Michael Smailes Oral History Summary

Title

Michael Smailes Oral History Summary

Subject

Michael Smailes

Description

Summary of an Oral History Recording with interviewee Michael Smailes (with contributions from Marion Smailes)

Creator

Michael Romyn

Publisher

Kent's Sporting Memories

Date

22 October, 2019

Rights

Kent's Sporting Memories

Relation

Michael Smailes Oral History Recording

Format

Microsoft Word Document

Language

English

Type

Typed Summary

Identifier

Michael Smailes

Text

Kent’s Sporting Memories Oral History Summary
Interviewee: Michael Smailes; Marion Smailes
Interviewer: Michael Romyn
Date: 13 August, 2019
Location: Michael’s home in Folkestone, Kent

0:00 Name, place and date of birth (Michael Smailes, Birmingham, 14 December, 1936); moved to India aged nine months and remained there during the war; on returning to England he in turn attended boarding school in Tonbridge and public school in Dover (Dover College), where he began sailing as part of the school’s sailing group; the first boats he sailed on – a snipe and a whaler.
2:40 On leaving school, Mike joined Folkestone Yacht Club, based in a basement opposite the Rotunda on Marine Parade; Mike describes the logistical limitations of the club and the coast, and how it eventually moved to its current location at North Street, where there remained problems of access.
5:15 Mike recalls how he began sailing competitively in Fleetwind boats and against local clubs – Hastings, Sevenoaks, Bexhill etc. He then moved onto a two-man Hornet boat, before returning to solo racing; how Mike became intrigued by inland water sailing and began investigating potential sites near Folkestone, to sail on during the winter; this led to Mike and others sailing at Nickolls Quarry in Hythe, which proved instantly advantageous: ‘After the first winter we thought this is so much easier than sailing on the sea – you’ve got no tide, yes we haven’t got a slipway which we share with lots of other people but we can launch the boats into the water quite easily, we can store the boats literally by the edge of the water, the water wasn’t very big but it was sufficiently large to get some decent racing in, and the beauty of it was that it was completely enclosed so youngsters could sail there as well’; on the back of this successful winter of sailing, Mike decided to establish a club.
10:20 The beginnings of the club – establishing a membership with few resources, hiring a prefab club house, holding regattas with other clubs to increase awareness and expertise; how Mike and Marion would sail with his family; Marion describes membership at its peak reaching more than a hundred; naming the club after the nearby redoubt; leasing the water on an annual basis from the quarry, which was eventually split three ways between the club, fisherman, and the windsurfing club, the latter of which eventually left; changing lease arrangements, which required raising fees and losing members from the peak in the mid-nineties; Marion describes the club’s affiliation with the local sea scouts group.
20:30 Mike recalls the competitive racing scene in the 1960s, including regattas, open meetings for particular boat classes around the country, and national competitions, both on the sea and on inland water; Mike describes sailing in Holland in competitions and his various successes; inter-club competitions against Hythe and Saltwood and Folkestone Yacht Club; the benefits of inland sailing versus sea sailing, not least of which is the ease of teaching young people to sail, including Mike’s children; how the club, with the supervision of the Royal Yachting Association (RYA), became an instructional centre in the 1990s, with roughly ten instructors at its peak; teaching sailing and racing in schools and clubs around Kent as part of a Kent School’s Association/RYA scheme.
39:00 How the club acquired its boats – through sponsorship, buying with club funds, fundraising etc. – of which it owned more than thirty at its peak; Mike and Marion describe how the club was very sociable and family-oriented; the individual successes the club can boast, including racers that have competed in European and World competitions; the limitations of the club headquarters, a small prefabricated building without a bar, which isn’t necessarily amenable to social occasions, and how they have other venues to host larger social functions; the barbeques and ‘fun’ weekends that the club occasionally hosted.
46:45 Mike describes the layout of the club building; the addition of the toilet block, originally built for angling competitions by Nickolls; the demise of the annual news letter after many years of publication.
50:10 The frequency with which the Smailes’ family sailed – ‘I mean it was sailing every weekend, whether it be an open meeting or at the Redoubt or whatever’; the few instances in which the club did not open at the weekend due to large angling competitions at the quarry; how Mike and Marion’s three daughters continue to sail regularly.
51:50 Mike states that the club has declined for two main reasons – 1) Nickolls decision to move from an annual lease paid by the club to individual subscriptions, which members had to pay to the landlord in addition to the club subscription and 2) the change over from Nickolls to RKB land management, which doubled the fees and thus put casual sailors off.
56:50 How the relationship between the anglers and Redoubt cooled once the anglers disbanded their club; how, in Mike and Marion’s view, the attitude of management (and bailiff) toward the club has slowly become worse, especially around issues of access to the water and increased fees; the rules and regulations the club abides by in relation to the anglers.
1:03:00 The infill of the quarry and the diminishment of sailable waters, starting with changes to the Nickolls business; Mike describes the calamity that was the building of the toilet block; how the infill hasn’t affected the sailing significantly, but how, over time, changes in management have placed greater fiscal pressure on the club; the necessity to sell off a number of the club’s boats to cover insurance for the existing ones, and problems with a diminishing membership more generally – ‘to be quite honest I don’t see a future for the club long term. The majority of our members are almost retirement age or retirement age’.
1:09:44 Mike describes the decline in young members and ‘family’ memberships – ‘we only have three at the moment and at the peak we probably had thirty children’; the arrangement with Downs Sailing Club in Deal, in which children visit the club during the year for instruction and sailing.
1:12:20 Issues of money aside, the club was already waning, states Mike, because of poor access, the club’s hidden nature – ‘you can’t see the sailing from anywhere…not that many people see that we’re sailing’ – and the lack of interest in sailing more generally and the competition for people’s time; the closure of inland sailing clubs in Kent;
1:16:00 Mike comments on what he sees as a decline in ‘volunteer culture’ and people ‘chipping in.
1:17:50 Mike says the thing from which he derived greatest enjoyment at the club was teaching, especially teaching children – ‘I used to thoroughly enjoy teaching youngsters and astounding their parents to say from one end of the day to the other, a), they’re scared of the water and b), by the end of the day they’re actually sailing a boat up and down, very simply, but they are sailing a boat up and down on their own and I used to thoroughly enjoy that. And gradually encouraging the children not only to learn to sail but to learn to race and then to compete, and then to compete at club versus club, or county versus county or whatever, and I’ve always been very involved in encouraging youngsters to sail and to compete.’; Marion agrees that watching children learning and progressing has been the most satisfying thing for her while at the club.
1:19:40 Mike talks about the lack of inland sailing clubs in Kent, and how inland sailing offers enclosed, safe water without tides – ‘it’s much easier sailing’; how people have at times visited the club from all over the county; Marion describes the club as being unique owing to its close proximity to the sea.