suspect that there would be at
least 5 or 6 of the first hulls out there with no Aero Marine
stickers in them, for he took months and months to get them.
These boats can be identified in other ways, though. He said,
“you and I (he) know you’re got the first, but I have to put
four more dots in yours otherwise I’m in trouble with the other
two fellows.”
Kevin Byrnes retrieved his
hull for it was the one from the States and made his boat. It
was of the usual Byrnes standard, fantastic in every way. All
the fittings were chrome plated, beautiful sails, carved wood
mast. How did it sail? Well, Like a dog. It sailed across the
lake at Scarborough Park, hit the opposite bank, was turned
around (by hand) sailed back and hit the bank again. A not very
enterprising start, this boat that was made heavy (to mould
off), even in light zephyrs it heeled to the gunnels.
The subsequent boats were
improved on, in regards to lighter masts, better placement of
the lead shot, etc. Now the first hulls were made with decks on
them, there was no rule saying you could not put a wooden deck
on. To lighten the boat, the fiberglass deck was taken off and a
ply one fitted. Cross deck measurements were not part of the
rule then. The basic rule for the beam then was 111/2” plus or
minus 1/2”.
While the boat had no deck
on it, it was possible to fiddle with the hull; one of the best
ways for getting this boat to go, was to spread the deck beam
from 11 1/2” to 12”. In doing this, it lifted both the transom
and the sharp end up, thereby reducing the LWL and in so doing,
being able to add more lead.
We settled down
for about 12 months or so of building and sailing. About this
time Max Lewis and I were sailing at Chipping Norton, at the
Chipping Norton EC12 club near Liverpool, for we had heard of
somebody else sailing a similar boat there. Anyway this bloke
found us, his boat was also a EC12, and his name was Alf
Willoughby who said he “flopped” his boat off a mate’s boat, who
bought it off DUMAS in the States. This boat that he flopped
from, was eventually registered as KA14 “Ragamuffin”,
Manufacturer DUMAS Hull number 120S. First Registered 6/4/82 to
R. Pinkarton.
The Class was going about
two years when it became apparent, that the Class was going to
become bigger than first expected. As Secretary of the ECSA, I
approached to the then Registrar Alan Dawson in Adelaide in 1981
to start the register for them. Allan asked me if I wanted No1?
But no, I said I would like No 8. KA1 went to Rick Dorrey in
South Australia.
Max Lewis had a beautiful
light blue boat with diagonal stripes (red, white and blue) all
in the gelcoat, his boat was numbered KA7 ”Columbia” first
registered in 22/12/81.
The Willoughby
boats (Mini Mariner) were slimmer than the Aero Mini Marine
boats and had other differences and these were: The bottom of
the keel was Vee-ed, the thickness of the keel was thinner, and
the beam on the deck was slightly narrower in places and it did
not come from the “Treasure Tooling Mould”. This was one of the
requirements of the old US rules that it “had to conform to the
Treasure tooling mould”. We had a “choice” to except this hull,
by Mini Mariner or not. Max Lewis wanted to ban it, for he said
it didn’t conform to the “Treasure Tooling Mould” as the basic
requirement stated. The argument flowed back and forwards for a
few days and it was pointed out to Max, if he didn’t accept it
as an EC12, then we might end up with two classes of EC12s in
Australia. Of course we had to accept it. In some ways this
bought the Class into ‘Deep Water’ later on.
In 1982, big things started
to happen. The AMYA National Championships were held in
Melbourne that year. The EC12s sailed south of the city at a
place called Currum (while the more prominent classes used
Albert Park Lake). The EC12 championships included both match
racing and fleet racing. I won the EC12 Nationals that year and
there were 11 starters for the event.
After the 1983 Nationals in
Sydney, Bruce Sorenson got interested in the class, when he came
to these nationals and took my Aero Mini Marine hull back to
Queensland to mould. If a person wanted to be a manufacturer in
the class then, he still had to mould off a known “Treasure
Tooling boat” which was also part of the original rules.
