10 minute read
Fishing Report
Hello,
Beautiful weather has everyone out over the last two weeks. Plenty of catch reports of good bags of fish have been coming into the shop. Last Friday, a polite young boy caught 15 very good bream from the Jetty, he very kindly gave me one for my dinner. AFAQ fished last weekend against the Gallipoli Barracks (Army), at Bribie Passage.
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Some of Claude’s catch.
The competition was a fish length event, AFAQ won with a length of 23mtrs, and the Army had 18mtrs. In the Club competition Claude weighed in 10.5kg, good size bream, snapper and flathead. Still good fishing in the passage. Summer and Winter whiting are still in the bay and passage, anglers are reporting catches of 50+, with winter whiting over the 35cm mark. Tailor is here, not in big numbers as yet, catches of Nice Yellowtail Kingfish. Tailor is here, not in big numbers as yet, catches of 40+cm reported.
Offshore is producing nice fish, photos from Beach Shack Fishing Charters.
. The school holidays are here and if crabbing keep a keen eye on your pots. Remember that the spring tides run very strong, your pots may have not been stolen. They end up washed on Gilligans Island, they are then taken to the
Nice Flathead on plastic
Ranger Station, there is a huge mound of pots at Whitepatch.
Very good eating Grassy Sweetlips Nice Yellowtail Kingfish.
Tailor means Alvey reel time, if you want them serviced, bring them in. We are often rung up asking for beach permits, Bribie Island Beach Permits are available at the Bellara News Agency 1/25 Benabrow Ave, beside Leading Appliances.
That is all for now, Tight lines
DOC.
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TIDE TIDE TIMES TIMES
Bribie Bribie Island Island & & Moreton Moreton Bay Bay
FRI 1 Jul 5:33 am 0.53m 11:04 am 1.38m 4:51 pm 0.38m 11:33 pm 1.98m
FRI 8 Jul 3:43 am 1.66m 10:21 am 0.38m 5:00 pm 1.61m 11:00 pm 0.67m SAT 2 Jul 6:06 am 0.53m 11:39 am 1.38m 5:27 pm 0.4m
SAT 9 Jul 4:48 am 1.57m 11:17 am 0.34m 6:09 pm 1.75m SUN 3 Jul 12:05 am 1.95m 6:41 am 0.52m 12:17 pm 1.39m 6:04 pm 0.43m
SUN 10 Jul 12:18 am 0.63m 5:59 am 1.5m 12:13 pm 0.28m 7:13 pm 1.92m MON 4 Jul 12:39 am 1.93m 7:16 am 0.5m 1:00 pm 1.4m 6:45 pm 0.48m
MON 11 Jul 1:30 am 0.54m 7:08 am 1.47m 1:08 pm 0.22m 8:10 pm 2.08m TUE 5 Jul 1:16 am 1.89m 7:56 am 0.47m 1:47 pm 1.42m 7:30 pm 0.54m
TUE 12 Jul 2:35 am 0.44m 8:11 am 1.47m 2:01 pm 0.17m 9:03 pm 2.21m WED 6 Jul 1:59 am 1.84m 8:38 am 0.44m 2:44 pm 1.45m 8:27 pm 0.6m
WED 13 Jul 3:33 am 0.37m 9:09 am 1.47m 2:54 pm 0.13m 9:54 pm 2.28m THU 7 Jul 2:46 am 1.76m 9:27 am 0.42m 3:48 pm 1.51m 9:39 pm 0.66m
THU 14 Jul 4:26 am 0.33m 10:02 am 1.47m 3:45 pm 0.12m 10:43 pm 2.29m
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The
HEALEY
STORY
by David Horrocks
HEALEY DEVELOPMENTS
We've noted how Donald Healey moved through a succession of small volume model sports cars culminating in success when he coupled his expertise in building light, but strong chassis designs to the powerful American engines provided by the Nash/Kelvinator corporation, a cooperation that came to be after he had met George Mason their CEO whilst on board The Queen Elizabeth. Donald had been en route to the US to meet with General Motors to try to negotiate a supply of parts when after a dinner the American had invited him to inspect a new model camera he had just bought; both men being keen photographers. A convivial drink led to the American asking why Donald was going to the states and when told had asked why he wouldn’t use Nash engines. Hence was born the famous Nash/Healey. However, these wellperforming cars were expensive and high-end and as such low production volume cars, with a total of 506 eventually being built. Donald had always dreamt of building a high-performance sports car that the maybe affluent but not rich buyer could afford. He had designed his original 100/4 concept to fulfil this dream and presented the idea to Nash as a low-cost model; they weren't interested even though there was a sports car boom in the US-based on the popular SCCA - SAF airfield races of the time. I don't know this to be true but could imagine that the profitable Kelvinator side of the business would have been running red hot in the US boom times of the early 50s which may be