Seeking some IOR history

Understood. The claim by Jim, "It really marked the end of the deep forefoot bow and mutilated stern designs that had developed under the Rule; though the fashion did last for some years" is not correct regardless.

The deep forefoot, "Peterson Keel" type was still very competitive under IOR more than 10 years later.

As far as "stern mutilation" goes, some of the Kiwi designers were far more guilty than Peterson ever was. Whiting was probably the king when it came to distortion in IOR design, right up there with the Pommie Jones. Peterson's early boats were reall more like fat double enders with the last few feet cut off.

Back to keel size:

I just had a look at an article about the '76 OTC, written by pro-lightweight Jack Knights. He mentions, "The clean shaped little Kiwi boats with their small sails are obviously fastest offwind in anything over 10 knots, and they aren't so bad upwind either. There is talk of increasing their keel area by 15 percent since they do sag off."

I can tell you when the 727 arrived here we had a chance to see it in the yard nearby some "conventional" boats. The keel did look tiny in comparison. Here's a picture of the 727 sailplan drawing. The keel would be smaller than a comparable masthead boat, since the sail area is far less. However, it does look a bit too small, especially for our light air/downspeed conditions.

The other interesting thing about the "wide stern" of the 727 is the length of the 727 was more than 2 feet less than a comparable QT of the time. If you extrapolate the sheer back another 2 feet you end up with a stern not so unlike a Peterson/Holland pintail.

 

No disagreement, Paul, the Whitings and later larger Davidsons had distorted, stepped sterns and yes, continue the stern lines of a 727 out and you end up with a sort of pintail plan shape - BUT the difference is the kiwi boats were big dinghy flat underneath whereas the Peterson/Holland/Chance boats were canoe - and that is a big difference. That planing area combined with light displacement ... and you know what you get offwind.
What we have today (actually in the last two decades) in race monohull design is just extrapolations of what the kiwis were doing in the 1970's.

 

That is true. The lighter boats were better downwind in a breeze. The trade off was they were not as good downwind in the light. So in your area (breezy) it was better to have the lower displacement and less sail area. Here in SoCal, on most of the East Coast of the USA, and in places like the Solent and most of the Med it more often paid to have a boat that was better in the light than in the breeze.

I guess it depends on what rule you are looking at. For example, the current IRC seems to like boats under 40 feet that are very heavy compared to the 1970s Kiwi boats. A Summit 35 (Mills design) weighs 11,000 pounds!

The MORC rule, before it imploded, loved 30 footers that weighed more than 7,000 pounds.

IMS started out with some really exciting Farr boats like High 5. Then it became a heavy boat class by the end.

When the sail area is not limited it is easier to have the lightweight style of boats in light air. You overcome the wetted area issue by sheer horsepower.

When you have the SA limited, especially tied to a trade off for displacement, the SA/Wetted Area ratio means a lot in light air.

 

Fair enough, but I was more referring to the faster box rule class boats, Transat 6.5, 40, TP52, 60, V70 and the like.
Going back to IOR big dinghy, when Mr. Jumpa was sold to California, if I remember correctly that Farr One Tonner was a revelation in California conditions, light and fresh; am I right there?

 

If you're implying that Kiwis basically created the modern yacht then it seems to be a stretch.... the development of boats has always been a very international process. In the early '50s when the Kiwi offshore races were being won by baggywrinkled bowspritted ketches like Lady Bug, the northern hemisphere had separate rudders, fin keels and light displacement in boats by Giles, Van de Stadt, Brown and Fox. Tabarly's Transpac boat of the '60s seems to have been the first offshore boat with movable ballast, and shifting ballast is very much something developed and popularised by the French.

Fibreglass and composite plastic/foam construction were northern hemisphere inventions, as were alloy spars, carbon spars, film sails, and many other elements of the modern yacht.

The Germans had won the Quarter Ton Cup with a lightweight wide-stern flat-hulled fractional rig boat with a bulb keel and a dinghy crew as early as 1969.

The year before 45 South arrived on the world scene, David Thomas' Quarto - a fractional lightweight - only lost the quarter ton cup on a protest. Before that, of course, the light (but masthead) Robber had only lost the QTC on rudder breakages.

Unless all the Kiwis had their hands clamped over their eyes and ears, such boats must have been an influence in some quarters and it seems unlikely that Kiwis all ignored such boats at a time when people like Spencer complained that Kiwi designers were spending too much time being inspired by people like S&S. For example, Atkinson's 74 NZ TQ champ was allegedly a straight copy of Quarto and looks like it from what I can see. Many of the concepts that go together to create the modern yacht existed before Farr etc launched their first boat or were developed outside the Kiwi stream.

