2021 NAMBA Nats Race Program

As the word spread that there were races being held in Alberta, we were excited to see entries from as far away as Winnipeg, Manitoba. We welcomed Mike Kurz, Gene and Paul Szun and John White who turned out to be very competitive racers. This group made several trips to both Calgary and Edmonton over the next few years, including the Canadian Nationals in both cities. In 1987 Bill Gawley became interested in the hobby and with his encouragement formed the Manitoba Rudder Benders. Now that we had clubs and sanctioned races, the boaters started coming to race with us. Graham Swain and Andy Stishenko from Kelowna, British Columbia started making the 7 hour or more drive to the races in Alberta. With the formation of clubs in Vancouver and Victoria the number of entries for the races in Calgary and Edmonton started to grow, to the point we had over 125 class entries for a weekend race. In 1982 Al Hobbs who lives in Great Falls, Montana, started coming to the races in Calgary which brought a real boost to the hobby with his tremendous enthusiasm for racing. In 1986 he expanded his travels to include Edmonton, and to this day has rarely missed coming to one of our races. With the growing interest in boating and the formation of the Canadian Marine Modelers in Vancouver and the Vancouver Island Weed Eaters in Victoria, it opened up new opportunities to race with new boaters. Forty years ago it was easier to hop in the car and make the 10 to 12 hour drive all night to be at the venue in the morning of a weekend race (the reason being we were all much younger then). We would race on Stool Lake by the airport in Vancouver and on beautiful Elk Lake just out of Victoria on Vancouver Island. These were great times to race even though work on Monday morning wasn’t always that much fun, after maybe 3 hours of sleep, and another 10 to 12 hour drive home. With the distances for boaters to travel between Vancouver and the Alberta clubs we tried to find a place in the middle to race. In the late 70’s we all put our heads together and found a beautiful lake in the mountains that worked for everyone. There is a lodge at Three Valley Gap where everyone could stay right on the shore of the lake. We had a great turnout with lots of fun racing over the weekend. In 1983, through the tireless efforts of Malcom Fraser and the Vancouver club they went to work to host the NAMBA Nationals at Burnaby Lake just east of Vancouver. The racing was great with representation from across western Canada and the United States. The effort to host the race seemed to take the steam out of the west Back in the late 60’s when we started trying to build competitive boats, the big challenge was sourcing hardware and model boats. At that time the only source of engines, propellers, drive hardware and boats was from the U.S., through mail order. We ordered hardware from Octura, boats from Dumas and Hughey, or designed our own hulls and made our own hardware. Those were the options we had. There were no marine engines at the time so we brought in OPS, Rossi, K&B, Super Tigers and even a few Veco. Local hobby shops carried only aircraft building material, some of which could be used for outfitting boats. Since water- cooled engines were not available in those days we used Octura Kool Clamps to cool the engines or made our own cooling jackets. The only propellers available were from Octura or Hughey so back then not much choice. We purchased nitromethane from a local chemical supply house so we could give the fuel the nitro percentages we wanted. High nitro fuels were not available at that time. By 1969 Stu Seymour and I had built some boats that we felt could be competitive but there was no place to race them. This is when we found the club in Spokane, Washington and decided to make the 6 hour drive, across the border, each way, to race our boats. We wanted to be part of some organization so we joined the IMPBA which, I believe, was the same organization the Spokane club was associated with at the time. This continued for several years even after there was sanctioned racing in the Calgary area. The last time I recall any of our members going to Spokane was in 1977 when we raced on the river right downtown. Around 1971, with the growing interest in racing our boats, Stu and I started the Stampede City Model Boat Racing club in Calgary. The following year Gary Jeffery joined us and we were on our way to having our own district and promoting the hobby in western Canada. With the addition of Keith Warham and Doug Sick we had the strong core we needed to start racing when the opportunity came, which proved to be not that far in the future. Shortly after, we changed the name of our club to the Buoy Busters, but by 1977, we finally settled on Calgary Model Boat Racing Association and became a member of NAMBA. I think it was the summer of 1974 that a group of us with boats went to Edmonton to race together. We had a great weekend. The Edmonton Model Boat Racing Association was formed shortly after this, thanks to the efforts of Dave Arsenault and John Chapman among others. We now had 2 clubs in Alberta so both clubs started to schedule races, acquire a recovery boat, and put together the necessary start-clock and heat-timing devices. Independently, in Lethbridge, about a 2 hour drive south of Calgary, a small group headed by Eric Himmel started the Chinook Model Boaters. Although they didn’t host any races of their own they did come to Calgary to race on a couple of occasions. The word even spread to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan where Ed Herman was running boats and was happy to make the trip to race with us in Calgary and Edmonton Model Boating in Western Canada - By Brian Jessup 2021 NAMBA Nationals Page 60