Old Quarter Tonners -Magic Bus

Obviously not pushing hard enough! Mumm 30s, Melges 24s, 18 footers, 49ers, and pretty much every other boat crashes when pushed hard at the limit.

Maybe they had to alter the boat or sit on the sidelines. My boat is designed with the idea of using 3 sets of trap wires. The local rating board will not allow the use of wires, so the boat has been modified with a deeper bulb keel to participate.

Here you are comparing IOR to an open design. Taxi would not have been very quick boat for boat here in SoCal against some of our smaller ULDBs of that time ('73 to '76). However, she would have beat them fairly easily on time under the IOR.

Same when the Ross 45 M1 arrived here. Very cool boat, but just slaughtered by the IOR fleet. I can't recall any IOR regatta the M1 sailed in here where it was not last overall corrected.

I wonder how the Rocket would have faired against something like the production Olson 30 (1650 kgs, more than 220 of them sailing). I remember when the Ross 930s were imported, after we had heard all about how fast they were. The local Olson 30s demolished them.

Our MORC maxis like the Pinnacle shown earlier in this thread were quicker than the Olson 30s, despite being heavy and low on sail due to the rule.

More modern designs like the Henderson 30 or Melges 30/32 are about a minute a mile faster than an Olson, so where would the Rocket rate compared to those boats? For comparison, how fast would a Rocket 31 be all around compared to a 27.5 rater One Tonner? Compared to a 30.55 rater One Tonner?

The thing I've noted over the years is the more radical a boat is, the less of them are sold. This goes against my philosophy, but it seems to be a fact.

 

Paul, I've only sailed on the first Rocket 31 Positive Touch once so I'm in no position to comment about Rocket race performance except to broadly list the Coastal Classic wins Extreme, the Rocket 29 has achieved. In that race there would have been in their class the hottest 9-10 metre NZ designs - and it goes without sailing that those kiwi boats would be higher performing than any overseas boat, save for European lake racers. MORC designs would be just masticated by macho kiwi ******** with ignited rigging knives in their unkempt hair and filthy pirate hats (especially if sailed by US ******* - a term and vernacular I'm not used to by the way, is it RAF English from WW2?).
Actually the UK yachting journalist Jack Knights made a telling comment about kiwi sailors when he said, "You can always tell the New Zealanders by their immense knowledge of sailing ........ and their lack of knowledge of anything else."
This was in the IOR era when LD designs arrived from the southern antipodes - so you can guess who he was referring to. Course things are different today, internet, cable TV, Playstations and all.
Yes you are right about radical designs not being hot sellers - but who cares? Murray Ross's M! was designed only for high performance and he wouldn't have given a rat's fart about handicap placings.

 

All kidding aside, I am very interested in finding out just how fast something like a Rocket 31 is. Is there any useful rating or handicap number that accurately shows where it stacks up against something well known like a Mumm 30?

Saying it is much faster than a 1977 HT doesn't tell me much. Neither does the fact that it might have won a certain race against unknown competition, and under what rule?

I can say that something like an Olson 30 rating Two Ton could win a IOR race overall against the best boats in SoCal around 1980, all downwind in a big breeze. I've personally sailed O30s at over 20 knots, and above 16 or so for extended periods. That doesn't tell the story on how fast the boat is all around, as it had no chance against a fleet of good Two Tonners in any other condition.

Ditto the MORC boats. These boats were 60% the weight of the centerboard One Tonners, with 10% bigger kites, even though they were constrained by a rating rule. The next generation of the Pinnacle type was only 53% the weight of the OTs, with more sail than the Pinnacle. The Pinnacle in particular was a powerful beast of a boat, and I have been aboard fully planing at a constant 17+ knots (and similar speed on the follow on design). Still they are documented a good 30 sec/mile slower than a Mumm 30, so I know where they slot in against one another.

You say the Rockets were faster than the 9 to 10m boats of the day, but I know one of those boats was the Ross 930, and that isn't very special compared to what we have had over here. So how much faster than a Ross 930, as a point of reference?


I only mention M1 because I thought it was a great boat, really good looking as well as exciting, but even with the masthead kites it couldn't get around a buoy race boat for boat with the better IOR 50 footers. I'm sure on a blasting reach it would blow by the lead pigs, but uphill and down in medium conditions it wasn't very special.


