Old Quarter Tonners -Magic Bus

CT249, this from Light Brigade:
The changeover began in 1979 but earlier designs along unrestricted lines had occurred when Farr designed the 11.6 (Farr 38) plus various Birdsall and Hal Wagstaff examples. In 1977 High Spirits appeared, collaboration between Richard Endean and Wellington part-time designer Wagsaff. Endean wanted an uncompromising fast sailer for Auckland conditions, in fact he wanted the fastest 28 foot monohull in New Zealand and having been impressed with Wagstaff’s wide beamed, flared hull Harmonic 24, wanted the designer to continue this small boat theme on the new boat with a narrow waterline that rose to a wide beam on deck, where human ballast could be used for sail carrying power. Endean asked for more flare like that of a 505 dinghy and sent Wagstaff some rough drawings of what he had in mind. Eventually Wagstaff completed the High Spirits drawings basing it on a winning Leander R Class dinghy he had designed after the Second World War. Endean considered the boat, “”Wagstaff’s best ever with its sweet waterline sections and its arrival was the turning point in local acceptance of purely fast yachts and the beginning of rejection of IOR.” Wagstaff however, considers High Spirits one of his lesser designs compared to his other work. But the High Spirits approach was picked up by Young, Ross and Elliott – although Elliott was dismissive of the yacht listing the times his later Outsider had beaten High Spirits. But Young especially praised the boat and freely admitted that it had influenced him when he designed the Young 88.

And this jpeg of Mach 1 from Gordon Trower in the UK, from almost the same period as 727 and well ahead, still ahead, of its time - don't think it was built but Warbird was.
There was another early flared boat here called Alcatraz, 35-36 foot with wings, a very light design but one that did not impress the local sportsters - I'll find an image later.

 

Actually it seems like a riff on the shape of the 18s of the 1970s. The Farr Travel Lodge was shipped here to Long Beach, CA and sailed here for quite some time. Then I think the ply hull gave up and the thing disappeared. Anyway, the Rocket looks like it was influenced by that era 18.

There have been a lot of other boats that have tried that path, and as CT points out there is a downside: Drag. They tend to have the leeward wave cling to the boat when sailing upwind. I've sailed on a Kiwi 35 and actually sailed on the first Moore 30 the first time it went sailing. Both boats could drag the leeward wing. I've heard the Taylor 32 Danger Zone has the same issue. As CT mentioned, the Elliott winged boat reported had similar issues.

I know this has also been tried in Europe, with the UFO28, Project OPNI (Farr) and some other lake boats. In the end the people who want to go real fast use slim hulls and racks rather than wide beam. I think the same can be said for the young guns in Aus/NZ.


As I have been saying, all the designers I have ever talked to wanted to do fast, fun, exciting boats. You have to do what makes the customer happy, what makes sense. Sadly, the radical boats have never been what loads of customers want. By the mid '80s Peterson was bored with the IOR and drew up a 40 footer that was similar in concept to M1. There were two customers and a builder lined up, then one customer got cold feet, the second didn't want to fight the PHRF fight alone, so the project died. Reichel drew up the Esprit OD 42, again like M1, but in 1986-87 people still wanted to do IOR boats.

 

Alcatraz was similar to the Moore 30 but the wings were not so wide; it also suffered from dragging the leeward wing. Going back to Rocket 31, Jim Young was very conscious of this problem when he designed the boat in 1980 (before the designs you show too I think, Paul). Save for the Swiss boat, they all look like they drag their flared wings and IMHO, most of them have their wings too low. Check out Rocket 31, has sweet curves and from what I've heard from Jim, rarely buries the gunwhale, mind you the crews sail the boats as upright as possible.

 

I believe the Kiwi 35 was first produced in 1983, so probably drawn in 1981 by OH Rogers.

I think the tooling for the Moore was completed in 1984, but I know Mull was working on it for some time beforehand.

Both the Kiwi and the Moore built about 10 boats. The Taylor was one. I think Elliott only sold one. Farr only did solid wings on OPNI because there was a ban on racks for that one year.

When I was in High School (I graduated in 1978) I drew the sailplan, decklayout, and interior arrangement of a boat for a project in my drafting class. After reading about Bill Lee and his first boat Magic, where he was basically building a 30 foot 505, I wanted to do something similar. He originally had wings on it, but there was an issue with the raters (he wanted to race the MORA, not MORC, Distance Race to San Diego). So they hacked the wings off. So my high school project had wings, smaller and different style from the Young boat and others, but wings.


Performance wise, it isn't so much having the leeward wing dig in, it has to do with the water creeping up the hull and sticking. The curved Young style might be even worse than the more distinct wings?

