Saturday, February 25, 2017

International 14 from POW 1983


Yachts and Yachting

This photo is nostalgic in that it shows the International 14 at the end of my era; open layout, wood hulls, single trapeze, symmetric spinnaker. Within a year the class would adopt the double trapeze and shortly after that the assymmetric spinnaker. This photo is from Yachts and Yachting magazine and was the header photo for their Championship Roundup section which usually appeared in an October issue. The POW stands for the Prince of Wales Cup, a long distance race held on Thursday during the English Championships. In an odd but very sensible tradition, winning the one-shot POW was much more prestigious than winning the points championship for the week.

As an aside, the International 14 Annapolis fleet held a reunion this past January. About twenty of us showed up but I'll spare the reader of any photos of old, bald-headed, slightly paunchy dinghy sailors whose prime was forty years ago.

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