Classic Moth design; Mousetrap vs. Mistral

I got an email from Duncan, asking for some clarification on Classic Moth designs. Operating on the presumption that, if Duncan is confused, there may be others in the bloggosphere with the same question (then again, maybe not), I've decided to put my reply to Duncan in this blog post.

"Would [you] mind identifying some Moths from the pics on your blog. I'm in the process of finding a dignhy design to build from. The boats that caught my eye are: The third boat from the left in the first pic from your blog entry on Nov 18, 2010."

Duncan is referring to my Cooper River frostbite post. In the group Moth photo, the third Moth from the left is George A's fiberglass Olympic Europe dinghy (Correction from George, actually Ed Salva's Winner Europe dinghy), a very popular class in it's own right in Europe and South America. It's very hard to get plans for the Europe dinghy from the ISAF. They will send measurement offsets for a fee but when these are plotted out, there is not enough information to make station molds. George, Bill and I took some lines off an old Europe several years ago. There has been talk of doing a stripper Europe off these lines but, so far, no one has taken the plunge. Walt Collins is also talking of doing a multichine plywood Europe shape. He was hoping to have something drawn up by this summer. If you would like George to send you a copy of our Europe lines for a nominal fee, mosey on over to the Classic Moth website for contact information.

"Jeff Linton's Florida Mod Mistral (or Mousetrap?) from your blog entry on Oct 25 2010. Are the Florida Mod Mistral and the Mousetrap the same design? From outside the Moth world I was not sure if this was the case."

Yes, what I refer to as the Linton Mousetrap design and the Florida mod Mistral are one and the same. Essentially the Mistral design (and the Mousetrap design) are bent up into shape using two 3 mm plywood panels, a starboard and port panel. "Stitch and glue video here." Instead of using the normal rounded Mistral transom, Jeff used a wider transom, supposedly copied from the Europe dinghy but, to my mind, a somewhat different shape given the difficulty of bending plywood. Refer to this transom picture of a Mousetrap from Len Parker. With more transom, Jeff had to futz around with the sheerline, giving the Mousetrap's aft deck a reverse curve not seen in the Mistral. To build a Mousetrap, get a hold of the Mistral plans and then you are on your own for the transom shape. Greg Duncan with his home built Mousetrap variant was featured in this post.

Here is a beam on photo of Jeff's Mousetrap by Len Parker..........