Thread: An overlooked designer. Peter Milne and the Fireball racing dinghy.

Mik, I don't think remembering people like this lacks relevance at all. As a middle aged fart I now have a distinct hankering to know about the people who designed all those boats I tore across the bay in when I was a youngster.

Growing up in NQ meant that you graduated from sabots to either thorpes or gwens, and then into sixteen foot skiffs. For the first decade or so I sailed there wasn't even a yacht racing group to join. So the magazine Seacraft was the link to knowing about all the other designs that were being raced around the country, and sometimes the world.

We pored over pictures of moths, fireballs, and anything else that looked fast and wet, and talked about how to get a new class up at the local sailing club. Resistance was always based on loyalty to the designs the club officials had grown up with, and for those who learnt their tricks in a Fireball, no doubt they felt the same sort of attachment.

So don't doubt the relevance of noting the passing of someone who produced such an enduring design. Boats like that don't last so long if they aren't good to sail, and just like we revere the Oughtreds, the Cunninghams and the Paynes, we should salute anyone who can put more of us on the water.

50 years from now a young fellow, knowing nothing of the designer or model will stumble across a Fireball and buy it. He'll log onto a site like this and hopefully someone will be left, to remind him of what he has, how well it performs and the coolness factor it invokes in many, which should include him. I'll be dead, so Michael, I'm relying on you to pass the torch. I've never sailed one, though know of the class and it's abilities.

Howdy PAR,

I would dearly love to get a website together with all the "outdated" wooden raceboat designs.

Australia and New Zealand have generations of restricted class designs where owner builders have tried to find the fastest configuration within a basic set of measurements.

Would be such a shame for all the information to be lost. The only class that has made a decent fist of this is the Phenomenal UK Cherub website that has lines drawings of around 30 years of boat design with pluses and minuses for each and some description as to why each generation was better than the previous.

http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...891#post694891

I have written about it here - but to get this info for the OZ skiff classes, the NS14, the Cherub, the Moth (now on hydrofoils "comin' at ya") and a number of others.

The Moths had hull weights in their ultimate scow form of around 32lbs (14kg) for a boat 11ft x 4ft6 x a bit over a foot of hull depth from deck to keel. They were built with 0.7mm plywood (not a misprint - about 1/64"). The skiffs moths are much lighter than this but have gone to carbon etc.

this is a scow moth - as most have gone to skiffs the people sailing the scows are sailing not so highly developed boats so this pic gives the general idea - but the hot boats looked a lot hotter. None of them had the metal space frame that supports the mast base in this pic and the sailor is sitting waaay to far back and has the boat too heeled - flatter and they will get another couple of knots - not quite getting it and getting it are critical to boat performance in boats as light and highly powered as these.



But it was the Moths that worked out the solution to nose diving for all boats. Just pinch in the chines hard in the last couple of feet of boat to make the transom significantly narrower than the bow. Before that everyone was stuffing around trying to work out what to do at the front of the boat!!!

Michael

Originally Posted by PAR

50 years from now a young fellow, knowing nothing of the designer or model will stumble across a Fireball and buy it. He'll log onto a site like this and hopefully someone will be left, to remind him of what he has, how well it performs and the coolness factor it invokes in many, which should include him. I'll be dead, so Michael, I'm relying on you to pass the torch. I've never sailed one, though know of the class and it's abilities.

PAR,
Never fear, you wont have to wait to meet Davey Jones! I looked at a boat today, knowing bugger all about sailing. The label said "fireball, designed by Peter Milne". A quick google search, and here I am!

No mast or boom, but the price is right. Time for some research....

I only just found this thread because rob vt did, and posted.
Thanks Mik- that is the best kind of thread and the best kind of history; real people doing real things and remembered for their efforts.

plans etc
http://www.fireball-dinghy.org.uk/The%20Fireball.htm

http://www.fireball-international.co...d_maintain.php

These sites have lots of info on how to set up a boat too if you have one already.

MIK

I'd like to echo those other comments Mik - thanks for the interesting read and the memories it invoked. I was standing on the shores of Lake Tinaroo in FNQ when I saw my first Fireball. I think I stood there a while looking at all that varnished wood with only one thought in my mind - WOW!!!!

