the lake - Part Two
By Charlie Salter
Here’s part two about a terrific book, APYC 150 Years on the Lake. We’ve picked out stories of people and boats that characterise a Rather special club.
ACROSPIRE II with her Noel Brooke sails 1979. Photo: Ralph Neale Archive, APYC
Restricted & One-design
The 25 ft Restricted class, nicknamed the White Wings became famous on Victorian inland lakes. In the early 20C, Charlie Peel in Melbourne was the go-to designer and builder of these boats. Defining a few rules like water line length and sail area, allowed boats to compete and gave freedom to the designer to be inventive with hull shape and rig set-up. Until the 1930’s this was the model for racing yachts in the US and Europe, especially using the metre rule. This encouraged naval architects like Francis Herreshoff and Knud Reimers to stretch their French curve templates and geometry to produce some remarkable yachts.
The idea of a One-design boat began with the Star Class in 1910. The popularity of a standardised and measured yacht for close racing really took off in the 1930’s with Snipes, 12 Square Metre Sharpies and Johan Anker’s Dragon. The latter two became Olympic classes with both Snipes and Sharpies sailed at APYC.
Sharpies & Snipes
These are not Bernstein street gangs but famous dinghies that ‘represent the bridge between crewed yachts of the past and the One-design classes.’ The Sharpie is a German design from 1931 still sailed in Europe. It first sailed on the Lake in the 1930’s and remained a popular class until 1957. It was an international and Olympic yacht sailed with two crew. Perth’s Rolly Tasker won silver in his FALCON IV at the 1956 Olympic regatta in St Kilda, Melbourne.
William Crosby published the Snipe in Rudder Magazine in 1931. It’s a 15’ 6’, two-person dinghy weighing some 170 kilograms. By 1937 the APYC had adopted the design as the Club’s one-design class with twenty in the fleet by 1940. (Click on images to enlarge)
What Class for APYC
Clubs were and still are always reviewing preferred classes to support. After WW2, the big boat days were over on Albert Park Lake. Development of ply sheet, cross ply moulding and new waterproof glues underwrote a flourishing range of small boat designs. Lightweight one-design dinghies for off-the-beach and lake clubs were the future. See DINGHY DEMOCRACY, SWS 30 July 2021.
Like most clubs, APYC was sorting through approvals, acceptance and adoption of classes suitable for the shallow lake.
‘In 1949 the APYC committee did not adopt Charlie Cunningham’s Gwenda and 20 ft Gwen, however, ten years later, they decided to make the Moth and Gwen 12 the classes to foster. In 1963 it decided to promote the Sabot as a junior class. The Heron was not favoured but became the Club’s largest class. Since then, an enlightened policy of letting classes come and go as members desired, has served the Club well.’
The little pram bow Sabot was promoted in the 1940’s by members at the Black Rock YC in bayside Melbourne. They adapted a leeboard design from a series of articles in the US Rudder Magazine called “Plywood for Boats”. In the 1950’s the Sabot had large junior fleets around Port Phillip.
Charlie Cunningham was a Melbourne designer famous for catamarans. He developed the Gwen 12 in the 1950’s based on his 1943 Gwenda prototype. It was an attractive and popular teenage class with a fully battened mainsail, small bowsprit and trapeze. The Gwen wasn’t the most effective performer upwind, because of its full bow. Off-the-beach sailors recall being swamped by ‘firehose like spray’. But it’s downwind performance tells stories about the 12 footer reaching past 16 foot skiffs with twice the sail area. Chop is an issue on Port Phillip but the Lake is a forgiving skating rink up and downwind.
The Heron, like the Mirror was designed in the early 1950’s by Jack Holt in the UK. The two-person gunter rigged class was introduced to Australia and became popular in Melbourne family fleets.