Bruce Sorenson and his mate
Tom Porter and Dave Black turned up in Sydney for the “Easter
Bunny Hop” as the event was called. Well the difference in their
boats to ours in Sydney were enormous. For they came from
Queensland with unstayed masts, keel stepped masts, tripods to
bring the sheet rope close to the main boom and a different keel
leading arrangements that looked superior to ours. Of course
they slaughtered us and really had Max Lewis’ gander up. For
what he called all the “illegalities”. With the rules being the
way they were, there were many glaring holes in the class rules
then. From that time on, Sorenson boats were sold through out
Australia and New Zealand.
From these boats came, the
infamous keel row and it was caused through a mishap! We were at
our sailing site in Botany Bay near the Sydney airport one club
sailing day, when Roy Silks tried to put his boat (a Sorenson
Boat) into a stand that usually held a Dumas type (Mini Mariner)
boat. It didn’t fit the box at the keel, and it all went from
there. Like, as people think, if it is different, it must be
better? Or worse?
There were 3 clubs
sailing EC12’s in Sydney at that time, 1 club in Melbourne,
1club in Adelaide and 1 club in Brisbane in 1985 and three
manufacturers namely Aero Mini Marine (Kevin Humphreys), and
Zoro’s (Bruce Sorenson) and Mini Mariner. Later Roy Silks was
trying to make them also but was having a lot of trouble with
getting them to ‘release’ out his mould and didn't continue past
two hulls, (he flopped a Aero Mini Marine hull, mine). Of the
ten hulls he actually pulled out of the mould he only got out 2
that were any good. One of those 2 hulls had a great lot of
filling done on the starboard side of the hull. So he gave it up
and remained the agent for Sorenson boats and made masts and
fittings and poured the leads, fitted the Sorenson boats out to
sell in Sydney. I made all the sails.
In 1986 there were four
clubs in Sydney sailing EC12’s. They were the East Coast Sailing
Association, Werrington Model Yacht Club, The Sydney Model
Engineers at Luddenham and Northern Beaches EC12 club. The
Sydney Society of Model Engineers had their own private lake and
had about 14 boats of their members racing there on a regular
basis. Some of their events included 24 hour races which we
attended.
The reason the East Coast
Sailing Association got its name was that, members of it did
not, in some cases come from Sydney. To get the EC12s popular we
encouraged people who lived in outlying places, such as Durass
Lakes, Wollongong, Dubbo, Burrill Lakes, Port MacQuarie and
other such outlying places to join. They could belong to the
Association and receive a monthly newsletter about what was
happening in EC12 class
As the class
started to come together, these later two manufacturers got
really into production; they seemed to squeeze out, in some
ways, Aero Mini Marine now called Lakesedge Engineering. A
feature about Sorenson and Mini Mariner hulls were the colours,
both had bright colours in the gelcoats, for there weren’t many
painted boats. I suspect that Sorenson was the more masterly of
the two. For both were outstanding. The Sorenson’s early boats
were done with airbrushing scenes over the coloured gel coat and
were really great, for some of them were even decorated with
Indians and stuff, one even sported a painted 32 ford hotrod on
the deck! One even had women posing with “wispy” veils over
their nether parts, painted along the decks. Like was
fashionable with panel vans about that era.
Getting back to these
Sorenson EC12s, they were a revelation to us, for the boats (in
set up) were so different to ours. As Bruce Sorenson was rigging
up, he stuck his mast into his boat, right down to the keel and
it didn’t have side stays .One of our blokes told him he forgot
to put his side stays on. All the Queenslanders had stay- less
masts. The lower part of the mast was fitted to the boat with
the boom and the vang and the bottom tube stub for the mast to
slide into. All their boats had Dave Black deck mounted winches.
These winches were really small and could pull enormous weight
with little battery power. All these boats had the lead poured
in, to properly balance the hull, in the right place. Where as,
some of our boats still had leadshot in the keel with resin
poured over them to keep the pellets in place. Of course they
beat the ‘living hell’ out of the NSW boats. So a rematch was in
order, to ‘rescue’ our pride and trophy. Which we did the
following Easter in Brisbane. Four boats from Sydney went up and
they included Roy Silks and his son Bruce from Society of Model
Engineers club, Max Lewis and myself from the EC Sailing Ass.