By the way, Laurie should have pointed out to Knights that Kiwis know more than sailing, they know a bit about sheep as well.

 

Ooff! Terrible last joke. You know it is PC here not to mention sheep. No class at all mate. Actually their numbers are down, last I heard. Never liked the stupid things.
When I said LD I meant Light Displacement, not Laurie Davidson - Knights was referring to certain NZ individuals he'd met in the Quarter, Half. One Ton and Admirals Cup crews of that time. And by the way, Laurie knows nothing about sheep, he was an Auckland city boy.
I'll do some research on using the Mumm 30 as a yardstick, will post later.

 

Does it really go without saying?

I own 2 Kiwi designs. Farr, Mander, Young etc are among my heros. But there does seem to be evidence that some northern hemisphere designs can be blooody quick.

If Racetrack is accurate, then Extreme rates closer to the standard Mumm 36 than it does to the modified Mumm 36; between the slowest Ben 47.7 and the fastest 40.7. That would put it slower than a Henderson 30.

Maybe Racetrack and my quick calcs are wrong - but surely there has to be some back-up for claims that one area's boats are that much better? After all, even in the days of the Kiwi breakthrough, other designs weren't too far off; IIRC Oosephage Boogie almost beat Joe Louis, Espresso and Star Eyed Stella were close to Taxi, Candu II finished about 27th in the HT worlds, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I love these boats, we've owned more Kiwi designs in my family than anything else IIRC, but other people can draw boats too!

The US boats that Paul pointed out do rate pretty damn quick compared to Kiwi designs, under US PHRF. Maybe it's because of the system, or the conditions, or because US sailors are more used to US style designs. But if you put a US boat in Oz or Enzed, all the same factors would apply.

I remember being shocked when I first saw the PHRF ratings for the MORC boats Paul speaks of. Surely, I thought, that can't be right; they seemed to rate too fast. But those boats do seem to be that quick.

Or take the Toucan from Europe. Okay, it's a "lake racer" and it's 33 feet long. But one did the Singlehanded Transat 30+ years ago, with enormous success. The Toucan seems to rate 5% slower than Extreme, which ain't bad for a 1970 design! Sure, the Toucan is a couple of feet longer; but it needs less sail and beam. Why measure a boat just on LOA alone?

Seahorse pointed out that while Freddy was fantastically quick, a J/92 in the same regatta was often very nearly as fast, while carrying a lot less sail and being more offshore capable. Seahorse has no real reason to prefer a US design to a Kiwi one.

The fact that we have to face is that in the classes that currently allow ANZAC designers to face northern hemisphere designers, we are often being creamed. Farr's my #1 designer, but his VO70s have not gone too well. Paul Bieker and Phil Morrison are smashing the Aussies and Kiwis in 14s - the only Skiff class the northern guys design for.

In some ways and at some times the R Class was the world's most advanced dinghy, for sure - but it was the Brits who lead the way in many design features seen in today's boats. Where did we get the first boats that could plane on a reach, the first dinghies with a modern U hull section, the first wings, etc? Europe, not down here.

One problem may be that we tend to grow up reading about our local heroes. We know of Bethwaites and Manders, but the northern hemisphere had its own heroes and too often we just don't know enough about them to realise the contribution they made.


BTW I seem to recall that an almost identical Jack Knights line was used in Oz Sailing (IIRC) in an article on BNs in general (not Kiwis, just BNs, or Kiwis and Aussies) in the SORC or Caribbean, so it was used or recycled in a non-nationalistic way.

Sorry for the rambling reply.

 

Here in the US the Mumm 30 rates even with the standard Mumm 36 in most places. In light/medium buoy and anything fresh downwind it is a good rating. So Extreme would be similar speed to a Mumm 30? There have been a lot of boats here in the US since the 80s that are faster than that.

The Davidson MORC maxi "Stardancer" (for MacLaurin) was longer, lighter, and with a smaller rig than the Peterson maxis. She rated higher, and won some/lost some, but with fewer big wins than the Petersons. After the death of MORC she broke her rig and put on a taller mast without the constraints of the rule. She currently rates dead even with things like J35s and in her harbour (Marina del Rey) she is pretty dominant at that rating in the light air they usually see. That's probably 18 seconds (5 boatlenghts) per mile slower than a Mumm 30.

