A Piece of Furniture: A Division 2 Windsurfer Raceboard

Occasionally I've come across photos of exquisitely built and varnished small sailboats that I have been featured on Earwigoagin under the moniker Piece of Furniture. Such was the case recently when some photos of a beautifully wood molded Division 2 Windsurfer was posted in Facebook.

The stern has very similar conic sections to the Mistral design Classic Moth.

The Division 2 Windsurfer was the odd duck of the Windsurfing fraternity; a long skinny displacement board that was actually designed to go upwind, not so much blast downwind. It was the Olympic Windsurfing class in 1988 for the Seoul South Korea Olympics.

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Update: 8/20. Gui, one of my International Canoe buddies from back in the day, now fully immersed in all things Windsurfing and foiling, begs to differ on my classification of the D2 as a displacement craft:

"The D2 is clearly not a displacement board!...The D2's work OK in light air, but like most other sailing craft, they are much nicer to sail in 10+kts. They are as much displacement boards as the other long raceboards when the wind is down. They plane upwind at ~8-11kts and I got mine to ~20kts downwind, pretty sure a more committed D2 sailor with a modern design would be in the mid-20's."

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Internet research on this woodie picked up a post from Hit the Wave blog, that pointed to this beauty as possibly having a 1984 Brazilian origin from a Greek boatbuilder, cold molded in Cedar; a Greco.

Aussie Chris Thompson seconded Greco as the builder with this comment that I'm dragging over to the main post:

"It looks like a Greco from my memories; I was offered one of the top ones at the '85 worlds for a criminally low price, but had no way to get it from the UK to Australia. There's been a little revival in D2s lately, which is nice to see."

A Piece of Furniture: The "Woodie" Europe Dinghies

The designer of the Europe Dinghy, Belgian Alois Roland, originally built them in wood. When Roland's company went bankrupt, his assistant, Giuseppe Christalli continued building beautiful wood Europe dinghies. When the Europe Dinghy class went Olympic the wood boats were no longer competitive and the class became plastic and has remained one where the new boats are entirely made out of glass.

History of the Europe Dinghy from Classic Classes by Vanessa Bird.

My Dutch friend, René de la Rie, sent along photos of his stunning wooden Europe which is not a Roland or Christalli but a Tebberman. Tebberman was known primarily for his rudders and centerboards, and only built a few Europe Dinghies, but what lookers his Europe Dinghies were! Beautiful deep mahoganies were matched with contrasting lighter inlays to create masterpieces.

George A of Mid-Atlantic Musings also owns a Galetti woodie Europe. Whilst not as stunning as a Tebberman the Galetti hull is still very pretty. Galetti was an Italian builder on the southern shore of Lake Garda. He was more famous for his 505's and Quarter Tonners.  Over at his blog George A tries to identify the builder of his "woodie" Europe dinghy. George unveiled his woodie Europe with a new Bosquet foredeck at this year's Brigantine regatta.

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Redecking a glass Europe hull.

Boatbuilding: "A Piece of Furniture"

"A piece of furniture" we would often say as we eyeballed those McCutcheon or Souter built Classic International 14 dinghies, cold-molded in mahogany, glowing with multi-coats of varnish, all joints carefully crafted, beautiful wood everywhere. I was reminded of superior dinghy craftsmanship when I came across this stunning photo of  the interior of the most recent addition to the historical Australian 18 foot skiff fleet, the reproduction Myra Too.

Myra Too was built in 2013 by Bob McLeod to reconstructed lines (by Australian National Maritime Museum curator, David Payne) of the 1951 championship winner. Myra Too was originally built and raced by Aussie legend, Billy Barnett. To build the reproduction hull, Bob McLeod used silver ash and, in the inner and outer layers of the hull, Queensland red cedar (the outer layers used rare, full-length pieces estimated to be between 400 to 600 years old).

Here is the original post on Myra Too's construction from the Australian National Maritime Museum blog.

From YouTube comes what, at first view, looks to be a typical mast-head GoPro video -- this of the historical 18 footer Yendys going around the course, However, with the historical 18 footers nothing is typical. Of interest to me was the spinnaker set starting at about 1:50 into the video. It takes four crew members to get the mammoth spinnaker pole out onto the mast, three of them heave-ho pushing and a fourth slotting the multi-piece pole together as it goes out. Once out, this long, long spinnaker pole then wags all over the place as they go downwind. These pre WWII 18's were heavy dinghies with lots of crew and this video shows that they pushed a lot of water around as they bashed around the race-course.

The history of Yendys from the Australian National Maritime Museum blog.

"A rival of Britannia, Yendys was built in 1925 by Charlie Hayes for Norm Blackman. This big hull is also built in the traditional heavy scantlings, but it illustrates an early piece of innovation, its transom bow. Hayes had another legend working for him at the time, Charlie Peel, who had been successful with transom bows on 14-foot skiffs in Victoria. As well, the 1920s was the time when the Restricted 21s showed how fast a lighter-keel boat could go, and Hayes and Peel were in the thick of this class too. Out comes Yendys, with its sawn-off profile and veed bow shapes, a sort of restricted-class yacht crossed with a skiff and with the bow overhang squared off. Despite the odd mix it went pretty well too, but although another two snub-nosers were built in that time, the idea did not catch on. It did show there was room to move in the rules, though, and the Queenslanders took on both innovation and the establishment at the same time."

And a post featuring a photo of a pretty deck on a 505.