Boating Legend

Bill Bollard - Born 1940

Beginnings

My early memories of sailing were of my mum working at Saltons sail-loft, and taking my brother and me on Saturdays to Drummoyne Sailing Club. I came to know every 16-foot skiff skipper and his crew. Hero worship at its best. And of course sailing was known to be contagious.

My parents split up and I went to live with dad at Dolls point for three years, after which I returned to live at Glades Bay with mum. I got to know every rock and sand patch around Glades Bay. Sailing was uppermost in my mind and I took it up seriously a year or so later.

I passed my intermediate certificate level at Eastwood Junior Technical School in 1955 and started looking for a job as an apprentice draftsman. I had several interviews without success when a neighbour mentioned an apprentice shipwright's job coming up with the Adelaide steamship company at Balmain East. Not knowing what a shipwright was, I applied for the apprenticeship and was excited when I found the shipwright tech course also applied to boat building.

The type of work was completely different to what I had expected. It involved what the tradesmen called "lining-off" which involved reading a ship's drawing and marking the steel plates ready for the shipyard and boilermaking tradesmen to shape, then weld, or rivet. I was posted with a tradesman, Harold Waterhouse. My job was assisting with lining-off as well as carrying his toolbox around. Other work involved repairing the ship's wooden lifeboats, stripping a ship's lifting gear and deck winches, anchor windlass and cleaning the bits for safety inspection.

Harold was a good boatbuilder and a great communicator with regard to detail. I was an enthusiastic pupil. He passed on his skills in the best possible fashion. He told of the clinker dinghies he built for hire boat fleets of Sydney during the Depression, building one boat a week!

I built my first boat in 1959 for Ric Longone. Ric advertised for a boatbuilder to build a 14-foot Skate, a new design by Ken Minter's brother, Vince. The boat was described as a large version of the VJ. The plans and calculations were done by Don Dickson, who later became one of my naval architect teachers.

l took on the job of building the plywood hull, registered number 212. It was a strange deal: Ric couldn't sail, and I agreed to teach him to sail, after which I had use of the boat for a year. The last time I saw Ric was when he called twelve months later and took his boat home.

Sailing at Abbotsford and Drummoyne

The next summer, sailing with Abbotsford Sailing Club, I crewed as third hand for Ken Dempsey in his 12-footer for two seasons, winning the point score in season two. Then Ken sold his boat to build a two-handed 12-footer and I decided to build my own.

The new 12-footers that Ken and I built were designed at the tech college as projects for the year. Ken's boat was built of plywood. Mine was built using the cold-moulded method. I named it Edna May after my mother. As both of us wanted to build chine boats, we approached the Abbotsford club asking them to put a motion to the NSW Skiff Association to change the rules to allow this. Fortunately Ken's uncle, Jack Dempsey, was the association president at the time and we went to the meeting as Abbotsford delegates. The motion was passed and we went ahead and built our boats. The boats were quite different in design. Ken's was influenced by Ken Minter's 16-footer, Joan, which won the Australian title that year.

My boat was finished and ready for the 1960 season. The boat was a bit rough as it was my first attempt at cold-moulded construction. I made my own timber mast and boom from spruce and bought one set of sails from Rob Salton of Drummoyne.

It took me two years to get. up to speed and finally I had a reasonable handicap of about twenty minutes. We started to finish higher up in the placing and it was not long before we won a couple of races.

The next 12-foot skiff I built for the 1962 season at Abbotsford was named Sprite,. This boat broke from tradition, influenced by Bob miller's 18-footer Venom, whcih won the world title the year before. I might add that Dr Manfred Curry's 20-foot 2-handed sailing boat featured in his book Yacht Racing, certainly influenced me and Bob miller. Curry's boat had a fine entry, low-reversed freeboard, rolled-side decks, narrow waterline and flared topsides.

Ted Brown's Boatshed (Balmain)

I was now working as an apprentice boatbuilder at Ted Brown's boatshed at Balmain, having transferred my apprenticeship from Adelaide Steamship. I decided to incorporate all Curry's features in this new boat. I had the mould set up with the rolled decks and was working one weekend when Roy Phillips called to see my efforts. He hit the roof and claimed if I attempted to register the boat he would do everything he could to have it banned from racing. Roy was the new president of the NSW 16-foot Skiff Association and being a boatbuilder, he was also the association measurer. Because of this, I decided to alter the mould so that it would comply.

