Category Archives: Beginner’s Topics

Beginners Guide to Applying Deck Patches and Hull Numbers…!

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This is something that every radio sailing newcomer will worry about the very first time they encounter it … Natural enough!

First let’s separate application of Hull Numbers and Deck Patches.

Hull Numbers :-

These are delicate little pieces of tape and you’ll want a gentle way to apply them. The safest and most effective we found was to use the famous trick of water mixed with washing up liquid. You really need to have this mixture highly diluted. The way to know if you have the correct dilution is that you want just enough soap that when you apply the mixture to the deck it leaves a smear – a constant, uninterrupted, watery film. If the surface tension leaves you with little rivulets and dry patches, then you don’t have quite enough washing up liquid in there. We are talking of tiny amounts of water and soap here – maybe a tablespoon or two of water a a few drops of washing up liquid..

Remember – this will take at least overnight to dry in quite a warm room, but the upside is that you get plenty of time to wiggle the numbers around on the slippery surface to get them looking their best.

Deck Patches :-

Deck Patches are altogether more robust and you get more choices of how to apply them. Basically dry application, water based application, or with soapy water.

It helps a real lot to get the patches cut accurately and you can read our earlier article about this here. If you get a new set of patches with the boat, make a traced paper copy for your records straight away.

Deck Patch Templates – The Easy Way !

For myself, I have tried (1) dry application (honestly quite tricky and on Race day most likely this is how you will do it….). (2) Soapy water as in the section above on Hull Numbers – easy, but needs time to dry.

I had not considered just using water, but have you seen this super little video on applying patches with water from Zvonko??

Hidden in the middle of this video, Zvonko makes a surprising assertion that Black Patches and White Patches are better at keeping moisture out than the other colours.

Interesting – I’d not heard that before, but Zvonko is Zvonko (!!) – it’s as if a god speaks to you directly !! You have to pay it some attention. 🙂

Then this is Zvonko’s video of how to apply patches in the dry… the key benefit being not needing time to dry off.

You’ll want to practice this for yourself … in a private, soundproof room with a swear-box to hand.

More on Waterproofing Your Electronics with Corrosion X – Video on Sealing Up DF95 Electrics ….!!

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New member, Andrew G, has pointed me to this great and useful DF95 video about waterproofing your onboard receiver and other onboard electronics using “Corrosion X”

One of the notable things to me is that they are using a pointed 1oz dropper bottle to dispense the fluid. It looks like in North America 1oz dropper bottles of Corrosion X are easily available. At the time of writing, in UK I haven’t found this product packaging. The same company are doing a fishing reel lube called SpeedX in a 1oz dropper bottle, but that seems to be it.

I’d rather have some small amount of Corrosion X in the boat tool box and with me all the time. I find through past experience that if the cap comes off those dropper bottles it will leak everywhere. Instead, I am going to try one of these (very cheap on Amazon)

It has quite a pointy end on the pipette which I thought might be better for this particular job, than the ones with olive oil to stick in your ear! And once that lid is screwed in, I reckon you are going to be safe against leaks in transit. The bottle size I chose is 50ml… so about 3 tablespoons – that should easily be enough for radio sailing.

Radio Sailing – a Sport with Pretty High Barriers to Entry…. !! A Surprising Role for “Match Racing”??

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A rambling sort of idea coming….

Like many clubs, the main sailing club at Datchet has seen its dinghy and keelboat fleets in strategic decline. However they have done a simply brilliant job of growing their K1 keelboat fleet and now have 22 boats, all pretty new. Suddenly it’s the largest K1 Club in the country. Now the two biggest social groups in the Clubhouse over coffee are Radio sailors and K1 sailors!!

I was browsing through my shore-side photos of last week’s Marblehead rankings. You only have to look at our crowd to realise that encouraging new blood into radio sailing is a major strategic challenge for the Sport in general. In ten years time, frankly we shall all be mostly laid-up or gone. Game over. Ten years isn’t long. We need to at least focus on replacing radio sailors who have to retire, then move on to attracting a new generation.

It often seems to me that some UK radio sailing clubs have this topic cracked. Datchet is blessed with the most friendly and supportive fellow members that you could find anywhere. At least half of why I sail there is the warmth of the people. But is there more to do, somehow?

In my dark moments it always seems to me that whenever we get visitors for a championship the average age of attendance goes down!! So in some UK regions, radio sailing members have been working on this…. In Australia, I follow the Youtube channel for the Wynnum Manly Club. Have you seen that ?? – they put a huge amount of effort into making entering the sport more easy, less fearsome, deal with beginner issues and so on. Super!

https://www.youtube.com/@wynnummanlyradiomodelyachtclub/videos

With my Flying Fifteen partner Howard, we have both been trying to make the transition to radio sailing. We find there’s quite a lot of new things to learn (!!). Plenty of fear of embarrassment getting in the way!! The barriers to entry are pretty high.

Aside from the terrific DF95/65 product getting hold of a boat is pretty challenging in itself. Then there is the issue of finding more ways to simply get started – learn to sail a course without hitting marks… or other boats.., get boat handling basics right etc. The standard way is “come and join in”, but lets face it, this can be daunting…even off-putting for some. I notice that SailboatRC has a one week kind of course in Croatia, which starts with a navigation race – just sailing around the buoys.

At Datchet there is so much support, and especially knowledge. available to help. Even the supply of new boats is being tackled. Gradually we are moving towards a picture, of “if you want a new boat to sail here, we can get you one”. Amazing.

It reminds me that last Saturday, a great keelboat racing friend called for a long chat. Despite his big boat collection, he also has two IOMs, plus is building a woody. He tells me that he likes taking the two IOMs out for friends and family social match racing… mainly I think to get his young kids into radio sailing. (Good!) In parallel, I’ve decided to get a second Marblehead so that when friends sounds like they would like to try radio sailing, I have a simple way to have a two boat day with them and have some fun.

I’ve been wondering about race formats for two or three learner competitors to have fun and embarrassment-free fun, safely on their own. Two boat racing and simple knock-out type racing springs to mind.

My keelboat buddy says that when he takes family and friends out for 2 boat IOM fun, there is always one big challenge. One of the two boats on the water is always dominant. It just makes it boring for the other skipper. Sometimes it is that one boat is naturally faster, but more likely one skipper is notably more experienced than the other. Quite often they simply race to a windward mark and back, or a simple windward leeward one lap race. The big innovation that they fell into was that at every turning mark, whoever is the lead has to do a 360 turn. He said that simple idea has just been magic to keep the second (and first) sailor motivated.

I have two or three friends who I can tell would like to “have a go”. When we add the N+1’th boat to the family fleet, I shall give this idea a determined try. Perhaps the friends can then also give me a feel for what a Club Course titled “Learn to Radio Sail” might actually look like. The Club has a big “Learn to Dinghy Sail” program each year and loads of kids (and some adults) have a try. Maybe the parents might like to try radio sailing when the kids are “out there”.

One step at a time though….