For the Peterson Adhara 30 I drew a non-MORC sailplan, but no boats were ever built using it. Basically it was the biggest fractional rig we could fit on the hull. A boat built to those specs would still not be as fast as a Mumm 30. It would be quick though, since the boat with the standard rig was as fast as, or faster than, the 30.55 Rating OTs downwind in any condition.

I would think the big MORC boats would be faster than a Toucan in most conditions, and I know they are much faster than a J92!

 

Paul, talking of fast smaller yachts beating fast larger ones, this from Brett Bakewell-White regarding his new 36 foot Al Fresco design:
"We were doing about 15kts, in not much more wind than this. That is the nice thing about these modern stiff boats, they sail at above windspeed in light air and not much below it in a moderate breeze. We beat most of the 50ft yachts home in the Friday Rum race, finishing behind NZL20, Farr AC with tandem keel), Wired (Bakewell-White 50), and a length behind Thunder (Melbourne-Osaka 52)- not bad for a 36ft yacht,
Regarding the Rocket analogy - fast is the objective, but we get there in a different way. Our boat is actually quite narrow and conservative in dimensions and we have used a combination of high ballast ratio (64%) and hull form to make the boat as stiff as possible - we are nearly twice the weight of a Rocket 31, and less reliant on crew weight. The difference would really tell upwind where our boat will continue to punch above it's weight, whereas the lightweight Rocket concept falls apart here. Having said this, Al Fresco cost a huge amount more than any Rocket."
Another comment from crew on Rocket 31 Positive Touch:
“Our first Auckland/Tauranga race proved our light air performance (where experts considered the wide Rocket would be sticky) when we match raced the Davidson Jive Talking, Samurai Jack and Power Play through the night; upwind in 5-8 knots of wind. In fact we were sailing at the same pace as the average 40 foot yacht and ended up finishing 20 minutes behind the Ross 44 M1. Our only disappointment with Positive Touch was in the Coastal Classic last year when the rudder blew apart when we were 2 miles ahead of the larger Higher Ground; with only the 50 footers ahead of us at Sail Rock. The race had been long and light and the nearest hotrod (sport boat) was miles out of sight astern. The breeze came in suddenly and we took off at 16 knots when suddenly bang went the rudder. After the long delay of making repairs we continued on to be at the finish in Russell still amongst the 40 foot yachts and within 3 minutes the top 4 hotrods including Blackout and the fast Waka.”
I’ve found the primarily multihull performance yardstick, the Edmond Bruce Number, (square root sail area divided by cube root displacement) to be a broadly accurate indication of performance for monohulls. Starting with the IOR light displacement designs, Magic Bus is 1.32 BN, Newspaper Taxi 1.18, Pendragon I tonner is 1.28, then moving on to the early NZ sport boat types: Young 88 is 1.28 and Ross 930 1.34. The Farr Mumm 30 (your yardstick) is 1.43 compared to the Rockets 31 at 1.6, the Rocket 29 Extreme 1.45 and Rocket 40 1.68. These are high figures for monohulls (racing multihulls are often over 2) but the Bakewell-White 8.3 metre enlarged skiff Bohica at 1.88 is a very high monohull figure comparison.
So your listing Rocket 29 Extreme as between Mumm 30 and Mumm 36 is an accurate indication of performance – but downwind in waves and high wind, everyone knows that the wide skimming dish Rocket is veritably a rocket. There are also very high BN figured NZ sportboat designs from Elliott, Thompson, Shaw and Dibley and they represent the new generation of kiwi designers. Indications here are that the highly touted Open 6.5 and 7.5 metre designs from France are actually astern of the performance of 6.5-7.5m boats from these younger NZ designers.
Sorry about the length of this thread - and yes, forward thinking US, UK and French designers are well known and respected here.
Jpegs of the very wide beamed, narrow waterline Rocket 29.

 

this racetrack is amazing! How come the world not uses this system then?

The top smaller sportboats are as quick as Mumm 30/Mumm 36 and seems like top bigger sportboats much faster than Extreme, Rocket 31. No question to me that northern hemisphere sportboats are slower, in Italy sportboat is more like a day sailer with a big keel and easy to sail with asym. SB3, E7 and Melges all are more like compromise for one thing or another. NZ sportboat rule is most lenient, so best designs from there are much faster.

