News

Attended a Radio-Controlled Model Tugboat Gathering

2nd May 2024, 17:06 by Brij Gawde

Many builders will not build a kit, but get hold of the original ship's drawings and build everything from scratch!

BHPian Jeroen recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I thought some of our members might be interested in this:

I visited an RC model event. A couple of times a year they organise a tugboat event. Anybody with an RC tugboat can come and sail it at the club's beautiful little lake!

Modelbuilding is a huge industry, with many different models, topics, scales and what have you.

There are quite a few people who build model boats. Statis and or floating models. From the very small to the very large.

Within that group, the tugboat model boat folks take a very prominent position. Tugboats have always been popular in the Netherlands. In the 30-50s ocean-going tugboat skippers were famous.People would follow their adventures. All long before the internet. This was through talks on the radio and articles in newspapers, magazines, and so on.

The Dutch have always been BIG on ocean towage and salvage. For decades there was immense competition between two companies, Smit and Wijsmuller. There was never a job too big, too dangerous, too complex, or Dutch salvage teams managed to succeed.

There is even an excellent book, considered proper literature, about this fierce competition and how an independent tug boat captain tried to break into the market. The book is called "Hollands Glorie". Dutch Glory. Even today "Hollands Glorie" still stands for whatever outstanding achievement the Dutch have and or do.

So many people are interested and there are several model-built boat kits out there. Many builders will not build a kit, but get hold of the original ship's drawings and build everything from scratch!Whatever, pardon the pun, floats your boat.

Here you see part of the club's pond. Pretty big. A huge model of a NedLLoyd container vessel. Not sure if this one is made to sail under its own power, or whether it is there to be towed.

This is the Smit Rotterdam. One of the last ocean-going tugs Smit was built in 1974. About 75 meters long it packed 22000 HP. Which made it the most powerful oceangoing towing tug in the world. She had a sister ship, Smit NewYork

Seen from above:

It is a model kit, provided by the famous brand Billing Boats,

www.billingboats.com/index.p...smit-rotterdam

Billing boats are always wooden boats. The hull is made up of many ribs and bulkheads and you place small wooden planks horizontally across them.

People build them as just a nice static model to be displayed. Or like here, put an RC kit into it. These days that means two individually controlled main engines, a rudder, bow thruster. working radar, towing winch, anchor winch, lights, and engine sounds!!

Here something quite different. A proper steam tug, with a real steam engine, all Radio Controlled!!

There were a few other types of boats on display as well. Next to towing, dredging is the other thing the Dutch are famous for. So there are people who build model dredgers, that fully functioning.To the best of my knowledge, there are no model kits, so this is all completely hand-built, from drawings, or perhaps even just old photographs.

The club puts out these market stalls where everybody can display their pride and joy, when not sailing!

This is one of the most popular kits around, the SmitLLoyd 109. I have sailed on her twice. The so-called original 100-Series of SmitLLoyd were very famous in their days. They are so-called suppliers/Anchor Handling Tugs. Extremely robust, and capable of handling ice conditions, with about 14000 HP they were far more versatile than the dedicated oceangoing tugs such as the Smit Rotterdam.

Notice the big anchor on the deck. This is an anchor used by an oil rig. The oil rig would be anchored to the sea floor with 10-16 of these anchors. It was the job of vessels such as the 109 to run out those anchors and retrieve them if and when the rig had to be moved. Very tough and very dangerous work! I loved it. As one of the engineers, I would work the winches or help out on deck.Working with the massive anchor chains also involved welding and a lot of cutting with acetylene torches and later plasma cutters. Enter little "ol" me! On a rolling and pitching deck

As I mentioned, a very popular model. Many people have built it, in various forms. Some have used a different model, e.g. 112, or 117. Because they sailed on it, or because they liked it better. All these 100 boats had some small differences from one another. SmitLLoyd and Smit were separate companies for a long time. At some point in time, they merged and the typical SmitLLoyd pink chimneys were painted in the Smit colours. Real SmitLLoyd crews hated it. But it got worse as they ultimately merged with Wijsmuller as well, and the company and ships became known as SmitWijs.

Here you see the 109 in original Smit-LLoyd colours and the later and short-lived Smit colours.

I liked this cute little tugboat. I chatted to the owner. It is a complete fantasy boat. He built it from all kinds of scratch materials. He has three more like this. But the finish and attention to detail is fantastic!!

Also a lot of harbour tugs. Very often Smit harbour tugs. There are a few more harbour tug operators, but Smit has always been the biggest and most famous one.

These are the sort of tugs that assist the largest container vessels and tankers in Rotterdam harbour. Look at the detailing, under the waterline as well.

I did not see any today, but I know there are RC model tugboats that have proper model Voith Schneider propellers.

Here is another oceangoing tug I sailed on, very briefly. It was called Happy Hunter at the time. Again, taken over by Smit. Next to the Smitlloyd 109, the Happy Hunter is probably the second most build model kit. Both are plastic or rather polyester kits. The hull comes in one piece. Even so, building a boat like this is very labour-intensive and it will take hundreds and hundreds of hours. A rough estimate says less than half of the model kits bought are ever finished. You can buy many of these kits, half or less finished at online marketplaces!

This particular club, the host of this event, has fantastic facilities, you can see the pond, the jetties and so on. But they also have a roomy clubhouse, workshops, and so on!

One of the few Wijsmuller boats out there today. Very nice model. The Wijsmuller boats are often very very pretty

This size RC model boat can weigh up to 20-25 kilograms. They all take a lot of weights, just to sit low and correctly in the water. The RC equipment and batteries are not heavy enough by themselves. All these boats have a lot of lead on board!