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.

Steve Toschi, Dave Klipfel from the 1970's

I periodically check the Google Stats on this blog for search keywords that Net denizens are using to get directed to Earwigoagin. Two days ago these odd search keywords popped up, "Steve Toschi International 14 sailboat."

Steve Toschi was United States' top International 14 skipper in the mid-1970's. With Dave Klipfel in charge of the front half of the 14, this team won several National championships and also the prestigious POW cup in England in 1975 (The second American team to do so; Stuart Walker and Stovey Brown being the first in 1964).  Steve and Dave were a Mutt and Jeff team, but backwards for a trapeze dinghy; Steve the skipper, long and lanky, Dave the trapeze crew, short and quick. (This was not too unusual for the American International 14 fleet at the time, there being a good number of women crews; even I got my start crewing International 14's as a scrawny teenager.)

Steve had his own sail loft in San Francisco at that time, Leading Edge Sails, and the team was always blazing fast in any breeze (as all of the San Francisco 14'ers were, living and sailing and surviving in the big breeze of San Francisco Bay). I ended up having my best two competitive years in the International 14's when I had the good fortune to race on Steve Toschi's ex-POW winner, Stradivarius, once it got sold into the east coast.

I figured, given the chance that, down the road, some other person would sit down and type the Google search words "Steve Toschi International 14 sailboat" I should dig into my archives and provide some content that would match the keywords. I found two photos.

I think this is the 1973 U.S. Nationals in San Francisco Bay. Steve and Dave are in US 946 which is a Sailnetics Kirby IV.

Steve raising the main at the dock. This looks like the same KIV. Later on Steve would design and build two 14's, his first design, Home Brew, a three planker plywood design that was ingeniously engineered to take the fiberglass interior of the Sailnetics KIV. Notice that T-shirts and jeans were considered perfectly acceptable as sailing kit in the 1970's - most of us favoring the cut-off jean shorts that Dave is sporting in this photo (and now, 40 years on, these jeans contributed to our generation keeping a legion of dermatologists busy today).

Bosham SC Classic Revival 2012

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that Bosham Sailing Club on Chichester Harbor (U.K.) ran a Classic event this fall that mostly featured the English Classic Racing Dinghies such as Fireflies, old International 14's, Solo's, Merlin Rocket's and National 12's and rarer dinghies such as National 18's, Thames A-Raters, and Tideway's. The event turned out to be very popular with 79 entrants. The Classic Moth, a Shelly design, with the transitional high-aspect ratio Aussie Rig that was adopted in 1969 (unlike the Classic Moths over here that have stuck with the low-aspect pre-1969 rig) won the medium handicap fleet. I have, in my usual style, pilfered some pics.

One of the Classic International 14's competing, this one skippered by Sarah Vaughn, who, I'm guessing, may be the daughter of Tom Vaughn, renowned as the eminent class historian. Hull looks to be a later Kirby design.

Addendum from a readers comment;

"Sarah Vaughan... She crewed for me in that boat at Rickmansworth (where we won the races) after I sailed the POW with her father, Tommy. That was nearly 40 years ago! Beautiful and a great crew, it's great to see her still sailing. Sarah and I became friends and I will never forget Steve Toschi saying that though he won the POW, I had gotten the real prize! How I wish!"

Ian Marshall in his Shelly Classic Moth, designed in the late 1960's.

Launching down the slipway at low tide.

Also a well done video of the event by SailTV.

Tom Price Illustration; Windrustler

Good friend Tom Price, knowing my interest in all things to do with Classic International 14's, sent along one of his charcoal illustrations of Tom sailing his International 14 over in England, circa probably early 1980's. Although Tom doesn't make a living as a professional artist, his work has illustrated Stuart Walker's books and one of his drawings hangs in my living room.

Tom currently is a top competitor in the Star and 210 fleets as well as a crack helmsman on several larger keelboats on the Chesapeake Bay.

From Tom's email;

"Windrustler" winning "Old Boats Prize" at POW, Hastings, sailed by Tom Price, Louis Phillips from Annapolis, Md. Super Casson III design, McCutcheon built originally for Jeremy Pudney,