New Plywood Cherub Build

These photos of a plywood Cherub build in New Zealand crossed my Facebook feed. A plywood Cherub is a rare beast. As is the fashion these days, most Cherub's are built of more exotic composite materials. New Zealand, the home of the famous Kiwi designer, John Spencer and his Cherub class, has seen a recent revival of the class; the class being moribund since the 1990's. As I've mentioned, buried in an old post; I raced one weekend in an English Cherub regatta in the 1970's. (Back when the design fashion was a deep V carried all the way to the transom.) I've always had a soft spot for these 12' double-handers (the original single wire, wide Cherub, not the two wire, rack version the English cooked up to compete in their Portsmouth handicap racing).

This blog has sprinkled various Cherub antics throughout posts over the years.

This build uses 4mm plywood throughout. Minimum hull weight is 51 kg.

On the jig

Minimum frames, double bottom.

Carbon Tube for Pole Launcher.

Hull complete. Fitting rudder gantry.

Typical flat hull sections of an assymetric-powered skiff.

A modern Cherub upwind in max power conditions.

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Addendum April 2022

For a modern day source of Cherub plans, Alan Roper writes:

"In regards to the cherub it depends what you want .Greame Hill has a hull kitset I have designed. ...There is another boat I designed to he built of stitch and tape system and there is another one built of conventional methods. The latter 2 have paper plans.

Header Photo: Design Cartoon for a Bend-em-Up - Classic Moth?

The previous header photo was a design cartoon kicking around the Interwebs. There was no explanation attached but, if I engage in a bit of speculation, it seems to be a developed ply concept for a Classic Moth. Bill Schill did his last Maser conversion very similar to this, a radical looking Moth. Bill's Maser concept was very slow. Unfortunately, I have no photos of Bill's last Maser. It seems to me you could build a credible Classic Moth if you glommed some topsides onto the back half of the boat. It would take some tinkering; should be an easy build, though probably not a racing shape.

George A. has more on Bill Schill over at his Mid-Atlantic Musings blog.

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Update: January 18, 2021 - It turns out this design cartoon was actually built. She is a Classic Moth design by Bertrand Warion, a prolific builder of Moths, whose design and building inventiveness has been featured in many posts on Earwigoagin. Bertrand writes of this bend-em-up design;

"The Moth Classique is "Zazou" I designed in 2002/2003? The boat was made from one sheet plywood, 5mm exterior grade. [It] was easy [to build] and quite fast but the mast was not stiff enough. [She] is now destroyed. [There] is only one photo remaining."

Zazou is Moth number 203 to the right of this gaggle of classic Moths running downwind.