In 1962, I made a move to the Balmain and District 12-foot Flying Squadron, winning three club championships in 12-foot skiffs over a twenty-four year period. Most of these skiffs were named Venom. I represented Australia six times in the 12-foot skiffs at Interdominion championships in Sydney and Auckland and also won the veteran category of the Australian 12-foot skiff championships in Brisbane in 1986.

In between the previous six years of building and racing skiffs, romance survived between Doris and me. We decided to get married in March 1966. Looking back, she was a "boat widow" of great tolerance before and after marriage.

Build-a-Boat (Norm Hudson)

I worked as a boat builder until Doris and I were married after which I started working for Norm Hudson's "Build-a-Boat" plans of Sydney.

I was employed as a troubleshooter by "Build-a-Boat" t sort out problems clients may be having reading the plans and building the boats. With my shipwright toolbox in the back of my FJ Holden ute, I would visit and help those backyard boatbuilders with problems. I got involved with building a complete 16-foot half-cabin cruiser for someone at Roseville. Norm Hudson was there nearly every days taking photos of the process. I also went to a house in Granville where the owner had set up the frames for a speedboat. He told me the plywood would not bend around the bow I shaped the plywood and planked the bottom of the boat with no problem. I also assisted with vessels built in steel. Norm Hudson had another designer working for him, Herman Boro. He was never in the office as he was at Mortlake building himself a steel yacht. Because of this, I never got to meet him and not long after, Herman Boro left the company; moving to Western Australia.That left me the only person to do the design work.

It was a steep learning curve for me and I bought a number of design books to study in my small office, before putting pen to paper. My drawings and design work started to flow although my spelling was terrible. Norm checked each drawing, marking the spelling mistakes.

Norm asked for a series of small cabin cruisers that required lofting work, and I suggested I do the work in my home workshop, to which he agreed.

I spent three years with Norm Hudson with sixty designs or so to my name: canoes, small to large yachts cruisers and workboats. Each design included detailed construction drawings, some with full sized templates. Norm had considerable assets but poor cash flow and I left the company without taking any of my designs. We remained friends and I sold him a number of new designs some years later.

Thomas and Coffy, Eken and Doherty

I joined Thomas and Coffy, electrical contractors, doing a major refit on the aircraft carrier, Melbourne. They employed me for my shipwright experience and my job initially was with the electrical engineers drawing "as fitted" the new installations in the ship. This meant going aboard each day to draw sketches of the wiring and junction boxes, returning to the drawing office and drawing the electrical layouts. Later I was asked to draw a general arrangement plan of each deck of the aircraft carrier, starting with the flight deck. After I had drawn two decks, I was told that the draftsman in the office was not happy working alongside contractors and that I would be finishing up at the end of the week.

Don Dickson, the assistant senior naval architect told me that it was the speed and neatness of my drawings that upset the permanent navy staff. Don Dickson arranged an interview with me with John Doherty of Eken & Doherty naval architects, the following Monday. I was asked to start immediately.

My first job was to draw a general arrangement of a proposed oil rig supply vessel from sketches provided by Jim Eken a Dutchman who had migrated to Australia during WWII. Jim was a clever naval architect who could draw a new project for a client in freehand overnight and calculate the principal design dimensions.

At the start of 1970, I enrolled in the naval architecture certificate course at Ultimo Technical College, where I was taught naval architecture calculations and ship construction details. The rest of the course ran along the same course as mechanical engineering, including fluid mechanics, a new course for naval architects.

The work at Eken and Doherty came thick and fast with a good variation of designs from fishing trawlers, tugs, patrol boats, landing barges as well as the 200-foot oil rig supply vessels. The supply boats were the most interesing in that they were high horsepower, seagoing tugs with large crews and cargo.

Alan Payne - and the Sydney Ferries

During my time at Eken and Doherty, I had gained my certificate in naval architecture and mechanical engineering, leaving them in 1978 due to a slowdown in work. This gave me the opportunity to start my own design company. I did design and contract drafting work for various firms including Alan Payne in 1982. I was aworking on an America's cup challenger as well ast the first fleet of catamaran ferries, of which nine were built.

