Sailboat Launching Facilities

[FLMODELER]

The City of Gainesville, FL plans to build a new water recreation area.
In their plans, they are a proposing a model sailboat launching area of about 50' of bank.
The sailing area will be about 400 to 500 feet in diameter with an ajoining area of a much larger diameter.
I need some input from the modeling community as to what types of launching facilities are already being used.
The original idea was to put in something like the model pond in Central Park.
Any other ideas out there? Pictures!!!
My plans are to organize a model yacht club here in Gainesville.
I currently sail the Soling 1 Meter and the Mini Soling by Victor.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Ed

[George Pfeifer]

The best idea that I have ever seen is a "Pit" at the shore line. It is basically a concrete lined hole, with ramps at each end, placed such that the water level is at waist to chest height when you are standing in the pit. This eliminates bending over to launch a heavy boat, and makes tuning and other adjustments while the boat is in the water very easy. A length of 10-20 feet would be ideal.

A club in Australia took this concept to the "Ultimate" by building a boat house over the pit and about 10 feet out into the lake. With a garage door at each end. The modelers could launch the boats inside then sail out into the lake. The boat house contained workbench and storage areas also. It also provided enough water area for indoor testing during inclement weather. The boat house was written up in Marine Modeler magazine a year or so ago.

Go for it, and ask for a retreival boat (electric powered) while you are at it.:D

George

[George Pfeifer]

Ed;
Forgot to mention in my earliar response that I belong to a club called "Edina Model Yacht Club". Ten years ago the City decided to build a new park with 3 interconnected lakes and they decided that they wanted to have a model boat club operate out of the park as an attraction. The city located several modelers from the area to form a club. The city drew up a club charter, and proposed to assist by providing free space and services. Take a look at www.emyc.org for an idea of how it all ended up.

Today, we use all three lakes, the North end for Sailboat racing, the Center pond for scale boating, and the South pond for Fast Electrics. The City makes the Centrum Building available to the club for all activities (meetings & shows) provides a 20 foot by 20 foot area in the maintenance garage for our use (storage of retrieval boat, bouys, show props etc). It has been an exceptionally beneficial relationship for both the City and the Club. We hold "Open Boating" sessions every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings (when the water isn't hard) and also run Ice Boats during the winter. The open boating sessions draw 100 to 150 people into the park each evening that we are there, and our annual show in June draws as many as 5000-6000 people to the park. The City considers it a huge success and bends over backwards to support our efforts. We in turn give back to the City by holding special events for other city sponsored groups such as sailing nights for the city run "challanged Youth Group" and running boating demonstrations at other City functions. Plus we hold an annual spring clean up the park day, where we just go out and pickup the winter's accumluation of trash in the park.
I would encourage you to work closely with the City Staff, as it can be very rewarding in terms of supporting a club. I would also tell you to not just limit it to sail boats, open up the club to Scale etc. Our club does everything except gas powered boats. Once you have a group together, make sure that you are visible at the park on a frequent, set schedule, and have handouts to give to the public. This really helps in growing the club.
Again take a look at our Web Site and tell the City to look at it to see what can be accomplished.

Good Luck;
George

[FLMODELER]

Thanks George,

You all have a great looking place to sail.
Do you have many problems with the power boaters?
I will pass the information about the Web site to the City planners.
They were also planning to have peddle boats available for public use.
I really appreciate your responce to my inquiry.
I sure I'll have more questions at a later date.
Thanks again,
Ed

[George Pfeifer]

Ed;

Scale boaters do not interfere with the sailboats as long as everybody remembers the rule that sail has right of way. For anything that is capable of 10MPH or more we insist that they run at the south pond only. Most of the time when sail & scale are running together it is only "fun running" . The serious sail racing is done at the North pond, then they don't have to worry about any interference. If an issue developes, you can always segregate the groups by time/date; i.e. designate Monday, Wed, Fri. as Scale, Tues, Thurs, Sat as Sail.
As a club attracts visitors one of the issues becomes "young" enthusiasts. While we try to encourage the "youngins" into the hobby, their first question is "how fast will it go" and due to a lack of modeling experience & skill their first boat is always one of those "box art" speed boats. Luckily, most of the boats are not and never will be capable of much speed. When they do show up, members make it a point to work with the kids, and keep it somewhat under control. If that doesn't work we will banish them to the south pond. When the club was created the City did specify in it's park rules that while the park is open to the public, club members have priority over non-members during published boating hours. These rules are posted.

Fast Electric is a whole different game. If you attract members interested in this, there can be problems, unless you have the capability to totally isolate their running area. F/E's today are capable of 60+MPH speeds. One way is to set up F/E running for separate times/days than other uses. But, if you cannot prevent paddle boats from entering the area, then I would say NO F/E at all. You don't need someone from the general public getting hit by one of these missiles. I run Scale, Sail & F/E, and F/E can be dangerous if not properly controlled. When we run F/E we do not even allow the retreival boat on the lake when boats are running.

PADDLE BOATS: These are the bain of model boating, for some reason the people operating these things have an overwhelming desire to run over bouys. It appears that it is fun to grab onto the bouys and move them even when they are held down by cinder blocks! Most evenings we have to reposition our bouys at the start of boating! The park staff have also gotten tired of having to untangle the rope from the props and now give the renters warning that there will be a penalty charge if the boat comes back with rope caught in the prop. When we run special events, we rope off the center or north pond so that the paddle boats can't enter that area during the event. Paddle boats do not have access to the south pond were we run fast eletrics due to a handicap access bridge which sits at water level between the center and south pond. I would never allow F/E to run where paddle baots have access to the same area.

Hope this helps; if you ever have any questions or need some help just contact me directly and will do my best.

Later;
George