Happy Ending/New Beginning

Fellow Moth Boat sailor Joe Bousquet has been encouraging some of the junior sailors on the high school sailing team where he teaches to give Classic Moths a try.  To further that end I've been passing freebie Moth Boats to Joe.  Earlier I gave him a boat which a lot of people thought was beyond rescue but Joe has already repaired the holes in the bottom and in the fore deck.  He indicates that it will be ready in time for next season.

I blogged about this poor ol' boat earlier.  Most people who looked said it was too rough to plant flowers in.  Joe B. plans to get her sailing by spring.

More recently Rich Larson, up on Long Island emailed me to say that he wanted to donate a Moth which his daughter was no longer using.  This boat was in much better condition that the boat above and included a road going trailer and a custom cover.  All someone had to do was come get the boat.  After talking with Joe B., diaristdaughter and I hit the road for New York.

For reasons known only to the programmers of Garmin GPS units, our little gizmo decided instead of the GW Bridge that we should take the Lincoln Tunnel and go smack down 42nd St and then to the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

The entrance to the QM Tunnel was blocked and by the time I realized that fact we had passed the detour.  We looped around, trading pleasantries with the Taxi Cabs and saw lots of big buildings of which I'm only vaguely familiar.  Is this one the Chrysler Building?  I think it is.

We eventually got to Rich's house on Long Island.  We were only a little bit late!  The rain magically stopped during the time we were actively hitching up the trailer and transferring boat gear from the garage to my wagon.

This Mk II Fletcher-Cates (blue hull closest to the camera) is in relatively good condition.

The Mk II version featured roll tank style decks while using the same hull as the standard version.  Originally this boat had a center main traveler rather than the current aft bridle.

Before leaving, we picked Rich's brain for some handwritten instructions to override our GPS.  I didn't fancy another ride down 42nd St., this time towing a wonky boat trailer with old dry rotted tires.  No, this bridge isn't the one you're thinking of.  This one is the Manhattan Bridge.

Here's the one you're thinking of.  Now, if you're interested in this bridge, be sure to ask me about my portfolio of prime Florida real estate.

We avoided downtown but every time I turned around we were going over another bridge, this one's the Verrazano Bridge--and no, none of these bridges are free.  I dread seeing my ezpass statement.  Sigh--the things I do for juniors sailors.  At least the sky was getting brighter in the  direction we were headed.

The next morning.  Yes, we eventually did get home in one piece.  I had brought two wheels/tires plus tools in case the old tires gave out but thankfully they didn't.  A week later, I helped Joe B. change wheels before he set out from my house in Maryland to go back to Norfolk, VA.  We had to use a sledge hammer to free one of the wheels from it's hub!

She looks good with her travel cover in place.

The following weekend Joe came to collect the boat.  He decided to stick on some reflective tape in case the tail lights decided to go on holiday.

Joe B. ready for the Grand Depart.  I'm the one who should be smiling--this boat came and went while my wife was out of town!

And yes, Joe also had an uneventful trip.  Perhaps this is a lucky boat.  Hopefully I'll see a new junior sailor in her next racing season.

Dixie Peach--a light weight version of the Dorr Willey design

 In 1957 Blair Fletcher won the US National Moth Regatta in a boat which he built and named Dixie Peach. This design was a light weight version of the Dorr Willey with an altered bow shape.  These boats were built of thin plywood panels rather than 3/8" cedar planking and as a result were both much lighter and also much stiffer than the design copied. The only surviving photograph of that particular boat is in the Cooper River YC brochure for the 1958 National Regatta which includes a low resolution pix of Blair sailing the boat .  In this post we shall examine the last of the photos sent to me by Jim Greenfield.  These photos show an identical boat.  The photos are undated but probably were taken during the late 1950s.  After that we'll take a look at that regatta brochure from 1958.

In this photo one can see the similarities between this boat and the earlier Dorr Willey-built Moths.  Blair's version retains the basic hard chine, gentle vee-bottom shape of the early design.  The fore deck peak is formed by two piece ply construction.  Although the rudder is still a low aspect "barn door" shape, Blair has deserted the wishbone bone tiller and stern fed sheeting arrangement for the more modern straight stick and up-the-boom routing for the sheet.  The traveler is interesting in that it appears to be a piece of sail track supported by a wood foundation with a small gap for the tiller rather than the more commonly seen bend bronze rod or wire travelers seen on other Moths of this era.  Note the tiny window in the sail.  Windows were just starting to be incorporated into the sails of small racing dinghies about this time.  Although the benefits were immediately obvious, windows in sails did not become universal until the early 1960s.  I didn't have a window until I ordered a new Seidelmann sail during the summer of '62.  The sailor in these photos is thought to be Blair's older step-daughter, Chicki Seaton.