Over the last 70 years, APYC has seen most dinghy classes in their sheds. Support for a fleet changes as juniors grow up, new designs emerge or older sailors return to relive dinghy days. Many SWS readers will know or have sailed these dinghies - Yachting Monthly Junior, Fairy Penguin, Sabot, Manly Junior, Mirror, Heron, Sparrow, Payne-Morlock Canoe, VJ, VS, International Cadet, Moth, Sailfish, OK Dinghy, Gwen 12, Cherub, Fireball, Corsair, Puffin Pacer, Minnow, Banshee, Laser, Solo, Optimist, Taser, Sabre and RS Aero. (Click on images to enlarge)
An Australian Moth
The most enduring class on the Lake in all its design generations is surely the Moth. Moths are a Restricted class, often known as a development class. At mid-20C, they enjoyed a Darwinian like parallel evolution in the USA and Australia. Similar dinghies, mostly unknown to each other, shared many characteristics.
The history of an Australian Moth is deeply embedded at APYC through Len Morris. As a young APYC member, aged 19 in 1912, Morris and a friend went to Charlie Peel in Port Melbourne and asked him to design a 25 footer to better Peel’s Ballarat flyer ACROSPIRE II. The result was METIS that regularly raced ACKII on the Lake when Joe White moved to Melbourne in 1914. Morris moved to Gippsland for work after the First World War and sold METIS, that remained at APYC. Morris would have known the Albert Park eight foot, cat-rigged dinghies and set about adapting this to a larger boat.
‘In 1928, Len Morris built an eleven ft long scow with an 80sq ft mainsail, which he called OLIVE after his wife, to sail on Anderson’s Inlet at Inverloch. OLIVE performed so well that two more boats, WHOOPEE and FLUTTERBY were built and the class was called the Inverloch Eleven-Footer Class. In 1933 the American sailing magazine, The Rudder, published an article about the Moth Boat, alerting Australians to US developments. Given the similarities the Moth name was adopted in Australia. It appears that Len Morris designed the butterfly insignia that was later adopted worldwide.’ (Click on images to enlarge)
A French Moth
Three generations of the French family are Melbourne sailors, boat builders and designers linked to APYC. Bob French was in the first Australian Olympic sailing team at the 1948 London Olympics. He sailed the single-handed Firefly against the gold medallist Paul Elvstrom. Bob started working with J J Savage & Son in Williamstown in the 1950’s building the moulded ply Finn fleet for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics before starting his own timber boat business in 1960.
Bob’s son Jim French started at APYC in a Sabot graduating to a Sailfish, Gwen 12 and the OK Dinghy becoming State Junior Champion in 1972. He won the State Moth title three times in the 1980’s while designing and building Moths, one of which won the World title in 1987. Jim was the APYC skipper of ACROSPIRE II from 1993 and is custodian of the 1966 Moth SKEETA passed to him by Chris Davey (our author). Jim and his son David are now focused on new generation carbon materials and modern Moth sailing with their company Skeeta Foiling Craft https://www.skeetafoilingcraft.com/.
The Moths, OLIVE and SKEETA are still at APYC. (Click on images to enlarge)
Acrospire II
This famous 25 ft racing boat and her owner Joe White started sailing in Ballarat on Lake Wendouree before moving to Melbourne and APYC in 1914. By 1915 White was alreday thinking about his next boat. She was designed again by Charlie Peel. ACROSPIRE III was launched in 1924. ACROSPIRE II was sold and returned to Ballarat in 1927 where she sailed until the late 1960’s. The abandoned boat was put up for sale in 1971 for $50 and purchased by senior members of APYC who knew the history. She joined the Club Centenary sail past but was in need of restoration. ‘Over the winter of 1977, ACROSPIRE’S re-ribbing was completed, its planking patched up then re-caulked and painted.’ (Click on images to enlarge)
From 1977 to 1996, the old inter-club regatta challenge between APYC and Ballarat Yacht Club was revived. ACK II represented APYC won six challenges and VALDERA representing BYC won five times. From 1993 Jim French was the APYC skipper with Chris Davey on main sheet. They made ACK II almost unbeatable in the latter years. In 1999, with funds from the Club and Tattersalls this APYC flagship was fully restored by shipwright Gary Stewart in Port Fairy. The complete restoration meant that only the original kauri planking remained but the boat was good for another fifty years.
