Plans for a Scow Moth; Bunyip IX

The Australian Scow Moth is one of the most exciting chapters in the history of building wooden racing dinghies. With the pressure cooker of constant hull development, builders were able to get the scow hulls below 40 lbs (18 kg) by paring away structure, till, all that was left was the essentials. Scow Moths were built like airplane wings; a very light skin (1.5 mm or 1/16" ply) supported by ribs and strategically placed bulkheads.

Ray Hilton, of Western Australia, designed and built scow Moths for his sons, Greg and John, through the 1970's to the mid 1980's. In 1982, Greg Hilton was the last Moth sailor to win a World Championship in a scow. Ray's Bunyip IX design (and the Ian Ward's, Jim French's, Andy McDougall's scow design) is where wooden Moth scow development stopped as the skiff hull in mid 1980's was rapidly outpacing the scow in International Moth competition.

Ray's plans and building instructions for the Bunyip IX, reproduced below, is a fascinating study of how to build very lightweight wooden boat racing dinghies. (To print or download, click on the upward arrow icon in the top-right app bar. The will open the PDF in another tab on your browser where you can print or download.)

• More readable station offsets for the Bunyip IX can be found here.
• Some pictures of Aussie scow Moths can be found here. 
• Australian Mark La has taken the Bunyip lines and made a flat-pack kit.
• Plans for the 1940's Len Morris scow Moth can be found here.