ê N E W S L E T T E R ê

of June 2006

for the

2006 STAR 45 NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP REGATTA (NCR)

NCR Preparations Update

Preparations for the 2006 Star 45 National Championship Regatta (NCR) are in Full Swing.

Since formation of the Organizing Committee and Advisory Board (Organizing Committee is:Don Keeney-Chairman, Nelda Tallman-CoChairman, Phil Geren-CoChairman; Advisory Board is: Brad Lauterbach-Principal Race Officer, Bruce Huckaba-Webmaster, Robert Japikse-Star 45 Class Secretary, and Mark Cooper-Venue Manager), the team has been very busy, and some of the highlights of the work are as follows:

· The time period for the Regatta has been set: October 20 – 22, 2006.

· The venue has been selected: Burke/Crenshaw Park, Pasadena,TX. The nearest airport is Houston’s Hobby Airport (HOU), ten miles from the racing site;

· The Race Director has been appointed: Brad Lauterbach;

· An NCR Website has been created, www.star45houston.com, Current plans are to convert it to a Star 45 resource center, after the NCR, a place where enthusiasts can go for helpful information on the building and sailing of Star 45 model yachts;

· A Preliminary Notice Of Race (NOR) has been posted on the NCR Website and will be posted on Star45@yahoogroups.com and on www.clearpointmyc.org;

· AMYA-registered Star 45 owners have been canvassed by mail and internet to update their contact information, to bring the address database up to date, and to prepare a master list for dissemination of information on the 2006 NCR. Readers: please notify 1keyknee@281.com with your current address if you did not receive a card or email message regarding the database update.

· An ad publicizing the NCR has been prepared and will run in Model Yachting Magazine Issue 144 (August 2006. The ad is reproduced below ;

Plans are to publish this Newsletter for the NCR on a monthly basis, beginning with this issue, ending in October. It will be posted on the sites mentioned above. It will have standard articles, such as this NCR Preparations Update article, and a Featured Article each month. This month’s Featured Article is the first chapter of a brief new history of the Star 45 Model Yacht, Early Boat Design and Production, written from information provided by the pioneers of the Star 45 practice, people such as Dave Mainwaring, Lesesne Monteith, Steve Pratt, and others. We hope you enjoy it! Please read it and send any comments and any additional historical information you may have to philgeren@aol.com.

The Committee and Advisory Board are dedicated to prepare what will be history’s highest quality and best attended Star 45 National Championship Regatta!!

The STAR 45 Through Time

A Brief History of the Star 45 Model Yacht

Compiled, from information provided by enthusiasts in the building and sailing of Star 45s,
by Phil Geren, 6 June 2006

Part 1 – Early Years

1.A Early Boat Design and Production

1.A.1 The Beginning

The International Star Class racing yacht, mother of the Star 45 model yacht, was designed and first built in the winter of 1910-1911. It is an open cockpit, fin-keel sloop, having an overall length of 22.8 feet. It has a fast, high aspect ratio hull, incorporating a compound curve in the bottom, with a skeg forward of the rudder. It carries a big-footed mainsail and lots of canvas. Roughly 8,000 full-size Stars have been built.

In the early 1960s Jay Brandon, proprietor of Dumas Products, Tuscon, AZ, designed and built a scale model of the International Star based on the 1945 edition of the International Star Class Yacht Racing Association’s (ISCYRA’s) official plans, at 1/6 scale, or 2 inches on the model being equivalent to 12 inches on the full-scale boat. At that scale, the model was roughly 45.6 inches long, and, voila! the Star 45 model yacht was born.

The model was originally designed for free-sailing, not radio control. However, lightweight, World War II surplus, low-voltage, electric servo mechanisms eventually became plentifully available. Those servos, adaptable to radio control in sailboat models, were the first to be available economically, and they were instrumental in the phenomenal early growth which took place in the Star 45 model yacht fleet.

Early Jibsails were loose-footed and overlapped the Main, so that individual mechanisms were required for control of the Mainsail and Jibsail sheets. Elaborate worm gears were used to pull the sheets. To accommodate these bulky mechanisms, Jay raised the model yacht’s freeboard by three quarters of an inch (which would have been equivalent to almost 5 inches on the full-size boat!) The worm gears were two threaded rods which ran longitudinally under the deck, each driven by a Pittman motor. “Travelers” moved forward and aft on the threaded rods and pulled or loosed the sheets. Wet nickel-cadmium batteries provided power.

In the July 1966 edition of Radio Control Modeler Magazine, Dumas Boats advertised a Star kit: “New from Dumas Boats, 45” radio-controlled Star Class Sailboat. All the thrills and skills of sailing big boats! 1/8” birch plywood hull with die-cut frames, mahogany deck, 64” high mast, ready made sails, instructions for building boat, sailing boat, installing RC equipment, and forms for making your own ballast. A Star Sailboat for racing – slightly modified for R.C. $45.00. The “hot ones” designed for “go” … ideal for show.”

