Bluenose II 1:100 Scale – Billing Boats

Bluenose II 1:100 Scale (BB600)

Bluenose II is a replica of the fishing and racing schooner Bluenose, commissioned by Sidney Culverwell Oland and built in 1963 as a promotional yacht for Oland Brewery. Sidney Oland donated the schooner to Nova Scotia in 1971 and it has since operated as a sailing ambassador and promotional device for Nova Scotia tourism. In honour of her predecessor’s record, Bluenose II does not officially race.

Bluenose II was launched at Lunenburg on 24 July 1963, built to original plans and by some of the same workers at Smith and Rhuland. The original captain of Bluenose, Angus J. Walters, was consulted on the replica’s design. The replica was commissioned by Sidney Culverwell Oland for roughly $300,000 (2.5 million in 2020 Canadian dollars) as a marketing tool for their Schooner Lager beer brand. The ship has one of the largest mainsails in the world, measuring 386 square metres (4,150 sq ft). She has a total sail area of 1,036 square metres (11,150 sq ft).

In 2004, the Bluenose Preservation Trust, with Lex McKay and Senator Wilfred Moore, donated a piece of wood from the deck of the ship to the Six String Nation project. Parts of that material now serve multiple functions in Voyageur, the guitar at the heart of the project, including two elements of the neck laminate, the top and end blocks on the guitar’s interior and decorative elements on the rosette surrounding the sound hole of the instrument.

The hull of the Billing Boats kit is assembled in halves, on a table. This allows for easier assembly and is quite useful in learning plank-on-frame or plank-on-bulkhead construction! Once each half is done you join the two for a completed hull. Make sure you work each half in opposite directions so that when joined they marry up evenly! While instructions are included we highly recommend builders view the instructions and diagrams here and here prior to purchase.

This kit contains English translation instructions, all measurements in the booklet are in Metric.

To view our entire catalog of ship kits, please click here.

For a good reference on building model ships, please click here.

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