Alan Payne was a great man to work with, I learned so much from him. About 1981 I received a phone call from Howard Peachy who was now a partner with Alan Payne. They wanted me to help them prepare a tender for a new ferry design for Sydney Ferries. I had always had a lifetime ambition to work for Alan Payne as he was the person whose yacht designs impressed me the most. I started work with Howard Peachy and Alan.

The ferry contract was awarded to Alan and I was involved in making a couple of test tank models two metres in length for testing in the towing tank at the University of NSW. The tests were carried out to determine the critical hull speed and wave heights generated some distance off and behind the models.

Alan was not happy with the results and decided that I should build some bigger models around twenty feet. He had two designs to test, one full asymmetric chine hull with a warped bottom shape aft. The other was a semi-asymmetrical round bilge hull shape, this being the preferred one.

These two catamaran hulls were built in my garage at Hornsby

Heights and we tested the first hull at Brooklyn, using two twenty-five horsepower outboard motors, with provision made to adjust different spacings between the hulls.

During tests on one occasion, we hit a few waves and I went down between the hulls and got left behind. Alan picked me up in the runabout.

The chine hulls were abandoned early in the testing. The speed trials were conducted on the upper reaches of the Lane Cove River, and we found a spot where we could get a straight run for about 500 metres.

One day, when we were running back at full speed around twenty knots, we had a technical problem. One of the rudders snapped off taking the steering arm with it. What happened next, in a split second, was that Howard suddenly closed the throttle of his engine while mine was still

wide open. At high speed the boat then took a sharp turn to the left and before we realised it, we went ploughing into the mangroves along the riverbank. No one was hurt and Alan, who was following behind, could not stop laughing.

After the trials of the 20-foot boats, Alan said he was happy enough with the design but wanted to do more trials on manoeuvering with a bigger model.

Alan Payne and the America's Cup 1983

Returning to work on my own, I designed a number of steel yachts as well as a number of fast aluminium fishing boats for the New South Wales fishing and charter boat industries. The Magnum 28 trailer/sailer yacht was another vessel I designed for South Coast Yachts. They constructed more than seventy to that design.

My larger design was for Bernie Hibbard, of Brisbane, for a 25-metre prawn catching and processing vessel with a lightship displacement of 130 tonnes.

About 1982, Alan Payne had entered discussions with Syd Fischer regarding a challenger for the America's Cup from the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron. Alan indicated that he wanted me to stay with him for contract work. At the time I did not have much other work on and as Alan had not received the go-ahead on the 12-Metre design, Howard and I were subcontracted to Cockatoo Island to work on the new Navy supply ship Success.

Alan had arranged that work with John Jeremy, and it was agreed that as soon as Syd Fischer came good with the first cheque, we could leave and start on the 12-metre design. After only a few weeks at Cockatoo, Alan asked us to leave and we started on the design. Yet again Alan had another office move, this time to Martin Place. Alan employed a couple more people for thsi project, namely Malcolm Griffith and Campbell Wallace.

Alan had come up with the parameters of the yacht and had Howard and me making plasticine models, about two metres long. Alan had this idea that if I was to make up a couple of half block models of the topsides only and we measured out an exact amount of plasticine that would represent the displacement, this would speed up making a model with a known displacement.

Alan said that we had to use every bit of measured plasticine and not ask for more. This system worked well and we were able to develop a new hull shape every few days. We could lift the lines off the model in one day recording the offsets only in table form. The offsets were then sent to Phil Helm ore at the university for computer analysing to be sent back the next day.

Alan would spend the night at home going through the computer results and we would have a round table discussion next morning to discuss how we would change the models.

We had two models going, while one was being modelled, the other would be altered ready for the next lines lift. This method allowed us to model about thirty different versions and gave Alan a good idea which ones were best.

As a security measure,Alan had me make a couple of metal boxes to fit over the models and padlock them each night.

The next stage of the design process was for me to make a couple of tank-test models out of timber the same scale as the plasticine ones. I was given a lines plan of an American design Enterprise which, according to records, was used in extensive testing and just missed out on defending the cup in 1977. She was narrowly beaten by Courageous.

I made a model of Enterprise and a model of Alan's selection from our list of plasticine designs. The models were towed in a large swimmming pool at Alan's brother's home at Mosman. They were towed using poles attached to the bow and a timed walk along the pool edge.

The models were ballasted to their correct 30-degree heeled waterline and were altered with plasticine used to reshape the hulls.

