Can someone help explain the old “Suicide” class rules to me?

Years ago, I stumbled on an article about the class and thought it looked like it might be fun to build one in the future. I wasn’t able to find a formal set of rules for the class, just was written in the article.

I gathered the found the following info:
Sail area is limited to 125sq ft, including the boom.
Beam is 5’6” (is that maximum allowed or a set requirement?)
LOA is 18’-23’

Does anybody have more info or can point me in the right direction?

 

A simple web search yielded the following from an Atkins boat plan.

During the late twenties the Huntington Yacht Club sponsored the Development Class of fast centerboard sailing boats. This class was popularly known as the Suicide Class, not because the boats were dangerous to sail, but because the insignia indicating the class was the old piratical device, a skull and cross-bones. Many of these boats were astonishingly fast. The boats were in the neighborhood of 18 feet over all and from 4 to 6 feet in breadth and all were of centerboard type. The principal restrictions of the Development Class are: no keels, not less than 3 feet 6 inches beam, nor more than 125 square feet sail area, a limitation of 50 pounds weight for a centerboard and a crew of two. Reaching in a strong breeze, despite the modest sail area, these boats really travelled very fast and in strong puffs, if you could keep them right side up without reefing, showed all the characteristics of planing. With more sail,a ballasted keel and a long hiking board to gain stability I have no doubt that speeds up to 12 miles an hour would be easily possible with hulls similar to those of the Development Class boats.

 

Thank you! What Atkins plan is this from? I found his “Speculation” plan but it didn’t have all this information.

It says centerboard, does that mean a daggerboard is NOT allowed? I know the class is defunct now, all this is irrelevant, but did they allow solo or did you have to have a crew of two?

 

It was from the Atkins plan Flying Saucer, his version of a keel boat along those lines.
The Huntington Yacht Club still exists, you can contact them to see if they might have any records or photos. I saw a couple of New York Times news paper articles written in the 30's detailing the results of races in that class, if you do a web search.

 

Thank you! I’m going to reach out to them and the Miami Yacht Club to see if they have any archived documents about it.

 

Here is a video from Florida.

 

Thank you for finding this! I was tempted to search for it on YouTube but didn’t want to screw up my algorithm and have to watch ads for the suicide hotline for the next 6 months.