Dinghy/yacht designers

Morten Oleson. His site is www.boatplans.dk

 

dinghys and yachts...

See Trinkas ... designed by Bruce Bigham....

http://www.trinka.com/

 

What about PC Bolger who has made everything from fast catboats to the ship that was in Master and Commander the HMS Rose before the movie. He has a 23 ft schooner that faster than just about anything short of a C class catamaran. Some of his designs are controversial but he has thousands of designs. One of the most prolific designer ever in modern history. What ever you think you might want to do on water Mr. Bolger has probably already designed the boat and it has been built.

John

 

What? The Light Schooner (if that's what you're meaning) is "faster than just about anything short of a C Class catamaran"???

Umm, with respect; that's waaaaaaay off, by a factor of about 100%, according to all figures I've seen.

In Australia, the Light Schooner is rated, for instance about 1% faster than the Hartley TS16, a 16' cruiser from the '50s; about 8% slower than the 1947 designed 20' long Flying 15 keel yacht;it's about 20% slower than the ancient 21 footers of the 1930s. The fastest 23 foot yacht in that system rates about 25% faster than the Light Schooner.

Those figures indicate that the Light Schooner is slower than a Vanguard 15 or Laser, and about half the speed of a 49er.

Light Schooner owners write of 4-6 knots upwind and bursts of 10+ reaching in a breeze....that's a far cry from the high teens upwind in an 18' skiff. and the high 20s/low 30s downwind. The little 12' skiff goes a lot better than that. 'Net accounts reckon they're slower than the Norwalk Island Sharpie 26, which is about as fast as a '70s 25 foot trailer sailer cruiser/racer. That's not rocketship territory.

Hey, I love the Light Schooner to bits, I want one, but saying it can beat an 18 foot skiff, a Melges 24, a Thompson 8m, a 49er, a Formula 18 cat, a Farrier F25, a 505, an International 14, or even a J/24, Vanguard 15 or Hobie 16 is pushing the bounds of naval architecture beyond their limits.

 

tsk tsk

Chris, why is it that you didn't even mention the Moth foiler? Theres something psycological going on here...
Bolger is a good candidate despite the Light Schooner exaggerations..

 

Neither PC Bolger or I tell tall tails.

I didn't know that my post carried over to this small thread but hear goes anyway. I cannot say in anyway that I am familiar with the Australia's Victoria Ratings but I do know how they judge the Portmouth ratings here in the USA. I described the Bolger quote verbatim that Harold "Dynamite" Payson placed in his book "Build The New Instant Boats" Whether you believe your rating system fairly rated such a low amount of boats and crews who built a thousand dollar light schooner boat against a fleet of world class sailors with $50,000.00 carbon skiffs is not my problem. But I have been racing multihull boats most of my life and a Bolger light schooner on a broad reach is a hard boat to match with any oft those pathetic examples you mentioned. I can't believe you would think a 16' Hobie could match the speed of a light schooner.

You are rating backyard builders against the top of each of those boats fleet. I have sailed a light schooner my nephew built with my help and he regularly trounces what are supposed to be much faster boats like a 49er skiff, your antique 16’ Hobie banana boat and some 6.0 Nacra multi hulls. A PHRF rating for the light schooner in America is nonexistent because there are not enough of them racing to make a rating. I am sure that in Australia if there were an active fleet many of the boats you pointed out would be eating crow about the light schooner performance.. From my communications with Mr. Bolger I can assure you that when he states something he is not blowing smoke from his nether regions. Also after racing across the San Francisco Bay in a light schooner if there was a large fleet of these boats that became popular it would attract the caliber of sailors that would raise those comical ratings you mentioned to the high standard the boat was designed to perform at.

One more indisputable fact is that there are no major sail makers who have even studied the sail plan for a light schooner. I am sure if Calvert, Smyth Team Sails, Hyde sails or any number of other performance sail makers made a concerted effort the light schooner would become a class of mono hulls that would lap other mono hulls at the Olympics like the Tornados did for years My nephew called in a favor from an experienced sail maker who took his boat for several weeks to tune the sails. I am sure most of the backyard builders down under put together their own sails in a manner that made the boat sail.

So if you get the book “Build the new Instant Boats” by Dynamite Payson and go to page 124 and read what PC Bolger wrote about his light “scooner” design I can attest to his meaning of speed. . I only hope that someday you will meet up with a well equipped light schooner.