To prove her seaworthiness, ACROSPIRE II entered a Classic Yacht Association Australia regatta on Hobsons Bay in 2006. With Jim French and Chris Davey on board, sailing five heats in light and heavy Port Phillip conditions, she won her division. Page 12 of the CYAA magazine, 22 March 2006, carried the following report from SWS editor Mark Chew;
‘I remember the sight of the 25ft lake boat ACROSPIRE II flying down a reach in twenty knots of wind with what seemed like too much sail up and the crew stacked out on the gunnels with grins from ear to ear. They told me she was a fragile old thing that was used to gentle lake sailing. They easily won Division two. Not bad for a bunch of pond sailors!’
You can still see the 111 year old ACROSPIRE II on a mooring at APYC or in the shed. (Click on images to enlarge)
150 Years
The Club had survived for some 80 years but in the 1950’s, APYC suffered under Victorian labour party shenanigans and pressure over their lease and site location. The Albert Park Committee of Management (APCOM) was ruled as a fiefdom by Mr Patrick Kennelly for over 30 years. Kennelly, a Cain government MLC, was openly ill-disposed towards APYC and some members who supported a rival labour faction. After lengthy and inconclusive negotiations by the Club for their site and lease, a fire in 1957 destroyed the first club building. Kennelly seized the opportunity, telling APYC to vacate and leave.
Despite many members abandoning the Club, a core group of APYC sailors didn’t give up. They lobbied South Melbourne Council and the Minister for Lands, then raised money for a new building on an adjacent lakeside site. By 1959 the new clubhouse and shed were ready. It was a terrific post-war Melbourne modernist design. The Honorary Architect Mr King, displays his skill with a stacked intersecting composition, finished with the new Stegbar Windowall, coloured spandrel glazing, lightweight cladding and a shed door super-graphic. SWS suggests that Mr King was Lionel King of Montgomery King & Trengove Architects. (Click on image to enlarge)
The Vision Thing
From its 19C beginning, the club has remained vigilant to protect itself and the Lake from ambitious aldermen, semi-government authorities, developer’s grand schemes and environmental threats. One of Kennelly’s final acts in 1968 as Chairman of APCOM was to publicly announce in the newspapers;
‘that a large restaurant was to be built on Gun Island. A causeway from Lakeside Drive and a bridge 8’ above the water would provide access to a 250 space carpark on the island. The restaurant would be two stories high, circular in plan with a revolving upper floor. At the northern end of the island there was to be a fountain shooting water 87 ft into the air, the highest in Australia. This was of course a serious threat to sailing on the Lake.’
APYC members hit the airwaves and newspapers doing everything to stop the scheme. Kennelly proposed a tunnel might be the solution. The Minister for Lands concluded that with all the objections there was no public support and declined approval. Further investigations by APYC showed many structures overseen by Kennelly in this publicly gazetted park, in fact had no Government approval. This helped accelerate the demise of APCOM.
F1 racing cars now rule the park and Lake for a month every year. The prospect of early autumn sailing with an Easter Regatta in 2022 was ruined. The lake level was too low after the Gran-Prix Corporation nicked the water to ensure green grass for the TV cameras trained for a minute on Marvellous Melbourne.
Keeping a weather eye on the future through an adaptable masterplan and flexible policy is often difficult for clubs hidebound by history. Even dinghy club committees need to be alert to this stuff. They are a ‘useful reference’ for planning and decisions or should we say ‘an inclusive stakeholder led engagement strategy document to identify risks and opportunities for APYC going forward’.
Whatever junk language you speak, APYC is ‘on to it’ with the excellent 6 Degrees Architects and open discussion of a possible merger with Albert Sailing Club. This seems a perfectly reasonable option to interrogate. Why not bring the fleets together and share buildings and facilities, common sailing equipment, rescue ribs, future purchases and maintenance costs. Historically, these two lake clubs tended to attract different classes of dinghy and people. APYC was for the toffs while ASC was for workers and even allowed sailing professionals. These old unwritten rules and class splits that did exist in sailing are happily long gone. (Click on image to enlarge)
Credits
SWS gratefully acknowledges Chris Davey, Mark Ashkanasy and APYC for allowing publication of extracts and images from APYC 150 YEARS on the LAKE.
You can order the book HERE
The SWS author was a member of Albert Sailing Club from 1968-1975 before moving to a Port Phillip club.