Alan was only interested in the windward side and was most concerned about reducing the quarter wave and tracking straight when heeeled. From these tests, the hull shape was changed again. This time Alan said we needed biggr models and asked me to build 18-foot models of Enterprise and the latest hull shape.

These models were built in Roy Phillips' old boatshed in Balmain using foam sandwich for the hulls on plywood frames and sheathed in ten ounce glass cloth and epoxy resin.

The keels were cast lead and both models had working trim tabs and ruders with the intention of rigging the models with identical mast and saidand then test sailing them.

Halfway through the construction of the second model, Alan heard a rumour that Alan Bond was also working on his keel in Balmain. He decided to shift camp. It took about eight of us to lift the models up the stairs from the shed to the road late one night and they were loaded onto a trailer and taken to a garage in Mosman.

Howard and I finished the models there and built a rigging cradle for each boat. The cradles wre fitted with Mini Minor wheels.

Jack Herrick made two identical sails and I rigged two aluminium masts with double spreaders. The models were loaded onto a trailer and taken up to Brisbane waters for sailing trials.

At first Alan set up windvane steering. Howard and I had to sit on the models to sail them into position with the trim tabs set at the same angle, as well as the same sail tension. During this manoeuvre we were lying on our stomachs facing aft and during the positioning, I accidentally T-boned Howard's model. we had a lot of difficulty getting the models together.

Finally Alan said that it was not working and we would try something else. This something else turned out to be remotely steering the models from rubber duckies via a tiller and twenty feet of Teflon tubing. This was much better and we could sail the models anywhere we wanted and once we set the trim tabs and sail tension, we could start a race side by side.

Using the rubber duckie we could hold an early boat back at the start until we had an even start, then sail the full width of the Brisbane waters in one tack, with Alan following in the tinnie observing the outcome.

Waterways

In 1982, I designed a series of small harbour cleaning vessels for the Maritime Services Board. During 1983, I started with the MSB as a ship surveyor, finally retiring on 5 January, 2001. During my time with the MSB and Waterways, I designed the HC5 and HC6 harbour cleaning catarmarans. I also worked as a "paid" volunteer for the 2000 Olympics driving patrol boats on Sydney Harbour.

Skiffs and Retirement

I have continued to design and sail skiffs for as long as I can remember. In 1984, I developed a new design, which was to change the shape of most 12-footers used in the next ten years. Again this boat was named Venom, hull number 16. It was different from anything I had designed before.

For this new boat I decided to go for a round bilge boat with a narrow flat floor and heavy, flared and hollow topsides, not unlike a 505 16-foot dinghy. I let the hull lines go out at the deck line at their natural lay, but the trouble was that the boat would end up over the maximum beam rule. I introduced a small chine just below the gunwale at the line of maximum beam to comply.

I went ahead and built the boat using "S" glass on the outside and Kevlar on the inside. I kept the boat at the end of the season and, during the winter of 1986, I decided to modify it as I felt I could improve the hull shape for better downwind speed. I took to the hull with a jigsaw and cut the topsides from the top chine down to just above the turn of the bilge. I replaced the topsides with straight sections of foam (doing away with the hollow topsides) and laminated the new topsides with the same "S" and Kevlar cloths of the original construction. What I found with the hollow topsides was that with big spinnakers the boat would plane downwind on its topsides and being hollow would cause the water to flow off the boat and curl making a sucking noise and increasing drag.

I thought if I straightened the topsides there would be less resistance and therefore faster downwind speed. When we relauched the boat for the 1986 season, this modification was successful. The boat sailed well in club and interclub events. I won the Veterans' Australian championship in Brisbane later that year with Peter Birch sailing as crew. Atthe end of that season I sold the boat to Rick Sanders. He renamed it Lufthansa. Rick sold the boat to Dave Riley. Later a mould was given to Peter Polec who built a boat from it, naming it Sydney Harbour Fuel. It is still sailing today (2004) under the name of Foxy Lady.

I am still sailing with the Gosford Sailing Club but now the class is Laser. I enjoy sailing in the State and Australian Masters series each year. M best placing has been a fifth in the State Grand Masters in 2004.

Since retiring from work, Doris and I have bought a house on the Central Coast overlooking the Brisbane Waters. I have built a 30-foot timber boat, which is moored close to my home. I also enjoy fishing and cruising.