Remote boats

On the kind of balmy Sunday that makes us realize why we live in Minnesota, the paved shoreline at Edina's Centennial Lakes Park is packed with folks of all ages. At the north end, a father and son share a hot dog and a remote control. Out on the water, a 2-foot-long, flatulent-sounding speedboat does doughnuts and figure eights, while sundry vessels -- a sailboat here, a steamboat there, the African Queen over yonder -- sluice about, miraculously avoiding collisions.

With model boats puttering and (best we could tell) model citizens gawking, the idyllic scene is "like a little Currier & Ives," said Bill Bach of Bloomington. "This place just gets caked with people. Once you're here, this is just a hard place to leave."

Bach was speaking not only of the beautiful day and setting, but of the Edina Model Yacht Club's 19-year run on the waterways that give Centennial Lakes its name.

Since 1991, when the old Hedberg gravel pit was converted into a retail, residential and office complex, the Yacht Club's nautical enthusiasts have been floating their boats, remotely, on these ponds, which are "the perfect scale for wind power and electric model boats," Bach noted. They ply the waters for sizable crowds every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evening during the warm-weather months.

Built by the club's 90-plus members, the watercraft on display at June's Parade of Boats included a sailboat with a 10-foot mast, a facsimile of Theodore the Tugboat, an all-wood Chris-Craft, a whaling vessel, World War II PT boats and 21st-century powerboats.

"There are people who are into the building," said Tony Johnson of Excelsior, "people who are into the cruising and some who are just 'Let's get it on.'"

Surprisingly, collisions are rare, but one-boat mishaps are not uncommon. Michael Ross of Edina had to rebuild the boiler on his African Queen replica when it fell in the water.

"You know the Snoopy story, 'It was a dark and stormy night?' Well, I should not have been sailing. The wind filled the boat with water, and it just sank," he said. "About five days later, we set up a rig with some big muskie treble hooks and snagged it in about 7 1/2 feet of water.

"We were really lucky," he said. "It's so murky, you can't see down there at all. When some guys had their fast electric boats go down, they got a scuba diver, and he had to find it just by feel."

The Edina Model Yacht Club's most prolific builder, Bloomington's Paul Olson, has had sundry boats bump into the walls, "usually when somebody else is in trouble and I only pay attention to what they're doing."

Away from the radio-controlled flotillas, staying focused has not been a problem for Olson. He has constructed scores of model sailboats, often at a clip of five per winter.

"When the water gets hard, that's your time to build," said Olson, whose 40-year career as a patternmaker -- producing models for the likes of Walt Disney and Tonka Toys -- has served him well during hobby time.

Over the decades, Olson has built "a little of everything." He put Theodore on his tugboat -- and can turn the head in unison with a fireman on deck spraying a stream of water -- because his granddaughter loved the character.

He's been at work for four years on a large replica of the 1906 Steamboat Minnehaha. So meticulous is Olson that he cut the tiny anchor out of a chunk of stainless steel. The steam engine is finished, but "I'm having a hard time getting myself motivated to work on the windows," he said.

Still, sailboats clearly are Olson's main squeeze. He had a "real" one for decades, sailing mostly on Lake Superior and the Whitefish Chain, before his back gave out four years ago. He started building the replicas in the 1960s and still owns an R-class sloop that required a resourceful measure to come to fruition back in 1971.

"I had very good plans, but they were only this big," he said, holding his thumb and index finger 2 inches apart. "So I got a 50-inch sheet and told my wife to go to school and put it up on the opaque projector, and I drew it up and built it from that."

Since then, the 50-inch sloop has sailed on Lake Nokomis, Lake Superior and even the Atlantic Ocean.

Bill Ward • 612-673-7643