Jock says his introduction to both yacht designing and sailing was through the famous model sailing Yachts: "There's no question they taught a whole generation of us how to sail. They were marvellous little boats, built of timber and about 50 inches long, the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania provided championship pennants for them. "I raced against such future racing identities as Neall Batt, Chook Newman, Jack Bennison, Max Muir, Ediss Boyes, George Makepeace, Dave McAllister and Don and Doug McKean, to name just a few." The model yacht era certainly holds many memories for that generation. The "skippers" of the perfectly-balanced little craft rigged them on shore and set them on their way in a race and then followed them in small "chaser dinghies" which were about eight feet long. "The model yachts were pretty nippy once they got going and we had to really row to keep up. It certainly helped develop our arm and shoulder muscles. "I remember one time Dave McAllister later to become my brother-in-law and I started our boats, Stormbird 1 and Natal Queen, off Battery Point on an August morning and followed them all the way down the river, round the Iron Pot and home again. We got home 11 hours later after a fair beat back up the river." Jock scored his first wins in competitive sailing with his model yachts - Stormbird 1 and 2. "There was a great interest in designing, building and racing those model yachts in the 1920s and it certainly gave me my entree to yacht designing. It allowed me to experiment at no great cost. "We used to be constantly changing a little bit here and a little bit there and achieving near-perfection in the end. The big thing was, they had to be able to sail themselves. We had none of the electronic aids of today's model racers. "If they couldn't steer a straight course, they were useless. There is no doubt we learnt a great deal from them. I really feel that quest for perfection carried through into my designing and building days. "The only restriction on the model yachts was that they had to be 50 inches long, but they were real little boats and started many of us in bluewater sailing. We gained both design and sailing knowledge from those models. "It is hard to gauge their speed in proportion to a big ocean-going boat, but think of it this way: that sail that Dave McAllister and I had around the Iron Pot was typical of a race - a spinnaker run down, a good beat home and it took about 11 hours. That is an average speed of about 2 knots and and an average speed for a 42 foot racer is still only about 6 knots - 42 feet as against 4 feet!