Nevertheless they are all interesting things, and no one seems to be making them like this anymore, not since someone made a very big one in 1988.

I don't know what linesplan that is, the Rocket 31 without wings? If I was to show you the Pinnacle 30 MORC boat lines you would think it was the same design, only with a more raked bow (for the MORC Rule). So similar you would be astonished.

 

No digging wings are worse, like digging a float under on a trimaran, almost. The Rockets are pretty good in light beating conditions with the crew to leeward, so stickiness okay there. Yes the big, white elephant from 1988, still perches near the viaduct, sad sight but although completely outclassed and out performed by hard winged S&S, it would have been interesting if it could ever have lined up with a similar sized mono. Still could happen; there was a rumour going round that it was going to be cleaned up and revamped, not holding breath. There was another flared big Farr boat and that is still sailing: NZL20 - "red dinghy on steroids" - took line honours (and so it should) in recent rum race.
Yes I'm sure there are plenty of like minded, avant garde thinkers and designers all over the world, hence your Pinnacle MORC similarity to Rocket - however you've got to realize that kiwis exist, or used to exist, in the isolated shaky isles, and evolution of ideas resulted from local competition between various designers - which can produce unique stuff. And we might get a little arrogant about that.

 

jim youngs rocket 31 during the rebuild for jims grandson. I have lofted the boat from jims table of offsets in rhino, it needs a little ironing

 

1: Original Paul Whiting/Murray Ross deck plan and fittings for Magic Bus.
2: Newspaper taxi
3: Hal Wagstaff designed High Spirits, the earliest sportsboat?
4: Jim Young's original of Rocket 31
5: The first winged sporsboat Alcatraz? Albert Sedymayer design.

 

Spelling correction - Albert Sedlymeyer, Alcatraz designed approx.1981
6: The big Bus, Smackwater Jack
2: Young Rocket 29 Extreme
3: Young Rocket 40 BuckleUp

 

Ah, but the "skiff" style AC boat is no match for the narrow version. Wavemaking drag is a killer.

There are talented people everywhere. The thing you need is a level playing field to find out who is the top of the heap. Since most of the best designers did not pursue the Rocket/M1 line of "fast, damn the rating" we can't know if Young's take was better than a Farr, Davidson, Peterson, or Frers might have been.

We have also had a good number of talented designers existing in a small area. In SD in the early 80s we had Peterson, Nelson/Marek, and Reichel/Pugh all within a couple of blocks from the yacht club. Add in the guys in LA like Andrews, and the SF group of Mull and Schumacher, with Bill Lee and George Olson in their niche in Santa Cruz, well a customer could visit about 10 decent designers in a couple of days.

When you mention arrogance, most of the above group could fit that description. Most designers in any competitive field are the same. I once mentioned that Farr had won another One Ton Cup to one of those designers, and his reply was a curt, "So what, who'd he beat?" Of course that designer did not have a boat in the Worlds that year, so in his mind the winner was somehow diminished.

The attached photo of the Pinnacle 30 shows two things. First, it shows the shape similarity to the Rocket. Second, it shows what happens when you leave an owner alone with the boat, a case of beer, and some cans of spray paint.

The Adhara 30, Peterson's follow on to the Pinnacle, shows much less flat topsides and was less draggy than the Pinnacle. Why a stern like that? Well, Peterson worked the design to not only rate high but well under MORC, but also with the correct IOR considerations so it rated 30.55 One Ton. The idea was some lunatic might want to take one to Cabo or PV, and with the offwind speed it might just do OK.

There was some merit to this idea. In her first race, with a downwind start, the first Adhara 30 reached the bottom mark ahead of some pretty big boats. After rounding and heading up the beat the big boats started passing. This one is the Davidson 45 Pendragon II.

 

Here is the excerpt from the artcile I read when I was 16 years old:

Bill Lee, Merlin, and the cosmic thrill
Reprinted from Sail Magazine, June 1977

Santa Cruz then was getting ready to host the 505 Worlds, and for a long time prior to the event, the hot-doggers around the waterfront were thinking of nothing but five-o's. Lee was too, but in a far different way. He thought it would be fun to build a 30-foot 505-now there was something crazy that could really get out and go! It was strictly a part-time project, done when he could scrape together enough money to pay for the materials. And when Lee got a keg of beer and announced that there was going to be a boatbuilding party that afternoon, there was plenty of help available. Even so, it took about a year to finish the boat. At first Lee thought it would be sensational if he could rig it just like a 505-complete with trapezes and centerboard. But he soon saw that, despite the possibilities. this would be less than practical offshore. So the wings came off and the keel went on.