NSW held the
Nationals in 1983/4 at the EC12 site on Botany Bay, the EC12’s
raced in winds up to 40 knots for the 3 days, to everybody’s
amazement. (Airborne Magazine No 68) and was won by ECSA’s J.
Bannerman KA 38. Competitors came from, New Zealand (2),
Tasmania (2), Queensland (2) and NSW(10). I was the O.O.D. for
the entire National’s class events that year in Sydney.
Max Lewis’s boat with
the wood deck was from Aero Mini Marine #15 and was called “The
Bitter End”. First registered in Australia on 11/10/81 with
Max’s USA membership number as his Australian (AMYA) number, KA
294. The boat sported a Goldspar mast, and American Fisher brass
fittings and Carr sails from the USA. Max represented Australia
at the Rick Palmers’ MINI America’s Cup in 1977 at Rhode Island
USA as well as Australia’s Neil Bennell OBE. Both our skippers
borrowed boats off the Americans to do this regatta. This
regatta, held at the same time, near the America’s cup in
Newport. Max was able to “liberate” Ted Turner’s Engineer’s hat
that came floating past after the ‘dunking’ of Turner’s win. Max
was made a life member of the Narragansett Model Yacht
Association, as indeed were all the overseas competitors.
We started the
East Coast Sailing Association together at Botany Bay crash boat
site. There is also a video of the early EC12 boats sailing at
Botany Bay that is held in the ARYA Historical Archives.
It might be in
order to say a few things about Roy Silks. For I knew Roy
personally and he lived near me. He was very fastidious about
getting the boats right that he got from Sorenson and fitted out
properly. The poured leads that he did, were spot-on and what he
used to do was put weights on the boats to represent batteries,
winches, masts and booms and pour the lead to almost the water
line. While it was floating in his swimming pool and then put in
tiny pieces of lead to do the final balance after the gear was
fitted. I watched and helped him do many of the Sorenson’s
EC12s.
Just for interest sake,
there are two metal flake Lakesedge Engineering EC12 boats out
there somewhere, one gold and one blue. I got them especially
made from Aero Mini Marine. Using the gold one, I won the 1982
EC12 National championship in Currum, Victoria. There were 2
clubs that sailed EC12s in Victoria.
Bruce Sorenson had a brand
new EC12, (never sailed), sitting in his home. The last one out
of his mould. Complete, ready to go, it was made for someone in
Papua New Guinea and never picked up, it is in PNG National
colours and rego’ is KNG 1,in some ways quite a historical boat.
That one I believe is owned by John Hall in Sydney.
The 1988 Nationals were the
last nationals attended by the EC12 class. The following years
89, 90 and 91 etc was not attended by the class members for
whatever reasons and the class stopped racing nationally. I
think it culminated in the lack of communication by the EC12
clubs in general. There was an unfortunate International Rules
Rewrite that split the entire World EC12 body, over some
ill-conceived plan to put another type of 12 metre in place of
the existing one. The trouble and ill will that came from this
held the class back from gaining the place it deserves.
Now, the class proved it was
popular before 1988, for it was thriving back then. It will do
this again, provided there is resurgence in the will to want to
do it, from the current owners. Boats are hard to find and the
reason they are hard to find is because the people who have them
are still sold on this concept. Of an “America’s Cup Match
Racing boat”.
Any hulls from Sorenson,
Lakesedge Engineering or Aero Mini Marine and the Silks &
Delisser hulls came from or were direct sisters of the “Treasure
Tooling” Plug that was imported from Buddy Black in the USA
(1974 circa). The hulls like, Mini Mariner, came from the Dumas
style Boat. I believe personally that both types of boats we
race in Australia are the same in performance and have always
been so.
There is more to this EC12
story and I will bring it to you at a later date.
