Costa Mesa Clan
Reemul said:
Now now Scott. You know that the manufacturer endorses the Max26x and Mac26m for heavy weather racing and that both boats are ocean sailboats. You likely are also aware of the 130 rating that I was threatened with last year. Jim Teeters evil is embedded in the software PHRF-NW uses to rate designs. Only fix finned vessels have hope of fair rating through that software IMO and of course the closer the vessel is in design to a TP52 the better the rating. This is why I have always viewed the TP52's as the owner of Braveheart has - PHRF buoy racers. These Mac26x boats are Costa Mesa built boats. That means a lot more than a buoy boat.
In 1973 there were 46 boatbuilders in Costa Mesa California and 24,000 boats were produced. A year later that number shrank to 22. Today there are less than a handfull. Nonetheless Costa Mesa California remains a Meca for boat owners, a sacrid historical place to any who ever owned or dreamed of owning an ocean going sailboat.
Westsail, Islander, Flicka, Crealock, Dana, Columbia & Lancer, Cal 20 and Cal 40 and Erickson all have historical ties to the city. And if you consider colaborative efforts, the list is even larger.
Costa Mesa is in Orange County and there were close to 100 boat builders in Orange County in the mid 1970s. Hence those who have or had interest in Santana, Schocks, I-14s, Sabots and Thistles, Penguins, el Toros and Lidos, which were all produced in the county, should be interested in Costa Mesa.
Designs from Bill Lee, George Cuthbertson & George Cassian, Bruce Farr, C. William Lapworth, and Shad Turner were built in the Costa Mesa community.
Today, builders such as Dick Valdes and Maury Threien, who founded Columbia Yachts, have long gone and the Meca today is threatened by redevelopment. Jenson Marine and MacGregor Yachts remain.
Yet there is hardly a serious sailor that doesn't know about Alamitos Bay - thirty miles from Meca, where some of the 1,960 Cal 20s are raced. Or about surf city, Marina Del Ray, where Coast Mesa clan boats are prevailent and ready to take their owners to Catalina Island and beyond.
Most sailors are aware of the Costa Mesa built Cal 40s that just completed the 100 year aniversity Transpac, a race to Hawaii that has been run regularly since 1906. But, few know that Genuine Risk (a canting keel maxi), Pyewacket (a waterbalasted maxi), Beau Gest (a TP52) and Magnitude 80, three of arguably the fastest monohulls on the water, are unable to break the record of the Costa Mesa built Joss, a 65 footer. Costa Mesa has claim to one of the oldest unbroken records in ocean racing, the Marina del Rey to Puerto Vallarta race which is run alternate years from the TransPac. May city officials develop that claim or at least preserve the history of it and the importance of this city for boat building somewhere within the shopping centers now planned. Joss is a Macgregor 65. Did not the sea hag teach you these things. Her training is worthless and this is but one example.
Meca - home of the church of FOYD. Huzzah Huzzah - let fly. I am especially interested in other Costa Mesa builds. Please comment if you know of them.