Phil’s Workbench: April 2021
What a lovely day for a sail !
The morning started a bit grey and surprisingly chilly however because the club had organised a “Footie” yacht sailing day with members of Wickstead Park Model Boat Club, it appeared value a trip to the lake. I charged up the batteries for Pigeon Pie and my Slingshot and headed to the water.
By the lake the weather hadn’t improved however at least there was loads of convivial company. The Wickstead guys began to arrive with some very impressive boats – plainly they all built large, well detailed tugboats. Once i say massive, I imply around four ft in size. If you have any inquiries pertaining to where and exactly how to make use of marine parts supply, you can contact us at our web-site. Most arrived on trolleys and needed to be launched in two elements, hull first then superstructure plonked on prime. Sound items have been additionally de regur and boat fitting really effective. In a larger model boat you may generate the form of base that at all times seems to be missing in model railway engines in comparison.
My day wasn’t excellent after all, the Slingshot battery was plugged in and… nothing. So I tried another battery with the identical consequence. And boat parts another.. Another. And one other.
Rather than try to repair things on the financial institution I stuffed the boat again in its field and sailed Pigeon Pie as an alternative. This gave me time to think and with that boat again on dry land I had one other poke round. Squeezing up the connections in the battery plug I managed to get some life. So gave the boat a couple of circuits of the water. I wanted some practise as we have got some new buoys which look like the balloon from “The Prisoner” painted orange. Nice however a bit larger than the outdated ones. Bouncier too as a number of members found when they tried to park boats in them.
Half a dozen circuits later the boat died. Not entirely unexpected as I knew the battery hadn’t taken the best charge, saving the good batteries for racing seemed like an excellent strategy. Back on dry land the model wasn’t to be revived though so I’m going to have to look additional at this. After last years efforts I need to have a reliable boat, not one thing that wants constant fiddling. Anyway a bacon buttie. Some extra sailing fun made me feel better. The sun came out and by the top of the day a “couple of hours on the lake” had turn into over 5 hours. We’d seen some incredible powered models. Very mediocre yacht racing because of a scarcity of breeze. I’m now convinced that boats should have engines for propulsion and marine hardware for sale not bedding on sticks !