Lost Maylands
This year is Maylands Yacht Club's 75th Anniversary - and 50th anniversary of the building of our current clubrooms. Chris Holyday and Terry Gaunt Snr are continuing to work on our proposed history book - Top Of The River, A History of the Maylands Yacht Club, to commemorate this achievement.
With 14 Chapters covering sailing at Maylands since 1914 and generously illustrated, it will be a must read for all past and present club members. The book should be ready for our Opening Day in October. Amongst many interesting chapters, we will be featuring the stories of all our National Titles Winners, from Terry Gaunt Snr in the VJ and Gwen 12 classes, through to our Moth Champions - featuring Brian Plumb, Rob O'Sullivan, and with the last being Cliff Burton in 1979/80.
Photo credit Cliff Burton
THE AUSTRALIAN SCOW MOTH
What is a Moth you say? They were once one of Australia's most prolific classes of small boats. They are still sailed world wide - but in a skiff form, not the old Australian Scow Moth version. Club member Dave Hogg sailed our last Maylands Moth until recent years, finally giving the class away due to his being the only scow Moth being sailed. He said at the time: "Unfortunately, at the club level in this state, the class is dead, due to the modern skiff Moth design being comparatively hard to sail — and expensive. About the Moths dying, I feel it is sad that cheap, good, medium-size dinghy classes have died and been replaced with very expensive fibreglass/ kevlar dinghies. I refer to classes such as the VJ, Moth, Cherub, Rainbow. They are being replaced by 29ers, 49ers, hydrofoil skiff Moths."
Dave Hogg pictured in 2008 sailing at Maylands - our last, lone Mothie.
(Credit Steve Fox)
Compare the changes in the modern Moth as shown below at the 2019 Worlds held in Perth.
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