I own a Spencer and all my dream and "possible dream" boats are Farrs, Spencers or Davidsons so in no way am I anything but a fan of these designers, but they did not create in a vacuum and modern yachts are the creation of many other people.

PS - did Mr Jumpa ever go to the West Coast? She raced on the East Coast and was still there in 2009. Sweet Okole and probably Scalawag were Cali boats, I think you'll find.

But checking did bring an interesting little cameo about Sweet Okole v a Cali ULDB from Jim Antrim;

"Some of these principals are demonstrated by a race I sailed a couple years back on a J-24. We had a broad reach up the coast and a very close reach back in winds of about 25 knots. The wave lengths were about 90 feet (a bit more than four times our waterline) with heights of 6 - 8 feet. At 90 feet the waves were traveling at 12-1/2 knots, so almost every time we’d catch a wave we’d peg our 12 knot speeds. At times we would get up on a plane of perhaps 14 or 15 knots and would overtake the wave ahead. We kept this up for 4 hours of broad reaching for a IO-1/2 knot average on the first leg. That was good enough to beat one Peterson 2 ton boat for boat and to be right on the tail of another. They had been getting a good push from the waves, but we had been doing wild surfing on the same waves and consequently going the same speed. Sweet Okole (a light Farr I tonner) was first to the mark and about 20 minutes ahead of us. With a waterline of about 1/3 the wave length, she had done some surfing, and being light and quick to accelerate, she had caught waves more easily than the two tonners. Right on her tail was a Moore 24 - lighter than the J-24 and a down wind rocket. Then we rounded .... Needless to say, the two tonners had a faster and more comfortable trip back against the same waves. The Moore 24 cashed it in at the first harbor along route and our ride back in the J-24 was a very wet thrash."

I was sailing one tonners around SO's and MJ's time and while the lightweights were very fast, they were not always fastest. For example, in the light wind '78 Hobart (to use an example I can easily find and involving boats I sailed on) half a dozen older mastheaders beat the Farr 1104s home. Scott Kaufman's article on the '76 OTC noted that the Farrs were not as fast upwind as had been expected, and certainly we had no issue beating comparably-handled 1104s upwind in a breeze in the Kaufmans.

 

None of those are measurement rules that force a trade off of SA for DSPL. All are pretty overpowered which can overcome the SA/Wetted Area issue. One other recent class that did force a trade off was the IACC class. It saw all the boats end up in the heavy/big sail area corner.

Nope. Jumpa did ship to CA, I saw her on the trailer here. But she did not sail here. She immediately went to FLA for the SORC, then stayed on the East Coast. She was perfect for the heavy air reaching/running at the circuit. However, she still lost out overall to the Peterson 46 Williwaw.

We did get the sistership Jenny H here, sailed by Kilroy (currently the top of the Farr 40 and Melges 32 classes). It wasn't very fast in the light/lumpy stuff compared to the Peterson and Kaufman and Turner masthead boats (about 10 feet more "I" dimension). Remember it had to have a keel added AND the rating went up, so it wasn't as fast as it had been and rated higher. Not a good combo.

Even after 1979 when Pendoggie became a One Tonner I can't recall any regattas here where they won as a One Tonner.

I did some sailing on the Farr 1104 out here. It was really unhappy in the light lumpy stuff. It did go better when the rig was increased about 5 feet. Of course it then rated 2 Ton.

The Compass/Farr 920 Half Tonner did better. It was mostly sailing against boats 2 or 3 years older. In the lighter stuff Northstar (1974 World Champ) could beat them.

 

CT249, no, not saying the kiwis created the modern yacht ... but the lightweight IOR big dinghies (where formerly light displacement was most unusual and as rare as rocking horse defecation) revealed their speed under a restrictive rule and had a powerful effect worldwide, either from performance or controversy or media coverage, on following modern yacht and also non-rule design.
Yes, I know about Robber and Quarto and Odd Job and others ... but the lighter 45 South's winning created a far greater impact.
Agreed Tabarly's Pen Duick V was also a pioneering and very advanced design ahead of its time in 1968. But how about Aucklander Peter Nelson's ULDB (before the term was even known) Vim of 1960. I realize this sort of thing can go on stretching further and further back.
By the way, regarding early separate keel/rudder designs,Jim Young again:
"So with Tango in 1954, I wasn’t out to be the first [separate rudder/keel cruising keelboat in NZ]; it just seemed the logical thing to do. As far as the separate keel and rudder was concerned, my thinking came from experience sailing 14 footers. I knew that rudder configuration would improve directional stability and control; it did both which was contrary to the general thinking of the time; long keels have a large turning circle, while all centreboard boats have short keels/boards and they can turn on a sixpence. But [in those times] a dinghy-type spade rudder was certainly not regarded as the type of thing to use on a cruising boat."
This just to show that in the '50's not all kiwi yachts were long keel gaffers.
But long before Tango was the Logan 1899 race boat Sunbeam with bulb keel/separate rudder (see jpeg - but through dominating racing here, unappreciated and sold to Australia) ... and before Sunbeam was Nat Herreschoff's 1891 Dilemma in the US and I'm sure we can keep on going back finding other, less well known examples.
Apologies for straying way off topic.

