Header Photo: Three Vintage Classic Moths All in a Row

Photo taken on the docks at Brigantine Y.C. New Jersey.

Blogger George A. ID's the three Classic Moth designs in a comment which I've dragged over to the main post.

"The white boat is a Skip Etchells "Connecticut" design. Skip lived in Old Greenwich, CT at the time; the bright boat with blue side boards is a Dorr Willey-built Moth from Elizabeth City, NC; the yellow and black boat was built by Fran Abbott in Ocean City, NJ

CLC's Outrigger Junior

John Z., Bob Ames and I made a point to travel east to wander around the kayaks and small sailboats that abounded at Chesapeake Light Craft's OcoumeFest over on Kent Island this past May. This is a CLC promotional event; for the most part, the small craft here are owner-built CLC kit boats. I did run into two interesting sailors who I proceeded to engage in long conversations. Dudley Dix, yacht designer, was there with his Paper Jet dinghy. Fortunately for me there was no wind so he was grounded on the beach. We talked at length about the catastrophic rudder failure and capsize on the aborted Capetown to Rio race in his design Black Cat - Click here to read this previous Earwigoagin post. He told a fascinating and harrowing story which reaffirms my desire to remain in dinghies close to shore and eschew any ocean racing. I also ran into Ben Fuller, a friend from back in the 1980's who was there to do the short 65 mile version of the Chesapeake Challenge in his kayak, which was to start Sunday on the morrow. As with any conversation with Ben we covered a lot of ground, from sailing 210's in Hawaii, to Delaware Hikers with racks, to his latest project of digitizing historical commercial fisherman and waterman photos.

One of John Harris's designs that caught my eye was the two prototype 15' proas which he has named the Outrigger Junior. Designed for off-the-beach sailing, it looks like a reasonable kit-built alternative to the Hobie 16. Never having sailed a proa, I'm not sure what the experience is like but there has to be considerable difference from tack to tack; on one tack leveraging the weather ama with your weight and on the other tack, counting on the now-leeward ama to take all the sail loads. The sail plan is large and is of the crab-claw configuration (basically a lateen with a forward raked main-mast which keeps the boom well up in the air).

John Z. was particularly interested in the netting used between the main hull and ama on the Junior.

The wooden cross beams were reinforced with carbon fiber.

A beach photo of OcoumeFest.

A Cautionary Tale of Ultralightweight Production Dinghies

I have been keeping up with Tillerman's excellent posts about his new love, the RS Aero singlehander. RS intends to build the Aero hull to a 30 kg. (66 lbs.) hull weight. This is a very, very ambitious target for a production dinghy. When I read of such super-lightweight numbers for the hull, especially for a dinghy designed for mass-market appeal, it reminds me of a cautionary tale from my days as a young blood, not quite 40 years ago.

In the 1970's Ian Bruce followed up the Laser with the two man Tasar, a very early, ambitious attempt to reset dinghy technology. The Tasar, designed by Frank Bethwaite, was a larger version of the Northbridge Senior, a 14' two person hiking development class in Australia. The NS 14 was built at that time, in plywood to 100 lbs hull weight. Ian and Frank figured they could build the larger Tasar to 140 lbs. hull weight in foam/glass, a good 50 lbs. lighter than the Windmill class, which, here in the United States, we considered lightweight. The prototype Tasar, which I got to sail, was beautifully built in Montreal using Kevlar skins over foam core and polyester resin. Testing of the prototype showed no problems.

However, when Performance Sailcraft switched the Tasar to the production phase, economics dictated that the Kevlar skins be jettisoned and very thin glass skins substituted to keep the hull weight at 140 lbs.. When the first production boats came out, it quickly became obvious that the thin glass skins had nowhere near the dent resistance of the prototype's Kevlar skins. Treating early production Tasars over the space of several months with, what we considered normal Laser-type usage in the seventies, (dollies were mostly non-existent) quarter size dents appeared over the bottom of the production Tasar hull, giving the hull an appearance of surviving a hailstorm. Occasionally a stray protruding nail head on a dock would actually puncture the outer skin. This fragility would doom the Tasar in North America. It would not be another best-seller for Performance Sailcraft. In his next attempt at the market, Ian Bruce stepped back and did a more Laser-like two-hander, the Laser II.