Also, as I think I might have been sailing my Scow Moth at the time, thanks for the snippet re nosediving.

I've got a soft spot for those bygone days of ply sailing boats and the sailing communities that seemed to surround them. I've a personal soft spot for Gwen12s.

Cheers, Peter.

yes .. the boats AND the communities.

It seems to me that there is a real need for those two things to work in together ... so they keep reappearing in different forms.

That's how the beach racing scene kicked off here postwar and particularly in the '60s with groups getting together and kicking of some boatbuilding and putting together a clubhouse or just deciding a particular beach was a good enough venue.

Since those clubs gradually moved to more and more expensive boats many of them have died.

However we now see that the wooden boat thing has a very strong virtually community that has moved to create some real communities of boats and home boatbuilders sailing mostly simple, relatively inexpensive boats. Some of us from this forum get together in Adelaide from time to time, some are focussed around the Brisbane Maritime Museum, others are involved in FNQ. Building boats and community.

That was Milne's original idea for the fireball.

But they are more expensive than cars now. On Pittwater in Sydney my local club had about 30 fireballs each Sunday and there was another club down the way on the same stretch of water that had a slighly bigger fleet on Saturday.

Palm Beach Sailing club and BYRA.

One was just a beach, the other had a nice clubhouse with boat storage under.

But with new boats being kevlar and glass sandwich, so only amateur boatbuildable with a lot of difficulty and costing well over $20,000 for all the fittings and bits you can see how 15 years later there were only 2 registered in NSW .. I ran into one of them on Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra - figuratively.

Best wishes
Michael

Originally Posted by PAR

50 years from now a young fellow, knowing nothing of the designer or model will stumble across a Fireball and buy it. He'll log onto a site like this and hopefully someone will be left, to remind him of what he has, how well it performs and the coolness factor it invokes in many, which should include him. I'll be dead, so Michael, I'm relying on you to pass the torch. I've never sailed one, though know of the class and it's abilities.

Well, it isn't exactly 50 years on, and no one will ever accuse me of being young again. I have been sailing all my life - dinghy's, coastal cruisers and the like.

20 years ago I built my first boat, a stitch and glue plywood dinghy which is still in my barn, and with a little touch-up would be serviceable.

A good friend of mine took me out on his 35 year old plywood Fireball the other day. Hard to describe the beauty of being out on the trapeze, watching all that bright mahogany plywood decking slicing through the water at, oh, I'd say we were travelling somewhere above warp 5.

So today, I stumbled across this site. Had just about decided anyway to pull the trigger and embark on another boat-building project. I think this ties it. The truth is that by all reasonable measures I am really too old and stupid to be even considering a project like this. But why let that stop me?

I'm glad you guys are all in Oz, since they don't make boat parts (or much else!!) in this country any more, and my friend tell me most of the parts for the Fireballs originate in your part of the world, so I expect I will be posting urgent requests for help in locating things.

As someone who knows something about boats, but alot less about woodworking, a the boat is a pretty stunning accomplishment from a design perspective. Designing a hull that is fast, responsive, comfortable, fun to sail, AND easy to build is a rare and significant accomplishment. Hats off to Peter Milne.

So at this advanced age, and with many more important things to do, I am just about ready to order plans. I have a barn with power, and most of the tools one acquires from owning an old house. Hopefully I also have the stick-to-it-iveness to finish.

A good question was raised above: Is it about building or getting on the water? I have a boat, I can get on the water whenever I want (and the temperature is above 15 deg C). So the objective here will be to savor the layout, the cutting, the drilling, the gluing and screwing, and most of all, finishing all that beautiful mahogany. I hope that will carry me through the miserable bits.

We'll see. thanks for the inspiration and g'day to you all!!

Howdy WPI and welcome.

I was involved in retail chandlery and also kinda know the bits that the Fireballs have been using for the last few years and know some of the sailors here.

So keep this page handy and ADD TO IT!!! Also feel free to ask any questions about sourcing of bits and I will try to help.

A noble project!

Best wishes
Michael

well past it

don't forget the photos

lot's of photos