Mayfly 14 Launching

As some of you know, Ive been building a Jim Michalak-designed Mayfly 14 for a friend here in Australia. You can read more about the design using this link.

Mayfly 14 copied from Jim Michalaks catalogue

The building process was delayed by a number of issues, including having our house and workshops flooded. However, my patient friend waited cheerfully, and we have finally got the boat in the water.

Here I am holding Mayfly 14 while owner Tony snaps a photo.

For many decades Ive been trying to convince people that flat-bottomed boats have lots of virtues, but that they must be designed properly. The standard comment is, "...flat-bottomed boats are easy to build, but very difficult to design...", and that is a fair statement. Unless the designer understands the critical relationship between bottom rocker in profile, and curve of topsides in plan view, the resulting boats frequently turn out to be very poor performers.

Jim Michalak has a wonderful understanding of flat-bottomed hull design, and Mayfly 14 demonstrates his mastery.

Mayfly 14 showing-off her well-designed hull shape and pivoting leeboard

On launching day, Mayfly 14 was loaded down with the weight of two large men and gear, but she sailed superbly right from the start. The boat was very light on the helm, demonstrated precise handling, and proved to be unusually close-winded. The last point was largely due to the excellent shape in her Allwood Sails, made by Joel McDonald.

Joel McDonald, from Allwood Sails, makes very good sails for traditional rigs

One of the particularly nice elements of the Mayfly 14 design is the amount of uncluttered sprawling room in the cockpit, made possible by the use of a pivoting leeboard instead of a centreboard. The leeboard is very effective, and the apparent assymetry is completely unnoticable when sailing.

A shot showing the pivoting leeboard in action. It works equally well on either tack.

Very simple sheeting arrangement. Note the straps and Fastex buckles used to hold the excellent deck-hatches securely closed. There is a large hatch in both the foredeck and the aft deck.

Everything in the rig is super-simple, and almost every component can be made from line and wooden parts

The boats travels well on her custom trailer, made with crosswise supports appropriate to the flat-bottomed hullform

Another shot showing the trailer with three crossways bunks covered with UHMW plastic.

A simple, cheap, and highly practical boat. Wholesome fun!

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Little Egret Launching

I am very excited to report that my Little Egret design, built by John Hockings, has been launched.

For those who dont know about this boat, you can read her history here, and here, and here, and here.

John has done a wonderful job of building his boat, showing that a determined first-timer who reads the correct books, and approaches things in a methodical manner can achieve first-class results. You can read about Johns building journey on his Woodenboat Magazine Forum thread here.

Launching day was overcast, rainy, and almost totally free of a sailing breeze. However, we did get a few short-lived breezes off the edges of passing showers, and were able to experience a little bit of resonable sailing - enough for me to form some opinions about stability and hull-balance. At this stage of the game I am very happy indeed with how the boat performed. In particular, I am delighted about the ergonomics of the internal layout. Here are some random photos: -

John just after arrival at the boat ramp. The rudder appears to be small, but it does comply with the rules-of-thumb regarding required area. However, I have given details for an alternative blade in the plans, which is somewhat larger. We had hoped that the use of end-plates would render this small rudder effective, and so far it seems to be very good. John has incorporated the old-time sharpie trick of being able to lower the entire rudder-post about four inches so as to drop the rudder deeper when clear of shoal water.

The hull-form of Little Egret is a cross between a sharpie and a dory, with a bottom panel wider than a pure dory, and with more flare in the topsides than is common in a sharpie.

Although it was early in the day, John and I indulged ourselves in a celebratory shot of rum and coke before the launching. That is John on the left, and a very nervous me on the right!

Moments after launching, sitting high on her lines as she has no load on-board. You will notice that she is very slightly down by the head, which is what we wanted, because the addition of crew weight should get her sitting level if my calculations are correct.

That is John and me on the very first sail. She proved to be very comfortable, with one person sitting beside the centreboard case and leaning against the forward coaming. The helmsman sits with back braced against the side-deck carling and with feet against the opposite side of the boat. This is a secure and effective way to travel. You can see in this photo that the fore-and-aft trim is just about perfect.

In from the first sail. The wind has dropped out, but we had encountered enough to discover that she sails nicely. That is me giving the thumbs up to my wife who took the photo.

This boat is very lean, and has fine entry lines

With two people aboard, the boat trims with the top of the rudder just below the surface.

John with his wife on launching day. His face tells a story about he feels...

Building plans for Little Egret are complete, but I wont be releasing them until a basic assembly guide has been written.

