Header Photo: The New Zealand "Zeddie"

Buchanan Collection Auckland Library

The previous header photo was of the New Zealand Z class, affectionately known as the "Zeddie". This photo was part of a collection of New Zealand dinghy photos taken by Arthur Victor Buchanan during the 1950's and put online by the Auckland Libraries. This is Z-27 "Dawn" ripping it under the shy kite; the header photo is a cropped version of id 6D-007 in the Auckland Library collection.

New Zealand yachtig historian, Neil Kennedy, alerted me to the photo archive online at the Auckland Library and tells the story of the Zeddie below.

"Zeddies... this Dawn Z 27. [The] only known sailing reference [to her] was in the 1953 Auckland Anniversary Regatta sailed on the last Monday in January each year (public holiday to celebrate the founding of the Auckland Province) which certainly was the biggest one day regatta in the world of its type. Everyone who had a yacht sailed on that day; for many it was the only race they competed in every season. Dawn was sailed by a J D McKay and crew and was only giving time to the scratch boats (1%) time allowance in the A division Z class fleet...

"The photo is taken off Devonport on the North Shore side of Auckland harbour and she is heading down towards North Head,... broad reaching in 12 to 15kn south westerly, with gusts up to 18 to 20 kts, which are a feature of Auckland Harbour. She has clearly caught one, screaming, hike-out and hang-on rides in these typical Auckland conditions. The road in the background is the Waterfront drive that goes to the Eastern Suburbs. Incidentally setting and gybing the spinnaker, could be pretty exciting in a fresh breeze as once the nose [of a Zeddie] went down they could be a real handful. (Hence the large "splashboards" running back from bow to aft of the side stays, which saved many a crew from a spectacular capsize.)...

"The dimensions of a Zeddie> Length 12ft 6 in., Beam 5ft 0 in., Depth 1ft 4in., Sail area (originally a gunter main) 110sqft, Spin 60 sq ft single luff, spars solid oregon Mast 11ft 3in Gaff 10ft boom 12ft 3in spinnaker pole 9ft 3in , Hull construction planked Kauri or Kahikatea (white pine) seam batten with sawn frames and canvas covered decks. The Zeddie would have been close to 300lbs hull weight at launching, so to get her up and planing like that shows the power of the rig. Crew two, under 19yrs. Yes girls did sail on them in small numbers too at club level. How many were actually built in Auckland is hard to know but sail numbers reached 200 on the Auckland register, and given number reissues (a common practice) and the fact they were sailed all over NZ, a probable estimate is around 500 NZ wide so they were one of the biggest small boat classes in NZ , until the arrival of the Cherub and the NZ Moth ( MK II) .

"While they were adequate to windward, they were essentially a "down-wind" boat and the stories of John Spencer (who started in Zeddies) of slogging for miles to windward just so they could enjoy a wild ride down wind are legendary. This is part of the heritage that made NZ yachties such great downwind heavy weather sailors.

"Note a couple of things: The skipper has no tiller extension, although they started to appear from 53 onwards, so good skippers developed long arms... The hiking straps were made from rubberised machine belts (discarded or 'borrowed" from machinery factories) and were quiet common.(Canvas ones had a tendency to rot and suddenly give way.) At the bow chain plate what looks like a "horn" sticking out is in fact a piece of folded 'hose" designed to catch wayward spinnaker sheets or even spinnaker pole braces from getting under the boat during setting/dousing or gybing, particularly with the single luff spinnakers... There were separate guys (port and starboard) which were shackled to the sidestay at the deck then run through a snaphook at the end of the spinnaker and back to a horn cleat on the deck aft. Some boats just had cleats others had bullseyes in front of the cleat as well. Spinnaker work was deemed a premium skill for a forward hand and the best could set and gybe a spinnaker in 15secs or less. Bailing out excess water was done with a large tin can and shirts, football shorts, lifejackets (sometimes an oilskin jacket) were the standard crew attire all year round... You had to be fit, hard and tough or you soon learnt to be.

