VINTAGE PERSPECTIVES
Tim Windsor – the early years
Tim Windsor was a legendary figure in post-wwii motor yacht design, working at Shipbuilders Ltd in Poore Street. But, like other crack Auckland designers, his roots were in the mullet boat.
Tim’s daughter, Helen Parsons, has given me free access to Tim’s archives and his well-written but unpublished autobiography which I have taken the liberty of quoting on occasion as I couldn’t express things better.
Tim was born Thomas Charles Windsor in Freemans Bay, Auckland on 1st March, 1912 but always called Tim. His British immigrant parents were in relatively poor financial circumstances; his father was a tramways employee and they shifted frequently from rented house to rented house. Tim was admitted to hospital in 1919 with suspected Spanish Flu but it turned out to be typhoid. This illness and later stomach problems seriously affected his schooling.
Like all waterfront boys, Tim’s association with the sea was a natural thing. At the age of 11 he assisted his friend Jack Cotterill in building a canoe from scrounged offcuts of oregon and canvas. They carried it 2½ miles from Bright Street to the sea at Shelly Beach, found it was cranky and carried it back.
Then, in March 1922, his half-brother George Elliott and his mate Chum Olliff bought a half-share in the 20ft mullet boat Rawhiti (N13) which they kept on the hard at Wilson’s Beach, off Shore Rd at the bottom of Victoria Rd, Remuera. Andy Tobin had built Rawhiti (strictly Rawhiti Jnr) in 1906.
“It was one of my most enjoyable times when George took me with him on a Sunday morning to work on the boat,” writes Tim. “We caught the tram from Symonds St to Victoria Ave and I can still hear the locusts and cicadas singing in the trees at the end of the street leading down to Wilson’s Beach, and the glimpse of the water through the trees. The highlight for me was being allowed to row the dinghy along the calm water along Wilson’s Beach inside the sewer pipeline. I got my love of boats there, no doubt.”
Tim’s first sail in a yacht was back from Home Bay, Motutapu, in Rawhiti in a hard westerly. But in 1924 Rawhiti was badly damaged when she went ashore on Rangitoto. George then bought a share in the Judges Bay keel yacht Peri (C6, built by Charles Robinson and Bob Murphy in 1897) but Tim never sailed on her.
In December 1927 Tim finished schooling at Meadowbank School with 6th Standard proficiency. Because of his illness he was too old to gain free entry into a secondary school and had to take a job, which in 1927 was hard to find.
There were few apprenticeships in any of the trades. He eventually got a job at Farmers Trading Company – very benevolent employers at the time. His first wage worked out at just over 3d an hour. Even at that low wage he was thankful to be employed as in those depression years there were many people unemployed.
In 1930 Gordon Crocker, who worked with Tim at Farmers, was one of the crew of the 40ft keel yacht Ngatira, B2, built in 1904 by Chas. Bailey Jr and then owned by Wally Jones. Gordon invited Tim to join the crew.
Wally had not raced Ngatira much since the 1925 Tauranga
Ocean Race but they did a lot of cruising, using the entire gaff rig out of Moana which had just converted to bermudan. Tim’s deep interest in yachting started then.
The same year he bought a copy of the American yachting magazine Rudder which contained an advertisement for a correspondence yacht designing course run by the Westlawn School of Yacht Design in Montville, New Jersey.
The school was established in 1930 by G.T. White and E.S. Nelson with high standards. Their elementary course cost $US15 which equated to £5, two weeks’ wages for Tim. The designing course manual and study lessons duly arrived along with the necessary ship curves and toplines which he had ordered from America as there were none available in New Zealand.
He cast from lead the spline weights or “ducks”. His draughting board was made from a 3ft x 2ft kauri board from Kauri Timber Company in Fanshawe St which cost 12 shillings. Tim spent all of his spare time for the next five years on the elementary course and passed in October 1936.
In November 1932 George and Tim bought the Manukau-based 18ft square bilge V Class yacht Daphne ( V45) for £45. She had been built in 1927, p probably by Les Coulthard at Onehunga. T They put her on moorings off Akarana Y Yacht Club in Mechanics Bay and raced h her with most of the Auckland clubs. Daphne was not among the top boats in her class but won a few races on her ha handicap, the most notable being the Au Auckland Anniversary Regatta for V Class in 1933. They spent many happy weekends cru cruising in Daphne to Waiheke and beyond. ““At the Christmas break we sailed to Tha Thames and Coromandel and the bays arou around Waiheke Island. We had very primitivei facilities in those days, we slept on straw mattresses which were damp most of the time, a one-burner kerosene primus stove for cooking and some old aluminium pots. “A popular meal for four of a crew was potatoes, onions and a tin of bully beef all mashed up together and spooned out onto a tin plate, it made a nice filling meal and warmed you up after a hard cold sail. There was no such thing as wet weather yachting clothing such as yacht crews wear now.
“We went out sailing in all weathers, bare feet, football shorts and jersey, no hat; it got mighty cold sometimes sitting up on deck with the salt spray coming over the weather bow and giving you a dowsing [sic] every few minutes. But we enjoyed the experience.”
George and Tim sold Daphne in November 1934 to Jim Frankham. George then joined the crew of a 26ft mullet boat while Tim devoted more time to his yacht designing studies. At the same time he built an 11ft Moth class yacht to an American design which he sailed on the Orakei Basin.
Later he built a 7ft sailing dinghy which he took to a bach the family had built on Waiheke, in Mako St, Oneroa. Tim passed the Westlawn General Yacht Designing Course in October 1936 and committed himself to further intense study to pass the Advanced Course.
In October 1938 he resigned from Farmers Trading Company, packed up all his designing gear and went to live by himself in the bach at Oneroa. Among the yachts he designed there was Gazelle, a 9ft square bilge sailing dinghy for D’arcy Whiting, which did well in the winter sailing races held by Richmond Yacht Club in the St Mary’s Bay boat harbour ( Westhaven).
A twin to Gazelle was Faun, sailed by FG Martin. In February 1939, just after the 1939 World 18 Footer Championships had been held in Auckland, and in the glow that followed a Kiwi win, D’arcy commissioned Tim to design Enterprise, a racing 18 footer ( V95) which Shipbuilders Ltd built for him at a cost of £20.
This design was one of two Tim submitted for his final paper for the Westlawn Advanced Course, which he passed in June 1939. Shipbuilders started work on Enterprise the same month but the outbreak of WWII that September changed everybody’s life around and D’arcy had little sailing until war’s end.
But Enterprise was the start of a fruitful relationship between Tim and Shipbuilders in which Tim’s skills were put to good use at a crucial time in history, which I will pick up in future articles. B