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Greetings from Louisville, KY (USA)

Dion9146

Dion9146

Joined
May 9, 2026
Messages
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New to this forum, but not ship modeling and definitely not modeling in general. I've been building plastic, wood, model railroads, RC, static, scale, cars/boats/airplanes pretty much my entire life. I grew up in Sandusky, Ohio surrounded by boats and Lake Erie water, and as I've gotten older that pull of the water has set it's hook and really taken hold of me. I currently race 2 dinghy sized full scale sailboats on the Ohio River, and have built 4.5 sailing ship models over the years (the .5 is still in progress). I'm currently restoring a 1967 GP14 full scale sailboat, but always planning my next model build.

For now, I'm sticking with another kit or two, but will eventually wade into scratch building. I've built a number of scratch built RC scale airplanes using the original manufacturers full scale plans, so the concepts and techniques are very similar to me. But I'm also an extremely busy professional with only a handful of years left until retirement, so the scratch build odyssey can wait for now.

Thanks for the contributions of everyone on this forum. I've already learned a ton just reading for the last couple of days. Looking forward to contributing!

Dion
 
Welcome to the forum from Duluth, MN. What classes of dinghy do you sail? I didn’t realize that there was any organized small boat racing on the Ohio River. Could you elaborate a little on the GP14? I’m an old dinghy sailor too. I owned and raced a wooden Thistle back in the 1960’s. Used to be a great fleet of them in Sandusky.

Roger
 
Hey Roger, I race a Force 5 and we race the GP14 in Thursday night multi-class racing. I also crew on a larger S-2.

Our club fleets include Sunfish, Thistle, Highlander, Y-flyer, and Force 5. We used to have a larger continent of Lasers, but all of the skippers got old and needed something more comfortable, hence the Force 5 fleet growth over the last few years.

The GP14 is mainly a British boat and still very active on that side of the pond, but a relative rarity around the US. It's a nice sized 14 foot sloop with main and jib that can be single handed, but fit up to 4 relatively comfortably. I'm using it to train a new sailor and it's an ideal boat for that.
 
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