For IRC NZ boats are not so good mostly, because IRC rule doesn't like them, for smaller boats definitely it prefers designs like Corby which weight 3X more, and more like a 25 foot keelboat than 25 foot dinghy. Different rule means encourage different things. Not that NZ designers are better (although mostly they are great) but that NZ rules are encourage faster boats; UK/northern hemisphere rule often encourage more safety, more weight, more cruising, more fairness to slow boat and so on.

 

I don't think the Bruce Number really tells much of a story regarding all around performance. It shows how powered up boats are, like the SA/D ratio I normally look at.

For example, if you look at the Mull Pocket Rocket 22 from around 1980 it has a BN of 1.19, and is about the same length as a Mini Tonner. It sails a good 30 sec/mile faster than the best mini tonners ever. Ditto a J24 compared to Quarter Tonners.

Anyway, looking at your numbers I see it is sometimes difficult to get the real numbers and therefore it isn't always apples to apples. For example, Magic Bus at 1.32 includes the #1 genoa (I calculated it at 1.33 from the sales ad that clearly states the genoa is included in the area).

Using the calculation below I get 1.24 for the Ross 930, similar to the boats from Santa Cruz.

Using SA as the crude (I x J x 0.5)+(P x E x 0.5) I have the following numbers for the "Santa Cruz school" of West Coast ULDBs:

Moore 24 1.23 (1973)
SC 27 1.17 (1974)
Express 27 1.23 (around 1980)
Olson 30 1.27 (1977)

The Santa Cruz boats were all a bit short on sail area because they come from a pretty windy area and they all were planned for offshore use as well. All four boats mentioned above regularly sail to Hawaii from California, usually shorthanded.

All these boats were much faster than the rating boats of similar size. The SC27 at 1.17 vs Taxi at 1.18 doesn't show the differences in IOR vs non IOR shape,and therefore speed.

In the USA during the 1970s and 1980s people wanted boats that they could race under a well known rule, IOR or MORC usually. PHRF would simply murder "fast boats" so there was no reason to do something like that. At least under MORC we could have the Peterson Adhara 30 at BN 1.30, and the Davidson Stardancer probably in the same area.

I know every designer wanted to do "fun" boats, but there was no market.

Doug Peterson did the boat I own now, BN at 1.47, in 1980, at the same time as the Blazer 23 in Australia (that was rejected by the original builder here in the USA as "too radical" for the marketplace).

Tom Wylie did the Wabbit in 1981, BN 1.43.

Carl Schumacher and some friends took an Express 27 hull, ply deck, huge rig, ballasted board, and made a Wednesday Night racer they called "Funny Car".

Gary Mull did the Moore 30 in 1984, BN 1.71.

Leif Beiley did the B25 in 1988, BN 1.3, PHRF about even with a Young 88.

In the '90s Bruce Nelson did the Sierra 26, BN 1.48, and they built 2 factory boats, never sold one new one out of the molds.

Don Martin did the Martin 243, BN 1.88, and the owners of those boats have been dragged through broken glass by the local PHRF rating boards across the USA. People buy them on the second hand market, oooh fun, then sell them on after a year or two of coming last in every race.

Of course there have been some successes, like the Melges 24, 1992, BN 1.63 and now the Melges 32 at BN 1.70. I don't think anyone would call these boats offshore capable.

There have been many other sporties like the Antrim 27, Taylor 32, Scumacher 44, etc. None have sold in great numbers...

..just as none of the new Kiwi designers have sold their high powered designs in great numbers. People want to be able to sail offshore, or measure themselves against a level field. Simply making boats lighter and adding sail doesn't really measure design talent. It simply makes some boats faster compared to the one before by brute force, finally ending up in oversized skiffs that can't race offshore and can't self rescue. If there was a worldwide box rule for say a 7m sportie, well that could be interesting. however, very few people would play (remember the Ultimate 30s).

I know for years people in AUS laughed at the USA sporties, since they had their T Boats. Funny, after a couple of Melges 24s arrived folks weren't laughing quite so much. Seems the Melges, not as radical as some of the boats in OZ, was pretty quick compared to the boats everyone thought were much quicker. Oh well...