The Dumas hull’s bottom was made of two pieces of one-eighth inch thick plywood, without the compound curve present in the full-size Star. The hull and controlls weighed about fourteen pounds. Don Prough would later license Dumas Products to produce the smaller “Probar” arm winch, however the increased freeboard was maintained in the Dumas design. Three thousand wood kits were sold between 1966 and 1995.

1.A.2 More Designers/Builders Join In

Other talented designers and builders of models began working in parallel with Dumas. Beginning with the Dumas design, the early practice was to cut the high freeboard down, to cause the hull to more closely resemble the appearance of the International Star, and to lighten the hull. This had the effect of shortening the hull’s overall length.

The beam of the hull varied from builder to builder. Sails in the early days mainly came from Rod Carr’s model racing sail loft in Springfield, VA. Dave Mainwaring, in Needham, Mass., used an old, abandoned street sign for the material to fashion a keel of a design he found pleasing, being significantly narrower than the Dumas original and having a slight aftward rake, from top to bottom, in the aft edge (the Dumas keel’s aft edge was vertical.) Dave also designed a semi-balanced spade rudder, abandoning the International Star’s skeg. Dave drew sketches for his Star 45 design, having lines scaled from the 1946 edition and then from the 1976 revision of the ISCYRA’s official plans. Dave’s friend Jack Sullivan, a design draftsman, rendered the sketches on mylar, and both Dave’s and Dumas’ keel designs were shown. These drawings have undergone three revisions. Revision 3, the current official version which governs the dimensions of Star 45 boats built from scratch, signed by John W. Mayers, clearly shows the profiles of the Mainwaring and Dumas keels.

The idea of using fiberglass reinforced plastic for hull construction was inside many a cranium by the mid 1970s. There was a rumor that Dumas was about to introduce one. In January of 1976 Dave Mainwaring borrowed a wooden Dumas hull from Dave Holmes and made what is probably the first female mold for making fiberglass Star 45 hulls. By July 1976 Dave had advertised for sale his “Sirius 45, Star 45 Class model radio control sailboat” – the short kit consisted of fiberglass hull, fiberglass deck, fiberglass aerodynamic keel shells, sail plan, construction drawing, and model builders guide, all for $65.00.

Sure enough, the rumor was true, and in 1976 Dumas also began making its hull design in fiberglass. The Mainwaring mold was then passed to John Reynolds in Orlando, FL, and John made many fiberglass hulls. His wife Mary became a highly-reputed maker of precision-built Star 45 sails.

Jerre Maxson, a tank mechanic during the Korean War with prodigious mechanical skills, built 27 wooden Star 45 hulls for others. He also built the fiberglass mold which was eventually passed to Skid-Do Industries, Clayton, Ohio, and was used to make 50 hulls by 1995.

In 1978 the Mainwaring/Sullivan drawing was approved by the AMYA as conforming to the Star 45 official specifications, during Bill Weiss’ tenure as Class Secretary. That legalized all the hulls manufactured by John Reynolds.

In 1982 the AMYA membership approved Dave Mainwarings recommendations to legalize all pre-existing Star 45 model yachts and to reduce the minimum weight from 14 pounds to 12 pounds.

By 1984 deck designs were standardized with a straight king plank, resulting in a straight line from stem to stern along the longitudinal centerline of the deck. This reduced sheer and made it possible to make the deck from one piece of wood or fiberglass. John Mayers made such a plug, based upon 1/6 scale, from the 1976 ISCYRA plans and sent it to Ray Ozmun of Ozmun Products for use in making a hull mold. Ozmun made many hulls for new enthusiasts.

1.A.3 The Rest of the Early Design/Production Story

This writing is incomplete in many respects, but most importantly due to the lack of information about the designs and leadership of others such as Bob Blackwell, Ray Ozmun, and Paul Galloway. Many Blackwell, Ozmun, and Skid-Do hulls are competing valiantly and winning races. Time was not available to obtain this information, however, as this is a work in progress, information will be sought. Also needed is information about sailmakers and rig design, for a later article.

Readers, please bear with me as I continue to put flesh on the bones of this initial effort.

Your contributions of information would be welcome and highly appreciated. Please write to me at philgeren@aol.com, or Phil Geren, 1044 Chimney Rock Road, Houston, TX 77056, and share your invaluable experiences and memories about these missing pieces, especially for the period from 1966 to 1995.

Chapters to come:

1.B The Pioneers and the Meteoric Early Growth of the Star 45 Class

1.C Early Sailing Champions

Part 2 Modern Times

2.A Latest Designs

2.B Today’s Star 45 Class

2.C Latter Day Champion Sailors

Part 3 The Future

Announcements

Below is the ad which will run in Volume 144 of Model Yachting, to announce the NCR for this year: