Update of Boat Building @ CRSC

Published Tue 23 Jul 2024

Boatbuilding at Concord & Ryde Sailing Club - Past, Present and Future

Concord and Ryde Sailing Club was established in 1945. A time when virtually all small boats were constructed of wood. Like most clubs of the period, many craft were built by members at home. This situation continued until fiberglass became the predominant construction material. A transition that started in the early 1970s and was almost complete 20 years later.

The change had many benefits, boats were now “maintenance free,” and could be mass produced, lowering costs. The negative side of the equation was the loss of the skills and knowledge of boat construction that had been pervasive within the community.

The classes sailed at CRSC and other clubs changed too. Many of the new designs had moulded curved (technically round bilge) hulls. The wooden classes, typically, had hulls panelled in marine plywood which produced a sharp angle in the hull, a hard chine. Round bilge hulls used the physics of curved structures to achieve stiffness despite thinness of the comparatively dense material. In comparison, wooden hulls achieved stiffness due to the greater thickness of their less dense structures.

At CRSC, some wooden boats remained during this period and a few, mostly Herons, were built.

Catspaws of change

The pattern began to change with the emergence of a small class of Firebug dinghies in about 2006. While only 2.4 metres long, they had significantly more sail area than the similarly sized training boats, allowing adults to get a new boat on the water very affordably.

Initially, the Firebugs were all built at home. This changed in 2018, when the club invited local schools to nominate young people to join the first Winter Build programme. Several schools expressed interest in this zero cost programme, but only two young people took up the offer to build boats, and then sail the boat they had built for a whole season. The offer included sailing instruction. These boys, Tyler and Riley were fully engaged on Saturdays during the winter months and produced two beautiful Firebugs, #1304 and #1305. Upon completion of the programme Tyler took the reference we provided and started an engineering apprenticeship. In contrast, Riley progressed, via sailing on high performance dinghies, to become a trainee master working for Captain Cook Ferries.

While neither of these young men still sail with CRSC, we feel that this early programme was successful in helping launch their careers.

Access to the club was restricted during the winter of 2019 due to construction work. As an alternative to boatbuilding, we ran a very popular sailmaking course targeting existing members. Then came COVID.

Winter 2023 - Fresh shoots and recognition

The lean years of the pandemic were hard on the Firebug fleet. With few graduates from the training programme, numbers dwindled. In contrast, the club re-established an International Moth class. While the “foiling” Moths, with their dazzling performance are constrained by the relatively narrow waters of the Parramatta River, the traditional scows and skiffs of the “Lowrider” division found the environment ideal.

The Moths were one of the few classes in which the tradition of homebuilding boats in wood had remained vibrant. With their return, the club gained a core of skilled and knowledgeable sailors and builders. This group, led by Shane Greaves, took on a more ambitious programme - the construction of two International Moths of the Imperium design. These were launched in September 2023 in the presence of Federal MP Jerome Laxale. Jerome had encouraged the club to apply for, and win, a grant from the Building Stronger Communities Programme.

The 2023 programme engaged primarily with young members of families already connected with CRSC. Some seven young people participated, along with several parents. These assisted a similar number of experienced boatbuilders. Such was the success of the programme that team leader, Shane Greaves, was honoured with the 2023 Hal Harpur Award by the Wooden Boat Association of NSW. This is given to the most meritorious wooden boat project of the year.

One disappointment was the lack of interest from local schools. The feedback received indicated that they were still recovering from COVID and lacked the resources to look beyond established programmes. On a more positive note, the programme generated a new pool of young people who embraced the Firebugs and they became a core element of the CRSC training fleet during the season.

Enter Making Waves

During the 2023 build, the activity at CRSC attracted considerable attention through regular updates on Facebook. Shane was contacted by the Making Waves Foundation, formerly Sailors with Disabilities, to help reshape the charity’s Wright of Passage programme. Wright of Passage provides opportunities for disadvantaged young people to work on boat building and restoration at Woolwich Dock.

After careful consideration, it was agreed that dinghies were a preferable offering for the programme. The smaller boats would enable participants to complete and sail the craft they had constructed within the year. Incorporating training using courses designed by Australian Sailing with the practical skills learned building the boats would provide a more coherent programme than projects reconstructing larger craft over several years.

