The previous header photo was of Rudder's Swallow scow being sailed on San Diego Bay. Paul Naton sent this historical photo along and I present the un-cropped version. It is of his great grandfather Fred O'Farrell, who co-owned this Swallow with Claude Woolpas. Paul details below how he received the photo and his dogged research into the time and place this photo was taken.
Tom Price sent this image along. The period swimsuit suggests maybe a 1920's time frame. He said he got it from a French website but can't remember where.
I have found scanned-in, one-sheet, Larken Klasse plans kicking around the Internet. They are amazingly detailed for one sheet (just have Google Translate handy if you are not Dutch).
Here are the plans below for those who are interested. To view them zoomed in:
Click the pop-out icon in the top right corner to open in a new tab.
Click the zoom-in magnifying glass icon.
This will give you a slider control to change zoom magnification.
As mentioned in my post on the Lark Scow - The Laser of the 1900's, Thomas Day of The Rudder magazine encouraged the home-builders of the Lark to be inventive; there was no strong concept of one-design strictness at this genesis of small sailboat development. So builders strayed from the plans, building Larks with yachty looking counter sterns, with cuddy cabins, longer and shorter Larks and they gleefully sent reports of their modifications into The Rudder and Thomas Day published them.
In 1903, in The Netherlands, W. Beekhuis, owner of the boat building yard "Navis" te Loosdrecht, built a small Lark, only 3.6 meters long (11.8 feet). He built them from the time period 1903-1905 but it is unclear how many he actually produced.
The 1903 Beekhuis Mini-Lark
In 1919, A Van Gool, from the northern coastal district of Friesland, The Netherlands, built a Beekhuis type Lark with additional modifications. Having traveled to America and observed American sailboats, Van Gool borrowed the Star type keel and grafted it on the Beekhuis Lark scow hull. He made the hull longer, 4 meters (13.1 feet). He replaced the squat gaff rig with a taller gunter rig. This Larken Klasse would become very popular in Friesland and Twente during the 1920's and 1930's.
The Van Gool/Friesland Larken
In 1934, Romke Vries designed an even higher aspect, full battened gunter rig for the Larken Klasse. By the end of the 1930's the more modern O-Jolle singlehander centerboarder was cutting into the Larken Klasse numbers and, as the Finn dinghy and OK dinghy were introduced after World War II, the class continued to lose popularity. In 1965, the class made its last appearance at Sneekweek, seemingly destined to fade into obscurity.
That is until 2004 where a group of Larken Klasse enthusiasts banded together to start restoring the old Larkens and build new ones. In the short span of 11 years they have built the class up to where they are now getting a vibrant 20+ turnout at the major regattas. An amazing resurrection of a true classic!
The newer Larkens have adopted a more modern keel with a separate rudder. The lead ballast is 34 kg.
The present day Larken Klasse on a reach (Anyone know who the photographer is?)
A vintage photo of a happy Larken skipper.
At this years Sneekweek regatta, artist and small boat racing enthusiast, Jan Tekstra decided to jump into a different class each day and record his race on a GoPro. This is his Larken segment.
Mesmerizing "rockin and rollin" downwind in some breeze off the coast of Ireland. I like how the skipper steers from a relaxed, sprawled position (which probably isn't relaxing given the pull on the rudder... just looks that way).
The Rudder magazine launched their second scow, the Swallow, a 24 foot, three person scow in December 1898, just three months after they started publishing the plans for the 16 foot Lark scow. A year later, in the November and December 1899 issues of the magazine, they would serialize the Swallow plans, and like the Lark, issue a stand-alone plans and building booklet The design is credited to Charles Mower but the prototype builder, Larry Huntington, was a renowned scow designer in his own right. I can't imagine that Larry Huntington didn't have a large say in the design of this scow so I personally would credit the design to a collaboration, a Mower/Huntington design.
As with the Lark scow, the Swallow proved very popular with amateur builders and was built around the world. Unlike the Lark, the Swallow didn't make it wholly into today's sailing scene. In looking at all the modern day scow designs, it appears to me that only the Sea Island One-Design seems to have inherited a large portion of her DNA from the Swallow. (The Sea Island One-Design ended up wider, particularly at the back end.)
For those who wish to delve further, you are in luck; the Library of Congress has scanned the Swallow plans booklet into PDF format.
The lines. The very shallow arc bottom was also the shape of Larry Huntington's Seawanhaka scow, Question, of 1895.
Two photos of the prototype on her maiden voyage in December 1898, The Rudder magazine editor Thomas Day skippering and Larry Huntington crewing. The day was cold and blustery.
Entering the harbor.
Group boatbuilding party planking the hull and flipping her rightside.
The previous header photo is of the Sea Island One-Design, a local class of large scows centered around the lowcountry South Carolina, specifically Bohicket Creek, Rockville. The 1948 design is attributed to New England naval architect, Henry Scheel but the lineage goes much farther back.
A sailing competition had started with two boats in 1890 and by the turn of the century the Rockville Regatta had quickly became a sailing contest between the towns that dotted these winding estuary fingers south of Charleston. (The Rockville Regatta also became the summer social event of the year with dances, parties, and romancing; a tradition which continues to this day, though considerably in excess - think the infield of the Kentucky Derby.) The scow shape came to the fore in the competition and Walter Eugene Townshend with his nephew, Oliver Seabrook, managed to walk off with many of the Rockville Regatta trophies sailing their series of scows named Undine.
From the book Rockville by Alicia Anderson Thompson:
"In 1947, Ollie Seabrook took the best features of three of the fastest and best sailing scows and gave them to Henry A. Scheel in Mystic, Connecticut, for him to create a set of plans that each island club could use to build a uniform sailboat. This three man scow was named Sea Island One Design, and it united the area yacht clubs, allowing for equal competition among the members to this day"
There is a strong similarity of some of these pre-WWII South Carolina scows to the 1899 Charles D. Mower's Swallow scow, which was the second scow featured in The Rudder's How-To-Build series. There was at least a borrowing of the general shape. Here are the sideviews of the two starting with the Swallow.
The 1931 Rockville Undine IV.
The 1947 Sea Island One-Design is a different design, though the parentage of the Swallow is very evident. The SIOD is shorter, the transom is wider and the topside panel straighter than that of the Swallow.
I've chunked together, into a PDF file, the plans for the Lark scow as published in Rudder magazine in the 1940's. It calls for a traditional build of the Lark but that doesn't mean you couldn't utilize modern technology and build it another way. To download the PDF plans click on the upward pointing arrow icon in the top right of the app bar. This will pop the PDF into another tab and you can print or download from there. Note that page 12 of the PDF file is blank.
Bald but my eyebrows are growing at a prolific rate. Sailed Windmills and Y-Flyers in the 1960's. Founded Miami University (OH) sailing team. Sailed International 14's and Lasers in the 1970's. Sailed International Canoes in the 1980's to mid 1990's. Sailed Classic Moths since 2002. Enjoy boatbuilding though I'm very, very slow at it (the Internet doesn't help matters). Name in real life: Rod Mincher
After choosing this username (Tweezer is the name of my Classic Moth), further research on the Internet turned up that Tweezerman is a corporate name for a line of pedicure products. Let me emphasize that I do not work for, nor endorse these products.