held all their attention and investments. On top of this Nash had an arrangement themselves with BMC Austin to produce the Nash Metropolitan a pretty little car, not certainly a sports model but one project somewhat alongside the same lines of a Europeanstyled offering. Now running parallel to all this activity and idea exchanges the situation at the new British Motor Corporation was going sideways. CEO Leonard Lord was looking for a competitor and indeed a successor to the MG (Morris Garages) sports models. Open-wheeled cars such as the MGs of the period were on their way out in favour of more streamlined shapes such as that demonstrated on the new Healey 100/4 - the expected way of the future. Lord was desperate to fix an Austin badge onto such a car.
The Austin Atlantic, the one attempt by Lord to sell such a model into the US had failed miserably. He had been left with a mountain of parts, all based on the company's inventory of Austin A90 components, this was certainly not a good outcome. So, when Lord visited the
Healey stand at the 1952 motor show and saw queues of people lining up to place orders for this sensationallooking streamlined sports car, a model which used his A90 engine and other of his surplus parts the penny dropped with a resounding clang. There was no way that the small Healey company could hope to build anywhere near as many cars as were being ordered but the new conglomerate BMC could, and the US would want them as much as the keen UK buyers at the show. It wasn't an arranged marriage but more of a match made in heaven. Realising that they had a genuine 100 MPH modern sports car on their hands made it imperative that they prove it in competition. In those days the motto of 'win a race on Sunday, sell the cars on Monday' was very apt. The stock production 100/4 could achieve 103 MPH but to ensure success they started to make a few 'mods' to come up with what they named the 100S. Some of these changes included fitting larger carburettors and for extra strength and reliability, they used the crankshafts normally fitted into their diesel taxi engines plus the gearboxes from the same source. The first attempt at the Mille Miglia wasn't a success. Both cars entered but whilst running well suffered throttle linkage failures. One pair of drivers who were normally racing motorcyclists did a quick fix at the side of the road only to have the clutch fail 25 KMS from the finish line. The next attempt was at the infamous Le Man's event where both cars finished. One came in 12th, the other at 14th; not at all a bad result for first-timers. The 'infamy' I used to describe this race event was based on
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my Healey story in the last Islander issue of the terrible 1955 crash, that race took place in a later year. After these promising early beginnings, a full racing program was instigated with the approval of BMC/Austin. More modifications including Westlake aluminium cylinder heads and redesigned inlet and outlet arrangements brought the performance of the 100S up even further. With all this 'go faster gear' being fitted it was judged prudent to fit the newfangled Dunlop disc brakes to all the wheels to make sure the car could be stopped as well as made to go. In 1954 a car was entered into the Sebring event with Lance Macklin (he of later Le Man's notoriety) and George Hutton driving the twelvehour race. A small failure robbed them of victory and put them into third place. Stirling Moss took the checkered flag that day. Great success in speed events was achieved with the 100S being time tested at the Bonneville salt flats in the USA where the car achieved 143.1 MPH over a measured mile and of much more significance an average speed of 132.29 MPH for 24 hours duration, quite remarkable for the time. In Australia, the car was a very popular choice for racing where local entertainment personalities such as Bob Dyer of Pick a Box fame enjoyed themselves on weekends roaring around the raceways. The very limited production of this model has made the 100S a very desirable classic car to own. The few lucky present-day owners have seen the values skyrocket and these values will never fall of course.
More on later history in the next issue.
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