Kylecraft Yachts

These models came to light by chance as a result of one of my appearances on television. Among the letters from those who had seen the programme was one from a woman whose father in 1945 had started a small business making toy yachts in the town of Largs, home of the contemporaneous, longer lasting and more famous Ailsa company. The story as she remembered it (she was only a child at the time) was that he had not been able to find work in the building trade because of the acute shortage of materials and had started to make and sell model boats as a stop gap. When trade picked up, he had abandoned the toy boat business and went back to the building. It's not clear exactly when this was, but he certainly sold widely. Among the material his daughter sent me was an advertisement which shows boats very similar in form to his being sold by Hobbies of Dereham. They came in 24 inch 22 inch and a smaller size that I think was 18 inch. My example of this size has gone to France, so I can't be sure

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There is a distinct resemblance to the Ailsa models. The wooden hulls are more slender and a touch deeper that Ailsa and the fins, though very similar in style to Ailsa's are proportionately deeper. The rigs are almost identical. To the best of my knowledge no examples of the original Kylecraft production have yet come to light. By the time these models came to light both the proprietor of Kylecraft and that of Ailsa had been dead some 25 years and it wasn't possible to discover whether there had at some stage been a link between the companies. My informant in Largs did say she would approach the Turner family to see if there was any further information to be found, but she did not come back to me.

The interesting thing is that when he abandoned the business, he also left a garage full of pieces; finished hulls, keels with lead cast on, and rigs, effectively kits of parts for about 300 boats of various sizes. After a degree of negotiation, the whole lot were acquired by Joshua Ritchie, who was running a toy boat stall in Portobello Market. Joshua put them together ands tarted them up a bit with stained and varnished hulls and rather better fittings than they would have probably had when sold by the original company. They were sold essentially as display pieces, but were perfectly capable of sailing. I had one of each size and with the exception of the 24 inch model, which was over canvassed and unbalanced, they sailed as well as might be expected for boats of this type. The photos show my example with a revised, smaller, mainsail. She goes well with this.

 

 

The models in the photos have been embellished even further than Joshua's display mode by having the fins, originally bare aluminium, painted ands the decks decorated by picking out the king plank and waterways with matt varnish.

Russell Potts