The Zeddie was designed in the 1920's; among a group of flattie dinghy designs born of the Great Depression; including, in the U.S.A; Comet, Lightning, Geary 18, the Australian VeeJay, the French 9m2 Sharpie, in New Zealand alongside the Zeddy, the Idle Along. A modern rendition of the Zeddie with Dacron sails and an aluminum mast is shown below. In searching the Net, it looks like the Zeddie was racing a class championship up to the year 2013.

Wikipedia entry for the Zeddie

Header Photo: Big Tasmanian Dinghy

As you would guess, I have a lot of sailing images collected from the Web; some filed in generic terms that give me no help in identifying them when I want to post them up on Earwigoagin. This great photo is one of them. I filed it under New Zealand-boat-planing, but I have no idea what class it is. This is quite a large dinghy, planing quite happily. I peg the date to be immediate post WWII. I'll see if any of my readers can fill in the details.

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I figured it would be Neil Kennedy, Antipodean historian par excellence, that would set me straight on this photo. Neil writes:

"That [photo] is definitely NOT a NZ class; we didn't ever wear white sailing gear and "Aussie Sunhats". I think you will find that the picture is of a 21ft restricted class that was sailed in Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia from the early 1900's till the 1950's. They had a challenge trophy which was fought out on an interstate challenge basis with a level of intensity to rival the NYY (New York Yankess for those not versed in American sports culture) v Red Socks saga's. I have a feeling that they originally sailed for the "Stonehaven Cup", donated by a Lord Stonehaven for interstate competition, but not 100% certain on that. I think a couple have been restored in Tasmania, and were featured in recent "Classic Yacht regatta's held in Hobart. Like all Aussie yachts they carried plenty of Rag ( sail) and a crew of hefty footballers to keep them afloat."

TOH to Neil of NedsLocker.

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More digging around the web shows this is the Tasmanian 21ft. Restricted Class, Tassie Too, recently restored. And the Interdominion Cup was called the Forster Cup. From the Royal Brighton Y.C. Victoria history:

A Brief History of the Extreme-V Classic Moth

Moth Classique

The Swiss-Dunand Moth represents a radical design jump in Moths. Not seen before in Moths were the very deep V sections of the Dunand, married to high rocker, resulting in a very narrow waterline. It was a design type that was to dominate the non-wing Moth era in the mid to late 1960's. From an historical viewpoint, it would be nice to credit a designer or group of Mothies for the development, but it appears this slice of European history hasn't yet made it completely out to the English speaking world. From what I have been able to determine:

1. The Swiss Mothies were the first ones to develop this shape as a light-air lake flyer. It became an all-around design in the Dunand version and Swiss Jean-Pierre Roggo would win the Moth Worlds three years running, from 1964 to 1966. Besides Roggo, other Swiss Mothies sailing the Dunand were Claude Barth, Dennis Weber and Hogg
2. In the winter of 1966, Benoit Duflos designed his very deep-V version Moth and the Duflos would dominate Europe through the rest of the 1960's. The Duflos was tortured into a shape beyond what you could bend a single sheet of plywood and was built using a horizontal slit about mid panel each side.
3. In 1970, Brit Derek Chester would design the Mistral as a version of the Duflos that could be tortured up. Although in the 1970's, the Mistral design didn't find great success in Europe, the Mistral became the marquee racing design in the American Classic Moth Boat Association from 1999 onward.

The lines of the Duflos: (again use the pop-out icon to print or download).

1960's Duflos on trailer (with typical buff body of all Mothies of that age).

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Some questions about the early history of the very deep-V?

1. Who was Dunand?
2. In the Swiss fleet, was there some precursor to the Dunand design that showed the way or does the Dunand design all alone represent a radical leap of faith? My assumption is the Swiss were initially working off the Fragniere design.
3. There is mention that Jacques Fauroux had a deep-V design in the early 1960's. Where does this design fit into the chronology?

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Mention must be also made of Chris Eyre's Lucky Sixpence design of 1966. This was another chined deep-V design, though Chris was working with wings in mind and his design had much straighter topsides.

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Fellow Moth historian, good friend, George Albaugh,

who lives just down the road put these comments up, with the blogmeister adding my two-cents worth. Other fellow Moth historians, Doug Halsey and John Claridge, chime in as well on this discussion.

