Friday, March 2, 2018

The Japanese Coca-Cola Moth

It appears that the Japanese Moth class got it start in the 1960's as a scow class sponsored by Coca-Cola. Here is the Japanese history as told by Ohno San;

"This photo (shown below) is from Kensaku Hashimoto. His dad was the Japanese distributor of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola-Japan got the lines drawing of the Peter Milne “Hurricane” scow Moth and sponsored the Okumura boatbuilders to build, in fiberglass, about 60 of the Milne design scows. As you can see from the photos, the Coca-Cola Moths had sails with a red stripe but didn’t sport the Coca-Cola logo.


Wooden masts and wooden booms.


This scow shown below may or may not be one of the original Coca-Cola Moths but it does have the double chine characteristic of the Milne "Hurricane" design. Also the halyard seems to be stored as in the other photos of the Coca-Cola Moths.


The number on this scow, 272, is a bit high for a Coca-Cola Moth but it does sport a red stripe on the sail. (The red stripe being higher up than the lower number Coca-Cola Moths.)


3 comments:

Alden Smith said...

Nice moths, and shows the power of a building programme to get people sailing - In my youth I sailed a New Zealand 7 foot 'P' Class yacht (fabulous little boat) with two red panels in the sail - I hated it and always wanted a pure white sail. I have carried that prejudice through into adulthood and either like a fully white or fully tan bark coloured sail.

Tweezerman said...

I like color in sails. Unfortunately color sailcloth is not as good as white sailcloth (at least for racing).

Nice write-up of the Zephyr Nationals. I see that you had a 75 boat fleet which is a big deal. It looks like in some countries the revival of dormant local singlehanders is backfilling where the Laser used to be dominant.

Alden Smith said...

Thanks for your comment on my Zephyr write up. It was a big fleet and exciting to sail in. It is unusual in NZ for there to be such a big fleet of what is a purely indigenous design - all the other fleets such as Finns, Laser, OK, Optimist have the opportunity for international and/or Olympic competition (and have grown or maintained their fleets) - so the Zephyr bucks the trend as it were.