 

It was logical and others were doing similar at the same time. Skip Caulkins designed the 50 foot fast cruiser Legend in 1950/51 with a fin keel and rudder with skeg. It went on to be first to finish in the Transpac.

Some interesting degrees-of-separation with that boat. Peterson apprenticed for Skip as a teenager. Legend was owned by the father of Dave Ullman. Later Peterson and Ullman teamed up on such projects as Blitz (probably the fastest QT in the USA in 1977) and later Quintessence (an OB41) that Ullman nearly won the Big Boat Series with.

Just to be clear, I think Bruce Farr was the best racing yacht designer of the last century. Without his influence Davidson and Whiting would not have gone down the light displacement route. I think LF Herreshoff, Olin Stephens, and Doug Peterson all had their eras, but Farr seemed to be the top dog all around. That doesn't mean he was always right, or his boats were always the right choice for a given condition.

 

Yes, it all passes on from the originators (who would have picked up some thought and ideas from other, earlier, original thinkers) and so on, always trying to improve. In those days, here, Farr was actually on his own - which makes him very unique. He worked with Jim Young as an apprentice; Jim says, Farr was always his own man, never copied anyone.

 

I knew that not all Kiwi boats of the '50s were gaffers; I was just trying to make the point that there isn't much evidence that their design at the time was ahead of the world, and therefore that much of the development that lead to the modern yacht was not extrapolating Kiwis of the 70s.

Yep, we can find many examples of separated rudder inshore boats. Early offshore boats include Zeevalk (1949), Sopranino (1949), Legend ('51), etc. The development did not come from any particular place.

Yes, the Kiwis had a major impact in the Anglo-Saxon ocean racing world in the '70s, and Farr's consistent outstanding performance for many years has had a huge impact.

But it does lead one to wonder how to properly calculate how much impact a particular boat caused. Quarto was a bit of a breakthrough for David Thomas, I think, who went on to design the three most popular British "first generation" offshore one designs in the important UK market (Sonata, Sigma 33 and Impala). It was these boats that probably pretty much established OODs in the UK, along with the J/24. She got quite a few column inches in the UK press and from UK journos at the time.

We probably don't know how much impact Listang made because it was a German boat, although since it was also made in the UK it was probably reasonably popular. Farr, Whiting and Davidson could have been fortunate in that they may have come along when level rating still had the momentum that it acquired in the days of cruiser-racers. The Listang was QT champ when the Cup was new and before it had become so prominent, but I can still find mentions of it in my UK mag collection; perhaps more than 45 got.

BTW the 727 doesn't seem lighter or beamier for its length than Quarto or Listang, and it's no lighter than Listang in absolute terms despite being shorter. The 727 is rated 1% quicker by the Germans (as you would expect being newer) and is probably a much better (and vastly more attractive) boat but can you and I, sitting here in the Antipodes and speaking English, accurately judge how much impact each of these designs had on the world as a whole?

Farr 727: 23.8'/ 7.3m LOA, 19.6'/6m LWL, 8.3'/2.54m beam, 2690lb/1220kg D, 1080lb/490kg ballast.

Quarto: 7.54m LOA, 6.1mLWL, 2.82m beam, 1303kg D,

Listang: 7.5m LOA, 6.2m LWL, 2.5m beam, 1200kg D

 

Trying to remember Listang, CT, did she have a stepped deck?
Yes, there were numerous pieces on David Thomas designs in YW and for sure, there would have been more knowledge of his designs in the UK than anything from the Southern Antipodes.
But my point, excuse repetition, is that the Farr 727 was the sudden appearance of an enfant terrible with too much talent - and that guaranteed notoriety and fame.

 

Listang was ugly like hell, but had a cabin the full-width of the yacht sloping down towards the nose.
You can see a "bad" pic of her in the enclosed document.
It was difficult to judge that boat as she was racing with a star-stelled crew, lead by Ulli Libor. Sometimes Rodney Pattinson was even stepping in.

The only stepped deck I know of is that of the prototype of the Ecume de Mer, which actually competed in the '69 cup next to Listang (which in turn won in '70)
see: http://www.finot.com/bateaux/ancienbt/ecume/prototype.htm

Ps: I was at Deauville in '75 for the "Coupe de France" which took place just before the 1/4 ton-cup, never had so much money been spent on the very numerous european-boats, so the ease with which the 727 walked away was a very sudden shock as you said !