 

Paul, you really are a rating rule and yacht design encyclopaedia - very good stuff. The point about Bruce Nos. is that it gives a decent enough power to weight figure but of course does not take into consideration stability, beam and importantly, in the case of the similar Bruce Numbered SC27 and Newspaper Taxi, (check out the jpeg to see what I mean) hull distortion -Taxi was twisted and bumped and bent about almost hideously whereas SC27 was pretty clean. And this is the reason the SC27 beats the Taxi. Actually I question whether a J24 could beat, say a Farr 727 - I remember Bruce Farr disparaging the J design, but that was back in the old days when he was just getting established in Auckland.
Gary Mull did a big and fast MORC boat called Horse - do you know about that one? Your list of breathed on US designs is impressive but as you say, none of them were popular. Yes the Melges 24 is a special boat out on its own.
CT249, it is almost ironic that you should think the NZ light boats were encouraged here - because in the early days they were hated by the establishment. It was more a peoples' thing here where all the rebellious, young, hotshot sailors went their own ways producing light designs and therefore, since they knew everything about them, because they invariably designed and built them themselves, they sailed them to the very top of their potential. It was more of a case of the hierarchy having to go along with this movement if they wanted to have decent fleets. One point, although the rest of the sailing world thinks kiwi light displacement yachts are sailing too close to the wind, so to speak, there have been very few accidents involving the light designs, certainly nothing like the doom prophesiers predicted.

 

No more than you or CT249. I really like boats, and their histories. I think we all become attached to the boats that were from the time we were coming up. For me it is the IOR, MORC, and ULDB stuff from the mid '70s to mid '80s. Today I sent payment for half models of the Peterson daggerkeel OT B195 and the Gurney 73 Windward Passage. I don't have a lot of boating things displayed at the house, but these will be prominent.

For someone like Doug Peterson, he owns his second Caulkins 50, a boat he was familiar with due to spending part of his youth working for Skip Caulkins in his design office.

I've sailed both the 727 and the J24, and without a doubt the J24 was MUCH faster (PHRF 198 vs 174). Even after the skeg was cut off the 727 and a 4 foot taller mast was installed it was still a good 12 secs/mile slower than the J24.

I do agree with Farr that the J24 is a terrible thing. After sailing on them for 10+ years I did the California circuit with a good friend in the late '80s. We won overall, and after clinching the title in SF we were driving back to Santa Barbara and I told him to never invite me back on that thing.

I've never seen or sailed on any J boat that I liked.

I only know about the boat from an article about the MORC Intergalactics one year in the midwest USA. I know it was very beamy and powerful, a daggerkeeler and of WEST sytem wooden construction. After that I never heard of it again. I would wager that it was pretty heavy, since MORC boats of that era tended to be rather robust. Actually, I think Jim Antrim might be the keeper of all the old Mull archives, so an e-mail to him might produce what you are looking for.

The Soverel 30 daggerkeeler champion from that era weighed about 7000 pounds. Later the production mold from the Sov 30 was modified with a stern extension and a big rig was added to make the Soverel 33 ULDB. They reduced the displacement to about 5800 pounds (still pretty heavy), so the boat floated a bit higher than the 30. Most people didn't know that this "ULDB" was really a rehash of a pig heavy MORC boat.

The guy who built the Pinnacle 29 MORC boats owned a Soverel 33. When we took the prototype Pinnacle 30 to the MORC Internationals in 1985 we were glad he had the Sov. Three days before the event we were out practicing in a good breeze, doing about 14 knots on a power reach in the flat water of the river, when BANG the carbon rudder shaft breaks.

The owner called one of his flunkys back in CA and got him to go down to the Sov, pull the rudder out, and get on a plane the next morning. We modified the Sov shaft to fit the Pinnacle 30 bearings, and sailed the regatta with the replacement rudder. It was about 1.5 times as fat as the broken rudder, and we figured we were about a tenth or two slower upwind, and a good bit slower and in less control during the breezy downwind legs of the distance race. We ended up winning class anyway.

I should have listed other designs like the Bob Ames designed Cheetah 30, possibly the fastest pure downwind boat of all the sporties in SoCal. However, I would never go offshore on one.