One. GA: Warren Bailey's "Mach One" design (World's winner in 1954) had so much rocker in the keel that the forward panels had to be pulled up "pram" style and then a false pointy glass nose was grafted onto the boat to give the hull a sharp stem look. "Mach One" had a deep vee that was similar to that of the Mistral/Duflos and may have been deeper than the Swiss design. The Cates-Florida design is a very watered down version of Mach One.

Tweezerman: You make a good point that Bailey's "Mach One" might be considered the original extreme-V. It was definitely considered more extreme than the Cates version that came after the original - but how extreme? Extreme enough to be lumped in with these later designs? I think not, but we only have photos of the "Mach One" to pore over and when I think tamatoo, you think tomato. We do know the Swiss Dunand's came over in 1965 and thumped the Cates. Would they have done the same to the Mach One? It would be correct to say the "Mach One", the "Cates", and the "Fragniere" were deep-V but I don't think the "Mach One" is extreme enough to achieve the reduction of wetted surface these designs achieved.

GA: As for whether or not Mach One was a deep-vee, narrow water line boat compared to the Mistral, we'd need access to Warren's half model which his son George has, rather than my memory. I think the most dated aspect of the Bailey design would be the small, pinched transom--a feature replicated on the Cates-Florida design. The Mistral would plane sooner.

Two. GA: Duflos' boat was designed in '62 rather than '66. He tweaked the design in '72 to accommodate the the then newly adopted Aussie tall rig.

Tweezerman: This is where the history is somewhat muddied. I do have a design list in my archives, listing the Duflos as a 1962 design. I also have in my archives a history that lists the Duflos as a design done in the fall of 1966 and introduced at the Cannes Ski-Sail Regatta, April 1967. I'm going with 1966 for two reasons. If the Duflos was introduced in 1962 it should have been competing with the Swiss Moth and most likely winning. There is no record of that occurring. Also, Chris Eyre wrote a report of the 1967 Europeans where he mentioned the Duflos as a new design, at least new to the English. If the Duflos design had been out for four years by 1967, I don't think anyone would have considered it a new design.

GA: I have plans from Benoit Duflos dated 1962.

John Claridge:The first [Duflos] I saw in the UK was built for Bridget Quick, again by Bill McCutcheon, in I think 1966.

Doug Halsey: I also have plans from Benoit Duflos dated 1962, and a 1966 newspaper article (in French) referring to the 1962 date. Marie-Claude Fauroux sailed the Duflos at the 1966 Worlds in Lausanne and was extremely fast, but inconsistent. She won 3 of the 6 races, but was out of the top 10 in the other 3 and finished 4th in the final standings. (Lots of us, other than Roggo and Ganter, were very inconsistent.) Benoit Duflos and Jacques Fauroux were also there, but were not in the top 10 overall. (I'm not sure if Jacques was sailing a Duflos, or if he was there for every race though). I have newspaper articles with results of individual races, photos, and longer discussions (in French), and some shorter clips from the London Times, which I will scan and probably post somewhere when I get a chance.

Three. GA: The designer of the Mistral--a clever attempt to capture Duflos' elegant but difficult to build shape, using flat ply panels, was Derek Chester, NOT Merv Cook! The Mistral design went through two versions (we use the Mk II version here) and was followed by the Mirage which while mimicking the Mistral shape was much narrower. The Mirage required wings and even so was difficult to sail in a breeze. Few were built as faster narrow winged Moths like the Stockholm Sprite hit the race course at about the same time. The main appeal of the Mirage was that it was so narrow, one could get both hull panels from a single 4 x 12 sheet of ply.

Tweezerman: Busted on that one! I got to the end of writing the post and went with my faulty memory instead of fact checking. I've done the correction in the main post. I've tried to remain with designs that were done in the non-wing era. Below is the lines of a modified Mistral - the Y2KBug. The transom has been flattened on this mod

4. Four. GA:  I have never seen any of Jacques Fauroux's boats from the early '60s but several French designers beyond Fauroux and Duflos were building their own boats then. One of the unifying aspects of French and Swiss Moths of this era was the love of the free-standing or "Finn rig" mast. Later on, towards the end of the low aspect era, both Jacques and his sister Marie-Claude were racing Duflos Moths. Marie-Claude is one of two women to win the World's out right.

