Warren Bailey, The Catamaran Moth

There has been some discussion over at the Classic Moth forum about the hard wings that are showing up on the International foiler Moths. This discussion segued into another discussion about some of North America's own inventive Moth developers back in the day. One in particular, Floridian Warren Bailey, was very productive in the 1950's and 1960's. He designed the Mach 1 which was then modified to become the very popular Florida/Cates Moth in the 1960's. He was one of a triumvirate that designed the Challenger Moth, a fiberglass Moth that was also produced in numbers. His son George Bailey posted this article on Warren on the Classic Moth forum;

Mach I and Cates

Warren Bailey won the Antionio trophy (called the world’s) in 1954 racing the Mach I, the hull he built that was the first of its kind, and that Harry Cates copied. Cates gave his version 3” less vee since this made it a lot easier to sail and also made it easier to build. On the original Mach I and the first two copies Cates built for people up north, the ply would not make the bow shape, so you had to build a glass bow and add it, as my father had done to the original hull when he was unhappy with how it pointed (or didn’t, as it were). With less vee the ply would bend enough to make the shape of the partly plumb bow. One of the early Cates was purchased from Charley Shelton, painted black, named the Mach II, and raced by my sister. Eventually Warren, who sold the Mach I just after wining the Antionio, bought her back – this was around 1959 or so. I raced the Mach I in late 1960 and through 1961 until I went to the UofF in Sept 1961. The Mach II was slower than the Mach I.

Warren had many requests to build Mach I copies. He did not build moths to sell. He built them to improve the design. For a living, he built 38’-45’ strip planked ocean racing centerboarders.

After the Mach I Warren built perhaps eight more attempts to build a faster hull. He then decided he could not. So he quit building and racing Moths. He insists that his only interest was in building a faster hull and racing was how he tested hulls. He said that otherwise, he was not interested in racing. If you consider how relatively crude his rig was in the days when olympic dinghys had a zillion control lines, this seems to fit. On his rig, you could not change anything once you went out other than set the vang to one or two or three knots in the vang line (something you had to do between heats). I remember the first time I saw a boat set up with lots of control lines – around 59’ or 60” in St. Pete? I was amazed at what we were not doing. But if you could hold her level the Mach I was still so fast relative to the competition in 1961 that it did not matter.

George B

I then came across this photo of Warren Bailey racing his own design rule beater catamaran Moth which was eventually outlawed. George, looks like you could provide another story behind this project.