 

Uh Oh!

I made the mistake of using the word "exaggerations" in my last post because I believed what Chris had said-not knowing much about the boat. Now I'm not so sure-though I'd be willing to bet that a Moth foiler and an Aussie 18 plus afew cats could beat this boat.
Nevertheless, for some who like me might be ill-informed about the Light Schooner check these out:
http://www.ace.net.au/schooner/index.htm Be sure to cick on "racing results"-pretty impressive though it gives no idea what the other boats were in most cases.

and this site-not much to it except the Bolger quote about C-class cats and a pix of the Light Schooner:
http://www.instantboats.com/lschooner.htm

 

Glory be, what a lot of bluster. Of course Bolger was exaggerating, and if he wasn't , there is room in the phrase "most anything" for some of the other high-performance boats named. If well rigged and well manned, the LS will reach with the best, but the schooner rig is not going to shine either upwind or DDW. But is there a faster boat that you can build cheaply in your garage, which doesn't require a lot of expensive fittings, or any rigging wire, and which has some traditional style?

 

A light schooner is not an end all fast boat like the Mar Chia IV or an Oracle BMW Cup boat but for a real sleeper boat that can make red faces o more than a few boat captains it is a great fun boat. It is wet, does not point well upwind but better than most cats and will put five adults in the water faster than any other boat I have sailed. The trick is to sail it enough where you are comfortable pushing it to the limit. No it won't beat a moth or an Aussie skiff but I have seen an ill fated and stunned 49er crews facial expressions when the light schooner sailed passed them on a reach. I can only assume it was a brand new boat and crew going out for a shakedown. I disagree about going downwind though of course that is my opinion.

Those sites are very familiar to me and many other Bolger forums and Bolger boat sites. I still have three more Bolger plans I own that need building. My racing days are probably over unless someone could convince me to race around the world or some other long race like a Transpac to Hawaii. It seams that in situations such as this one more is said than done. Oh well life goes on and I am glad that I didn’t have anything better to do today. To all fair winds and calm seas.

 

Doug,

Those "impressive results" come from the same geographical location that created the slow yardstick I mentioned. When the site you mentioned speaks of beating B Class or Div 2 cruisers, they're normally talking things like 20' trailer-sailers from the '60s and early '70s. Beating such boats does NOT qualify a boat as a high-performance legend.

I didn't mention the foiling Moth because they have no yardstick and are not very popular or as well known as the dinghies, skiffs and cats I mentioned in the bottom part of the post. If you care to look at them you'll see I chose boats like Vanguard 15s and Melgi that are well known in the USA, plus a couple of boats that are the fastest things around. I didn't choose a boat that doesn't exist in the country where the writer to whom I was writing came from.

 

I WANT to build a Light Schooner, I love the look of it, I WANT to race it. I agree it looks like a real "sleeper" esp. on a reach. I hope I'll get a chance to knock one up, put a good low-aspect rig on it and maybe some racks or traps and fill it with Laser, Laser Radial, J/24, cat, windsurfer, 420, skiff, etc champs. I think it will kick in some conditions.

But that's a long way from beating "just about anything" bar a C Class and so far the evidence is slim. I have to say, I've never met Phil Bolger but while I like some of his boats he also seems to market them quite hard....I remember the "MIcro" or something article where he uses an imaginary cruise to emphasise how good the boat is. That sounds a bit like me creating a fantasy race to illustrate how my Spencer 28 can beat a Farr 40. Some of us prefer to see times and results.

I'm not into F18s myself, but can you really call them "pathetic"? Exactly what is vastly better? Same goes for the Farrier. I don't know which F18s you see, I have the misfortune of sharing the course with about 5 guys from the top 10 in the F18 worlds (along with world A Class and Tornado champs) and their boats go fairly well.

It's interesting that a LS beats Nacras....what club? Are results on the net? How did the 49ers and Hobies you race again finish at the world or nationals championships?

The only thing I can find regarding racing on the Bolger forum is a mention of a LS finishing half way through a fleet of 15 boats including a Catalina 22 in a breeze. Maybe the fleet consisted of a Catalina 22, a Light Schooner and a bunch of C Class cats and 18' skiffs that beat the LS?

 

It's alright Chris

It's alright , Chris.