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1971 Fauroux: Neil Kennedy, digging through his extensive yachting library of Nedslocker, sends along this design sketch of the 1971 World Champion Jacques Fauroux extreme-V Moth. For the 1971 Worlds Jacques had done a modified Duflos, with even more rocker than the Duflos and a more circular midsection. He had built her out of 2mm. ply at a hull weight of 22 kg. Width was 5 feet (1.52 meters) with 4 inch (.1 meter) gunwhales.

Seacraft Magazine, March 1972

Wolstenholme Punt Singlehander

Upon seeing my post on the tricked out Swedish D-Kanot, Neil Kennedy of NedsLocker sent along this article of a singlehander design by Brit Andrew Wolstenholme, based off the Norfolk Punt class. I've included the article below. Wolstenholme's design is smaller than the D-Kanot and is a simple V shape, not round bilged, but it is interesting to see how similar these two designs are, given the very different design traditions they draw upon.



A photo of a vintage gunter-rigged Norfolk Punt...

..which is a far cry from how the modern Norfolk Punt is set up today (trapezes, assymetric spinnakers, carbon spars, etc).

Articles from Nedslocker: Northbridge Junior build - Australian Sailing 2002

You can't put anything up about Antipodean classes that Neil Kennedy doesn't have an archived article to supplement it with. Linking with the Japanese build of the Northbridge Junior, Neil sends along this article from Australian Sailing on a Northbridge Junior build in Sydney. (Use the pop-out icon on top right of article window to put it in another tab on your browser.)

Articles from Nedslocker: Aussie Plywood, Frame and Stringer Construction

Over the past year Neil Kennedy had been digging into his vast archive of magazine articles and sending them along to Earwigoagin. These two articles about the introduction of the plywood frame and stringer construction in the 16 footers I find particularly interesting. The 16-footers may be considered the baby brother to the 18-footers but, as Neil points out, in the late 1950's and 1960's they were developing faster than the 18-footers. The Australians (in the 16-footers, the Western Australians) were the leaders in pushing lightweight frame and stringer construction for their performance classes.



Even back in 1959 the plywood they used for the 16-footers was 4 mm., which is really light for what is essentially an open boat. As a comparison, most plywood International 14's of the 1960's (there weren't many - most were cold molded designs) used 6 mm. On Evelyn, the 16-footer, I count twelve stringers over the hull bottom (plus the center plank).



You see a similar surfeit of fore-aft stringers in "Vitamin C", one of the last plywood champion 12 foot Cherubs of the early 1970's.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Chapman

"Vitamin C" on a ripping tight spinnaker reach.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Chapman

Header Photo: Dave Porter and crew in the Wooden 18-Footer "Aussie"

Sea Spray Annual

In response to the photo of the extreme hiking on a scow Moth, Kiwi Neil Kennedy sent along the previous header photo of extreme trapezing on an Aussie 18-footer. No idea on the date but my guess is sometime during the 1970's. From the photo caption:

"Most dynamic skipper in eighteens today is without doubt Dave Porter in "Aussie". Here he is demonstrating his extreme trapeze style in which he actually looks ahead underneath his crewmen, Bob Moore and Ted Griffiths. "Aussie" in the past year has chalked up a remarkable series of wins, among them the NSW state title, and second in the Australian title to "Travelodge" (Bob Holmes).

Neil Kennedy fleshes out the history of Dave Porter and "Aussie".

"Aussie was a 1970/71 season Sydney 18 and the first three handed 18 which finally led to the demise in Sydney of the four handers that had dominated the 18's from 63 onwards.

"She was designed by NZ amateur designer John Chapple who was a very successful 12ft skiff sailor and featured a high aspect ratio rig with a short footed jib. She quite straight fore and aft [ed. note: i.e. rocker] but with slack saucer like sections from midships which made her very quick but equally slippery down wind and especially gybing. That season was very much a crossroads design with the Hugh Cook designed Travelodge being the latest refinement of the Sydney four handers, and the powerful Wille B design leading that theme, while in NZ the first really successful Bruce Farr Miss UEB showed a taste of what was to come in the next four years, when Bruce dominated the class. That whole period is a great story in itself.