Granted, in forty years, today's material technologies for building production dinghies have improved and RS is using all the modern wrinkles to create the Aero. Epoxy resin is better than polyester. There are better fabrics. Still, thin outer skins over foam construction are more damage prone. Two or three years ago I was on the lawn at West River Sailing Club at the end of a day of racing. The A-Cat catamarans (which use similar thin skin construction to keep weight to a minimum - though they use carbon skins throughout) had been racing and I watched a fellow maneuver his A around the various boats strewn on the lawn to reach the water hose at the side of the club. In the process of turning, he smacked one of his hulls against the corner of the club house, leaving a nice dent about 6 inches from the transom. To an A-Cat skipper, this type of damage is part and parcel of owning a very lightweight, very high-performance sailboat. I'm not sure, given the intended market RS has envisioned for the Aero, that this constant danger of small contact becoming a visual blemish, lump, dent, or hollow on the hull is what an RS Aero skipper is buying into. It will be interesting to see how the introduction of the RS Aero plays out. And, I will be the first to admit, many times my predictions have been wrong.

Click here for some previous Earwigoagin posts that have featured the Tasar.

Click here for some previous Earwigoagin posts that have featured the RS Aero.

Another Home-Brew video of Classic Moth Designs

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been unearthing some old video clips on my hard drive. This is one where, for the first time, I narrated the video as I shot it. Unfortunately you have to put up with the blogmeister's mumble-mouth delivery which demonstrates that I, thankfully, could have never had a career as a TV newsreader. (Even I have a hard time deciphering what I was trying to say - at one point it sounds like I said "outspoken cockpit" when describing an open cockpit design - Sheesh!)

There is one historical mistake in the video. Skip Etchells did his Connecticut design in the late 1940's, not the late 1950's.

Old Timey Ad: St. Lawrence River Skiff, Canoe, and Steam Launch Company

From Forest and Stream, June 30, 1894. The La Gloria model is what "small boat" sailing was considered back then. (There was also the "canoemen" with their tiny cockleshells and piles of canvas - but they were a special breed - still are.)

Game On!

I am not a Superfan. You won't find me wearing team shirts or as standard fixture in the stands watching any professional sport. If I watch a sporting event on TV it is in short spurts, rarely do I take the whole game in -- Except for two events; Olympic Ice Hockey and the FIFA World Cup (La Copa del Mundo for my Hispanic friends). The World Cup starts tomorrow and I'll  watch as much as I can.

Although I'm not a native born American, U.S.A is my team. I like how the German coach Klinsman has transformed our attack. Unlike our previous rope-a-dope strategy of playing stingy defense and hoping for the miraculous counterattack (see Landon Donovan in 2010, or an own goal as was the case against Columbia in 1994), this year we can give anybody fits. For Brazil, it is obvious we fell into a tough group for the first games; we meet world powers Germany, Portugal, and also Ghana, who has eliminated us the last two World Cups. A steep hill to climb and all the better to tune in.

Game On!

Official World Cup song by PitBull



Pitbull ft Jennifer Lopez & Claudia Leitte - We Are One (Ole Ola)(The Official 2014 World Cup Song) [Intro] - Clean HD from DJ Brandon Crites on Vimeo.

Header Photo: Australian Historical 10-Foot Skiffs - To the Back of the Bus!

This is the second time I have featured the crazy Australian 10-foot Historical Skiffs in a header photo. To fit three grown adults in a 10 foot racing dinghy and pile on the sail area is bad-ass in the extreme. Here is a onboard video of one racing. Join me in marveling as the crew camps out in the back of this rolly-rolly bus downwind (sometimes you just have to sit on the transom). The action heats up at about 2 minutes into the video.