In this shot we see that Blair's design has a good bit more keel rocker than the earlier Dorr Willey boats and that the point of maximum rocker is placed farther forward along the keel line .  The bow block is much smaller as well. 

On starboard tack with a bit more speed.

I'm not sure what class the boats moored  in the background are.  They are not Comets and I don't think they are Snipes.  Can anyone identify them?  The venue is Cooper River in Collingswood, New Jersey.

Just for fun, here are the four sides of the brochure for the 1958 U.S. Moth Nationals.  Dixie Peach is pictured above from the previous year's regatta.

Remember the old ten minute start sequence with the white, blue and red flags?  I used to have a "yachting" stop watch which oddly was not waterproof (one wore the watch on a neck strap and hoped that the rubber watch cover would protect the time piece and on a large yacht perhaps it did, but I can tell you one flip in salt water was the end of my watch, cover or no cover).  Those watches had a sweep second hand and also a separate hand which moved across white, blue and red segments of the watch's face.  Just a bit of trivia for you young kids who've known only a digital "ironman" wrist watch...  I also see that breakfast was nice and nutritious--NOT!

I don't think Cooper River YC's courses have changed much since this brochure--after all what can one do with limited water?

Gene Pilot, named above as one of the regatta organizers, also raced Moths and had a boat built by George Szabo called The Twist.  For years I thought the boat had been named after the popular dance of that era.  It was only much later that I learnt the real story behind the name.  It seems that when George S. popped the hull off the building jig she "twisted"!  I don't recall her being better on one tack compared to the other but then Gene was a rather large man for a Moth Boat.  Chickie Seaton, the young lady sailing Nr 1491 in the photos above, later owned The Twist and sailed the boat to great effect including winning the women's World Championship in 1963 so perhaps Szabo's first attempt at building a Cates-Florida wasn't so bad after all.  Other names that ring a bell include Bert Dowler.  Bert was the long standing IMCA president but sadly he passed away in 1958 and so this was one of the last events he helped organize.

Swiss Navy

Jim Greenfield, a long time member of Cooper River YC and a former employee of Fletcher Marine Products, sent me a collection of photos from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s.  Today's post will examine a series of photos taken of Blair Fletcher testing the first of the "Swiss" Moths his company produced during the mid to late 1960s.  These boats were based on the boats designed by Swiss builder Dunand and first seen over in this country at the 1965 World Championship which was held at Corinthian YC in Cape May, New Jersey.  Pierre Roggo, Claude Barth and Dennis Weber brought over three Dunands and Roggo won the regatta easily out pacing the Cates-Florida and Shelley Moths which were the mainstay designs fielded by the American sailors.

The "Swiss" Moths were quite beamy compared to other contemporary Moths and also sported a wooden, free-standing mast which was very much in vogue in European-designed Moths in those days.  In this photo one can see the double ended controls for the outhaul and Cunningham.  Most American Moths from this era just tied off the outhaul and most didn't have a Cunningham but instead relied on a downhaul, in which the gooseneck could be slid down a short piece of track attached to the mast and then a thumb screw tightened to retain the desired luff tension.  This, like the tied off outhaul was of course not adjustable while sailing.  Additionally the blade shapes were becoming more sophisticated on the European boats.  The vang however, was still fairly primitive with the tongue of the boom passing through a slot in the mast with "one setting suits all conditions" tension achieved by insinuating a wooden wedge into the front side of the slot to prevent the boom from rising.

The Cooper River shore line was very much less built-up than today.

In this photo one can just make out one of the small, vestigial deck wings which were very controversial at the 1965 Worlds.  The Americans cried foul, insisting that the small deck overhangs were essentially hiking wings, which in those days were illegal.  The fast thinking Swiss sailors countered that those were not hiking devices but instead were "rub rails"!  In the end they were permitted to sail without having to shave them off.  The argument of exactly when a rub rail grows enough to become a hiking wing was not entirely settled until the class adopted a sweeping set of rule changes which legalized wings and also ushered in the high aspect Australian rig and sail.  At a stroke, Moths gained both more sail power and more righting moment.  Those two changes drove not only development of the IMCA Moths all the way to the hydrofoiling boats seen today, but also the creation of Classic Moths for those sailors who wanted to continue racing boats built more or less to the original development rules.