As finally agreed, during the school terms, participants attend two days per week, Wednesday and Thursday. Every second Wednesday is spent following Australian Sailing approved courses at CRSC. In addition, the young people are given membership of the club for a year, to encourage them to become involved, if they wish.

Winter 2024 - Rainbows

Selection of the design for the 2024 programme was challenging. The eventual choice was unexpected. The Rainbow Scow, a fabled design from the heyday of wooden dinghies, had languished in obscurity for several decades. Upon analysis, it was decided that it met the needs of both CRSC and Making Waves better than the alternatives. In summary, the Rainbow is a two person boat designed for wooden construction, it is also designed for a spinnaker balanced by a crew supported by a trapeze wire. Thus, two sailors on a high performance boat for a very reasonable price.

To confirm the merit of this selection, a prototype of the modernised Rainbow was built and sailed very successfully during the 2023/24 season and the wisdom of the choice was confirmed. As a result of very generous donations through the Australian Sports Foundation CRSC had sufficient funds to finance the construction of two boats. This was assisted by a range of generous discounts from our sponsors, Boatcraft NSW, Ronstan Australia and Rakau Designs. Later, a third boat was added to the programme at the request of two members of the club,

At the beginning of May, construction of the CRSC boats commenced and by early July, the boats’ hulls were rapidly approaching completion. Making Waves’ first boat, was begun in March and will be launched on 31 July. It is to be named Red Kite. The three club boats will be launched in early September.

The 2024 build was marked by two important developments, participation by a small number of pupils from Marsden High School and, for the first time in recent years, some young ladies joined the group. A welcome step towards inclusion in the sport.

Looking to the future

With the success of the 2023 and 2024 winter builds, plans for future years are already in preparation. Looking forward, key issues will be the recruitment of future participants, space for the storage of new boats, the design of the boats to be built, and inevitably funding.

The connection with local schools established in 2024 has laid a clear pattern for future years. CRSC is in the process of documenting the experience of the last two seasons and summarising the benefits accruing to participants. This will be made available to local schools by the beginning of 2025.

Three Rainbow Scows are under construction at CRSC and two more at Making Waves. With the prototype, Bonkers, that means CRSC has access to six of these boats. Six boats are sufficient for an active training programme. When fully configured for racing, the Rainbow Scow is a high performance dinghy, but rigged appropriately, it is an excellent training boat. Unfortunately, storage is limited at the club and the acquisition of further boats of this class, unless built for or by individual members, is not necessarily ideal.

It is therefore appropriate to consider a different design. One option under consideration is a Heron Class sailing dinghy. The club already has a fleet of these craft. They are famously, family boats sailed by two teenagers or a parent and a child. The Herons owned by the club are old and impose a heavy maintenance burden. In contrast, Shane Greaves, our lead boat builder, has already constructed the national champion boat of the Heron Class. This boat, called Chicken Dinner was optimised to conform with the measurement rules of the class while achieving the fairest possible lines. One option under consideration for the 2025 programme is the construction of a new Heron while selling one of the old craft. A cheap boat would thus be made available to a potential purchaser, while its space is made available for the new, highly competitive boat. In turn, this new boat could be made available to young members who aspire to participate in the class’s active championship programme at state and federal level.

The final element to put the programme on a long-term basis is to engage with a suitable sponsor. CRSC has productive relationships with Boat-Craft NSW, Ronstan Australia and Rakau Design. These businesses provide generous subsidies that make it possible to keep the programme free to participants. The final element is therefore finding a lead sponsor to supplement the generosity of the donors who have supported the programme to date.

A note on wooden boat construction in the 2020s

Wooden construction in 2024 is very different from 1940, when the Rainbow Scow was designed, or indeed the height of dinghy sailing’s popularity in the 1970s. Modern boats, including those built by CRSC are typically sheathed in glass cloth impregnated with epoxy resin. The result is a boat that requires little more routine maintenance than the equivalent GRP boat out of a factory mould, yet, unlike a production boat, these craft can be easily repaired using the tried and tested techniques of the wooden boatbuilder.