I think they have done more than 600 M24s now. That's a good little worldwide class, but for some reason it hasn't caught on downunder. Of course here in the USA you could build a one-off that would be lighter, more powerful, and faster than a M24. What would be the point?

 

I think this is very true. A good part of the winning records of the early Kiwi boats was due to the way people like Farr, Bowler, Ross, Davidson, and the rest sailed them like the high performance dinghies they were familiar with. When others from the "heavy keelboat" crowd bought in and tried to sail the new light fractionals they had the wrong sail shape mindset.

I have to disagree a bit here. Of all the daggerkeeler OTs from 1977 I think only one, Mr. Jumpa, did not have structural issues. B195 broke at least 3 times (1st race OTC, Syd-Hobart, and during Clipper Cup), Smir-noff-again broke, Jenny H broke, Hecate broke, and even The Red Lion broke. We know what happend to SWJack.

In the HTs it was similar, with Taxi sinking and others breaking. We had QTs turning over in the Japan Worlds and dropping boards out and sinking.

When you have to worry about passing a pull down test that is nowhere near as difficult as broaching in a seaway with a full kite you should be thinking twice about going offshore. I wonder if the Rockets with daggerkeels could pass this test with the board up?

I think it is LUCKY there weren't more catastrophic results from those days.

 

I found the blurb on the Schumacher 27 "Funny Car".

I can't say I ever saw it or even photos of it.

 

"I think it is LUCKY there weren't more catastrophic results from those days."

Yes, yes, in that pioneering period there was damage - but my fault for not be specific - I was really referring to the sports boat, Wednesday Night Racer types, the Davidsons, Ross's, Elliotts, Youngs, Dibleys and all from the '80's on.
Another question: this design from early '80's, have you ever seen another hull like this .... anywhere? The second jpeg is the very early Hal Wagstaff design High Spirits; that was the design that started the NZ flared hull from Young. High Spirits looks pretty ordinary now but was a revelation in those days, a fast boat too.

 

Trower's Warbird ('72 Quarter ton, UK) looked a fair bit like the Rocket 29 in plan form, IIRC. The Moore 30, 1985, was 14' wide and had more distinct wings, which may be faster. The Kiwi 35 (earlier) was 14' wide.

In the '60s, Tabarly's 35' Pen Duick was 3.5m wide on a 10.7m LOA, and capable of crossing an ocean one up with water ballast.

The second question is - do other people have different shapes because they are behind the times, or because they sail in different conditions? The Elliott Sportscar looks quite a bit like Extreme and it never really showed amazing all-round performance 'cause in Oz conditions the lee wing slammed through the water. It's similar offshore in Sydney, where the big cliffs and swell create an eternal chop that really harms many boats.

High Spirits looks nice; when was she designed?

The Js and Farr 727s raced JOG against each other here. The Js rated about 2.5% quicker and were at least as competitive on rating.

I may not (and probably should not) have said that the Kiwis encouraged light boats, but the conditions may encourage Cat 3 type boats more than they do here. And the Squaddy had a Light division back in the '60s didn't they?

I can understand people not liking light boats (although at about 2000kg my own isn't the heaviest 28' offshore cruiser/racer around, and I've taken what may be the lightest boat ever to Hobart). If you went out and spent a shedload of money on something like a Cav 32 - a comfy, well fitted out boat that could sail around the world happily - it would be bloody annoying if someone came along and made it obsolete. I'd even feel the same if I was the owner of Karina, Streaker, Corinthian etc.....then again they had happily made the even earlier boats obsolete themselves.

Two people I knew were lost on Waikikamukau (the first 727 in Oz) and I didn't enjoy looking for them and gradually realising, as time went on, that I was looking for their bodies. I lost my dad on an early cat; a mate lost his brother on an early tri. Advances are great, but the downside should be recognised. There's many boats being wasted on moorings that could be out there if they were valued, respected and catered for.

Let me underline that I think Kiwis regularly lead the world, and that my current boat and dream boat are Kiwi designs. But there were many brilliant designs from other places (look at the 1930s Jollenkreuzers) that should also be recognised even if for various reasons (ie freezing and light winds!) they are less popular than NZ lightweights.

BTW looking at the German yardsticks makes it look like the Euro sporties can also be pretty damn quick; and of course their lunatic edge is playing with rack and trap 44s not rack and trap 22s.