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The Aussies are coming! To Annapolis....

In somewhat related news, the National Sailing Hall of Fame made the announcement that a contingent of Classic Australian 18-Footers is making a trip to Annapolis for the Classic Wooden Boat Regatta. Date is Sept 15-17, 2017. From the NSHOF announcement:

"The "Classic" is an informal opportunity for boats of all different sizes and designs to compete together in a low-key race against other wooden vessels. The event has grown each year, with boats ranging in size from 8-feet to 65-feet and traveling from as far away as Canada to participate. That record will be broken this year, when sailors from the Sydney Flying Squadron, Australia's oldest open boat sailing club, will be visiting Annapolis to participate using their own fleet of historical 18-foot skiffs, which they are shipping here from Australia specifically for this event.

18-foot skiffs, considered by many to be the fastest class of sailing skiffs, began racing on Australia's Sydney Harbor in 1892 and later in New Zealand. Called "Aussie 18s" by their owners, the skiffs will be dockside for public viewing on Friday and Saturday, September 15-16, along with the many other participating classic boats.

"We are very excited to have the 18-footers from Australia here for the Classic Race," said Maria Museler, the event's volunteer organizer. "Anyone who loves wooden sailboats won't want to miss this great opportunity to meet with wooden sailboat owners, take part in a fun race, and show off your classically designed sailboat for everyone in Annapolis, Maryland."

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Wowee! HotDawg! Sandbaggers and Classic 18-Footers together. Two over-canvassed, over-crewed vintage battlewagons. Should be quite a sight on Annapolis Harbor.

String Pullers Convention: Hucklebuckfive

In response to my post about the 505's and their array of strings, Kiwi Neil Kennedy (who seems to have a vast archive of vintage magazine material about dinghy sailing) sent along a Yachting World article from May of 1972. It featured a recently launched Flying Dutchman, Hucklebuckfive, a craft that was billed as the "Worlds most complicated dinghy." Attached is a PDF of that article. Of note is the "blobcatcher" (pg. 2), which used a clock mechanism to adjust the jib halyard "one click at a time."

New Zealand Classic Skiff Moths

Neil Kennedy of New Zealand sent along some magazine snippets of the New Zealand Classic Skiff Moths, specifically from Seacraft magazine - 1958 and 1959, and Sea Spray magazine - 1965.

Most of the designs look very similar to our CMBA Shelley model. (Not surprising since Shelley was a transplanted Kiwi living in England during the 1960's when he was designing dinghies.)

Some items of interest from the magazine articles:

• The 1958 cover of Seacraft has a Hawk design skiff with a rotating mast.
• Bruce Farr got his start mucking around with Moth designs. His Mark III model is shown in the 1965 issue of Sea Spray. I didn't realize he had a brother, Alan, that was also his compatriot in cooking up Moth designs.
• The Antipodean Moths always had a taller, fully battened sail plan compared to the American Mothboat.

Header Photo: The New Zealand M Class

The previous header photo was of the New Zealand classic M Class, a restricted lapstrake design originally by Arch Logan from the 1920's. Below is another M going upwind. I culled these beautiful photos from Facebook so I'm not sure who the photographer is.

Neil Kennedy, New Zealand trade consultant, and sailing historian on the side, sent along several emails detailing the history of the M Class. A tip-of-the-hat to Neil from Earwigoagin for filling us in on these classics.

"Now to try and give you a hopefully " brief " understanding of the two photos and the origins of the class. The yachts concerned are M class which is a restricted center board class that sprang from a design by Arch Logan in 1922 for a prominent Auckland family for their two sons. The first named "Mawhiti" and the second "Manene" were launched in 1922 and made an immediate impression. They evolved into a class which attracted the interest of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron ( the leading yacht club based in Auckland) . The "M" designation came from a decision by the Auckland Provincial Yachting Assoc to classify the various and rapidly growing yachting fleet in Auckland by designating the various types of keel boats and center boarders with a letter and a number.

