INTRO

The Club Bell
was the starting bell for many a race, and was produced in the Royal Engineer workshops by the joint owners of C31. Messrs Greenway, Foxcroft and Boland. Foxcroft, who was an expert moulder, made the shell for the bell which resulted in a perfect share 24 inches high with the club initials inscribed on the fece. Where is the bell?

    
C31 (foreground) moored outside the Clubhouse.
(Photo courtesy of D Boland)
The club bell of 1941 - hanging, guess where?
(Photo by K Sherrard)
 
THE FIRST BOATS
The first man to take to the sea was a Signalman Goldman who purchased a "kolek" on the cheap from one of the staff at Loyang. But he was a "kolek" fanatic, which no ambition to rise aove that class. Concurrently the Royal Airforce was also building a sailing club at Seletar and it was decided to standardise the type of dinghy to take into permanent use: a One Design. It was agreed to sail the 14-foot pram dinhgy designed by Wing Commander Burling of the RAF. Thornyrofts of Tanjong Rhu had the sole building rights and they agreed to build and supply on credit as and when required. The CGYC paid Thornycrofts and the Treasurer arranged for payments to be collected from members by means of stoppages from their regimental pay. This system of financing worked well. Then a boat owner left for home, he had to sell it to the Club and in turn, the Club resold it to a newcomer. In that wasy, no boats were lost to the club and a good profit from the transaction helped to boost the accounts. As founding member Jack Gulston recalls, the boats were abit crude when delivered, but they soon put that right. The bamboo mast were replaced by pine and the rigging replaced by stainless steel fittings salvaged from wrecked aircraft. They never had rust problems but some time later they did have some difficulty with the centre plates: constant chipping off the rust and repainting resulted in the plates becoming so thin that there was occasions when beating to Pulau Tekong, they just folded up under the boat and then the hapless sailor was in real trouble!! One regular racing man was Maurice Sheppard who was the number one artificer on the well-known 15-inch guns. He easily found a considerable quantity of stainless steel armour plating going spare and it did not take much of an effort to cut out a pile of high quality centre plates...talk about recycling...CSC was at it way back when!! and "finally, the little boats were little beauties!"

  
 
Gulston's Burling pram dinghy, Nyamok out on the water. The Japanese chop enabled Gulston to keep the photograph throughout the war years.
                       
                                   
The boats had 105 square feet of sail and a generous beam. It was a sturdy and manoeuverable boat and in its heyday saw more than a hundred in use by the Changi, RAF and Naval Base sailing away as Kota Tinggi and during the war, C16, Felicity brought LTC John Daniells (Captain of Boats) to as far away as the Dutch Islands where he joined up with Ivan Lyon to reach Padang in Ceylon and finally home to the UK. C38, Goldeneye also managed a 650 mile sail over 14 days to Indonesia bringing Bob Martin (Club Treasurer) and Lionel Morris straight to the arms of the Japanese warship Asigari in the Sunda Straits. The captain of the warship was so impressed byt the excape of the crew that they were treated very well as prisoners of war?
Jack Gulston with Nyamok (C4) fitted with pine mast. Note boat on right with the original bamboo mast.
 
INTER-CLUB COMPETITION
was healthy amongst the 3 clubs based at the north-eastern shores of Singapore: CGYC, RAF Seletar and the RN Red House where class racing was held in the boats. There was also team racing which was club-based and sometimes unit-based amongst the Gunner, Engineers and Signallers. However, the outstanding event was the annual Home and Away Race between CGYC and RAF Seletar for the WHITE SWAN TROPHY. This Team racing event saw Changi beaten by RAF from 1937 to 1940. This, as they found out later (and not too soon!) was soon due to bad tactics as the Changi sailors marked the best RAF helm, resulting in the RAF team getting the better of them in the tactical play. The Changi sailors finally decided "to hell with that!" and began to just sail to win, "to fiddlesticks with team tactics!". The ploy for pure speed worked and Changi won all 1st six places in 1941. The Trophy was theirs! Racing at the Club was regular, with the Novice Trophy series every Tuesday, Commodore Trophy on Fridays and the Round Ubin Race and Vinette Race every first and third Sunday of the month respectively! The annual RSYC Round Island race was a tradition that has carried on to modern times. The Traditional course then was from Tg. Rhu to Changi, the Causeway, and then back to Tg. Rhu.
 
 
Prize-giving group 1938. Back row: Nix (C8), Boland and Greenway (C31), Inman and Cawthorne (C19). Front Row: Sheppard (C10), Daniells (C16), Mrs. Hoskins (C18), Gulston (C4), Snow (C15).
Photo courtesy of J Gulston)