When the boat was finally finished in the spring of 1970, Magic as it was called (with Lee in his magician's hat at the launching) displaced a mere 2,500 pounds. It spread the better part of 450 square feet of sail, and it went on to win the Monterey Bay series that spring. It also got people thinking about whether Lee was onto something.


So, back as far as about 1969 Bill Lee had planned to have wings on his 30 footer. That article prompted me, in the fall of 1977, to begin drawing a 30 footer with wings. Racing against MAGIC in Long Beach in '76-'77 was amazing to see the speeds they could achieve downwind, with a huge rooster tail of spray starting at the mast and ending far astern.

 

Yes, I've read that Sail piece too Paul, in fact it's in the back shed. And yes, kiwis knew about Lee and Ohlson back then, thought they were blokes like us, and they were except down under, we didn't like the mast head rigs the US, and France, put on their boats. The hulls were modern light displacement but the rigs were old school. From Light Brigade:
Farr, Davidson, Young and other New Zealanders were critical, not of USA’s West Coast ULDB high downwind speed but on their poor windward performance – plus they didn’t like their simplistic masthead rigs. In a decent wind while beating ULDB’s heeled excessively and went sideways – this failing was unacceptable in New Zealand. The innovative French designer of light displacement boats, Guy Ribadeau-Dumas, who designed record breaking Open 60 Credit Agricole and small, lightweight maxi Charles Jourdan for the Whitbread Race, maintained US ultra-lights were too narrow to have enough power when not surfing.

 

Oh, there isn't enough time to write up all the things wrong with the Santa Cruz designs. Sure, they were fun compared to "normal" boats, but they were far from great.

The Moore 24, SC27, Olson (not Ohlson, different guy) 30, and Express 27 all had Vee shaped, high deadrise hulls. Not really good planing shapes, as we know now.

The Olson 30 had a bit of a hollow in the bow waterlines. This led the boat to have an awful tendency to bow steer when surfing big waves. Once the bow would bite and start to create lift the wipouts were quick and spectacular.

All those boats had TERRIBLE foil packages. I mean really awful keels and rudders. That was more of an issue going upwind than the beam. The Olson 30 is actually 1" wider than a Ross 930, and only about 9" narrower than a Mumm 30.

The Moore and the Express did have fractional rigs. However, for SoCal conditions the big kites of the masthead rigs on the SC and the Olson really were king when it came to making time downhill. Of course up the hill they were not as good as a fractional, they would overpower too easily. That was a trade off for the downwind thrills they were selling. I will say the O30 went up the hill just fine compared to the Ross 930s, for what that's worth.

(Note: The MORC rule of the mid 80s pretty much dictated a masthead rig, unlike the earlier version of the rule that resulted in most boats having fractional rigs. The "Big Rig" designed for the Adhara 30 was fractional.)

They could have been smarter and done a frac rig with masthead kites, as we do now. Some Express 27s have been modified this way and are better light air boats than their stock sisters.

Any SC27 racing in SoCal should have had the boom lengthened. It really did help a lot. Some O30s did the same, but thier sailplans were already better balanced.

Before Schumacher did the Express 27 it was going to be a Peterson design. Of course Peterson was doing 40 to 50 foot boats all over the world at the time, so a little 27 footer for a Santa Cruz builder didn't sound like it should be a priority. If he had done the design I think you would have seen something much better than the Express that is only about 6 sec/mile faster than a SC27. Based on the Blazer 23 (hull lines similar to the Rocket you show) from 1980 down in Australia I think that is a given.


Overall, the boats from Santa Cruz have been big fun for a lot of folks over the years. Not great things, but not too bad when you consider they were designed and built by a bunch of dope-smoking hippies.

 

I guess I should have given Gary Mull more credit on doing boats of this type.

From what I understand he first did Sparky (30 foot) in 1981. In 1982 he followed up with a de-tuned version of Sparky, the Humbolt 30. In 1983 he did the Pocket Rocket 22. All fractional rigs, with hulls similar to the Young boat.

Jim Donovan was working for Gary in those days and in 1985 he did a turbo'd version of Sparky called Wolfpack. At 3200 pounds it was a very light 30 footer, with a shape much like the Rocket 31. The masthead rig was to fit better into the MORC rule.

 

Second correction: The winged very light displacement Alcatraz was designed by Grant Firth, not Sedylmeyer as I originally had it, apologies.

 

Hello all,
Do any of the knowledgeable souls from IOR days know the early history of "THE SYNDICATE" out of the same mold as "BEACH INSPECTOR" a Dubois designed half tonner.I have had it for a few years and apart from a few mods to make it more liveable it is as built. I have drawings of a new bulb keel but resisted the urge to use them.
Peter