"As with all great ideas it worked until vested interests bent the rules. In the case of "Mawhiti" and her sister ships it was assumed that they would be classed with the other 18ft center boarders as a V class, but the RNZYS decided that their new restricted centerboard class was too valuable to be lumped in with the "working man's" V class 18 footers, and "persuaded" the APYA to allocate the letter M to their new fledgling class, probably based on the fact that the first two had names starting with M.

"The authority on the M class or "Emmy" as it was colloquially known is Robin Elliot whose book Emmy is a fascinating study of the class. Robin and I go back to the 60's when I was a junior customs clerk in the Customs department in Auckland and Robin was a customs agent clerk. We had a mutual interest in yachting and history which has remained until today.

"Now back to the M Class photo's. The Header page is "Mach One", M46, which was the first of five boats built by Owen Reid to his own modification of the Laurie Davidson designs which had dominated the class from the 1960's onwards. The Reid boats are very fast down wind and are unique in that the plank lands are glued despite being made of solid Kauri in normal clinker fashion. All the planks were saturated with Everdure to stabilise them. "Mach One" weighed 421kg when launched when the average was closer to 500 kgs so a minimum weight limit of 450kg hull and center board is now in place. The second photo, "Menace" is M48 and the last of the Reid boats to be launched, she is one of the best now and fitted out just like a normal top line racing yacht. As you can see they have a four person crew; yes, there are a few girls crewing but they are powerful boats needing a bit of muscle in windy conditions. They have been based for years at the Royal Akarana YC in Okahu Bay in the inner east of Auckland's Waitemata Harbour and currently have about 8 to 10 active boats.

"The Mullet Boats are not connected in any way with the M's . Their origins are from the fishing smacks that fished in the shallow bays and estuary's of the Waitemata harbour, an inner Hauraki gulf where mullet abounded. They were identified by length of hull ( but not overall as they carried bowsprits and overhanging booms) in 20, 22, 24, 26 and 28 footers. They were sailed by a crew of two and were fast and weatherly half decked boats, that once they had caught their quota (around a ton or 40 dozen fish) they headed back to the Auckland wharfs to sell their catch (no refrigeration) in the best possible condition. They were a straight stemmed shallow draft craft with a broad vertical tuck, barn door rudder with a large rig two headsails set off a long bowsprit and a larger gaff mainsail. Built single skinned carvel with steamed frames from the 1890's with half decks and a small cuddy aft of the mast. Powerful boats that could, in suitable conditions, out sail many longer keelboats of the day.

"In the 1900's as fishing stocks declined they became popular as racing craft for the working class based around the inner western Ponsonby Cruising Club which still sponsors them today. They were known by their letter designation "H", 26ft's only a couple are around today, "I", 24ft's which were never that popular. "L" 22ft's the most famous of them which still race with modern rigs, and "N" 20ft which were only a few and you can see one on the Waitemata Woodies website.

Another photo. Gorgeous sailboats!

Another article on the web about the NZ M Class from sailworld.com/NZ.

Header Photo: Historical Aussie 18-footer On the Edge

The best photo there is of a sailing dinghy on the edge of control. An Historical Australian 18-footer but I don't have anything else, such as the name of the 18-footer, or the date. I assume the photo comes from the archives of the Australian National Maritime Museum which has done a superb job of releasing historical photos onto the Web.

Update: Neil Kennedy comes forward with the complete history behind the photo.

"The 18ft skiff is Crows Nest II ( ex Almae) taken in the 1952 season on Sydney Harbour. The helmsman is Cliffie Monkhouse who was one of the legends of Sydney 18ft skiff sailing. The following season 1953 he sailed the first of his skiffs named Toogara and continued with a series of skiffs of the same name until the 1965 season.

His sail insigna of a black shield with a red ball was instantly recognisable. The photo itself is one of the many fabulous pictures of 18 foot Skiffs in Robin Elliots book "Galloping Ghosts" the story of Australian 18ft skiffs 1890-1965 which was first published in 2012.

Neil Kennedy ( Nedslocker)

The frontispiece for Robin Elliott's book "Galloping Ghosts".

A few of the Robin Elliott book are available on Ebay.