2012 Classic Moth Boat National Regatta

Unlike last year's chilly affair, this year's edition of the of the CMBA Nats (held over the weekend of 14-16 Sept) offered improvements in both the weather and the turnout of boats.  Last year's event drew 13 Moths, this year 20 boats assembled to race.  In addition to the Classic and Vintage Moths, two of our members also sail International Moths with hydrofoils and they brought them along for demonstrations after Saturday's racing concluded.

Arch Farmer, his brother Larry and grandson Evan stand next to Old 264.  This newly restored boat dates to the early 1930s

At the other end of the spectrum are this pair of hydrofoiling modern Moths.  The hull alone of Old 264 weighs over 150 pounds, the all-up weight of one of the modern boats is 75 lbs!  Photo credit: Amy Smith Linton.

Other boats on the lawn included Gary Gowans' home built Cates-Florida design Gen I Classic (boat with the varnished deck) and Greg Duncan's Skip Etchells designed "Connecticut" Moth (all white boat in background).  The Connecticut was a late 1940s design while the Cates-Florida design dates to the mid  1950s.  The contrasting hull shapes of these two boats offers a nice demonstration of development that occurred during that time span.

Arch Farmer's Dorr Willey-built Moth is another design from the 1940s.  Again, one can appreciate the advancement of hull shapes from the early '30s to the late '40s by studying these two boats.

The Europa design, by Belgian Alois Roland, dates to the early 1960s.  In the late 60s the owners of this Moth design, not liking the developmental aspect of the Moth Class, broke away and formed a strict one-design class around this particular hull shape.  The new class, called the Europe Dinghy was subsequently selected as the women's Olympic single hander and competed in four Olympiads starting with Barcelona in 1992 and ending with the Athens games in 2004.  My boat, Ooh La La, seen here snoozing under her mooring cover was Meg Gaillard's Athens games boat.

Other boats on the lawn included Jeff Linton's Mousetrap.  The Mousetrap design is Jeff's modification of the Mistral Moth to include the Europe dinghy transom  shape.

Jeff's boat features this nifty cassette style rudder.

Another interesting boat is Bill Boyle's Abbott design.  When Bill got this boat she looked like this.

One more look at Old 264.  The Farmer brothers did a wonderful job of bringing this historic boat back from the dead.  In the next post we'll launch boats and go racing.  See you then.