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Landing School Boat Launching

A great week of learning, teaching and boat launching last week at The Landing School where I instruct in the Wooden Boatbuilding Program. These students just launched a Joel White designed Maine Coast Peapod. It performed great at the launch last Friday. We enjoyed a jaunt in the Kennebunk River during a small craft advisory. We ducked out into some of the swell, three of us aboard, to see how mannerly a Peapod is in these conditions. Even I was struck -- again -- by how well behaved a sea boat the pod can be, whether bow to or stern to the waves. We turned around and rushed in with the swell and tide as the regular Fall start students watched on and snapped photos.

With most of my work in plywood, CNC cutting and making boat kits, it is a joy to help students learn to build a boat in solid wood and one that does not depend on epoxy for holding it all together or fairing over mistakes!

Finer points of final assembly.

Check out the Programs at The Landing School on the Rocky Coast of Maine.

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Sylphe – by André Mauric Sunk before Launching!

André Mauric was the most prolific and best known of Frances 20th century yacht designers. His career started in the 1920s with radical designs for racing yachts to the International Metre Rule in the days when the bermudan rig was still considered new-fangled and fragile, and carried on well into the 1980s when, among other winners he designed the the highly successful Atlantic crossing record breaker Kriter VIII. In between he designed dozens of great boats, including Pen Duick VI for Eric Tabarly, the 1972 Half Ton Cup winner Impensable, the popular and successful First 30, and Sylphe, a classic yacht hidden for 5 years underwater.

(photos: Sylphe racing at St Tropez: www.sail-in-style.com)

Sylphe (originally Ariel) was commissioned by Paul Blanchet, an owner who wanted a yacht to win races under the British RORC rating rule. His timing was not good – it was 1939 when Mauric started designing the boat, and she was still unfinished on the slipway at Chantier Pharo, her builders in Marseille, when the Germans invaded France. In the days of uncertainty and chaos after Frances surrender, believing that the Germans would steal the yachts ballast keel – a 13 ton lead casting (imagine the price of that today!) - Mauric ordered the yard to sink the unfinished hull in a deep part of the harbour.

So it was that Sylphe spent 5 years in hiding under water before she was even launched. Many of the Marseilles shipyard and dock workers knew the secret, but no-one breathed a word, and Sylphe remained safely concealed with all her ballast until the war was over.

After the war Sylphe was recovered and completed. Her long submersion had done no harm – indeed it may have further improved the seasoning of her timbers and made them less liable to distort, crack, or split in later age. She was finally launched in 1947, and though Mauric had designed her with one of his trademark tall bermudan cutter rigs supported on a slender mast, her sailplan was modified in 1953 to give her a larger and taller foretriangle, its foot extended by a short bowsprit. These modifications were no doubt intended to keep her competitive with the latest offshore racing boats which, encouraged by the allowances in the old RORC rating rule, had begun to sport big overlapping genoas and high aspect mainsails.

During the next 50 years or so Sylphe was sailed and raced in the Mediterranean. It seems she was well maintained, with Mauric himself advising on a number of alterations and small repairs. Her original mast was replaced with a new hollow wood mast in the 1980s, and an engine was fitted at some time (she had been designed and launched without one). The teak deck was also renewed during this period. So when she came up for sale in the south of France in 1999 her new owners found her to be in reasonably good structural order, but scruffy, dated, and in need of a lot of attention.

Her new Dutch owners sailed her to Turkey and set about a 7-month total overhaul to make her more suitable for Mediterranean charter use. Although the interior had mostly to be stripped out and rebuilt to provide more comfortable charter accommodation, the original hull timbers and planking, having endured such a long submersion so many years ago, were found to be in excellent order. Only a couple of rot-infected frames had to be replaced. Her owners are proud to claim that Sylphe still has none of the steel bracing and reinforcement that many other yachts of her day now need to keep them in sailing order. They are equally proud that she retains her original mast winches and her unique, custom made, cockpit sheet winches.

Now equipped with all the modern trappings of a top-quality charter yacht, including satnav, full B&G sailing instrumentation, water-maker, autopilot, etc., Sylphe is currently believed to be available for charter in the Mediterranean. She is also occasionally to be seen taking part in classic yacht regattas at St Tropez, Cannes, and at other glamorous yacht harbours.

Sylphe - a classic Andre Mauric design:

LOA: 18.50m
LOD: 17.25m
LWL: 12.68m
Beam: 3.95m
Draft: 2.50m
Air draft: about 23m, masthead 21m above deck
Sail area: Main 84 m2, Yankee 29 m2, Genoa 78 m2, Spinnaker 205 m2, Reacher 105 m2

Link to Sylphe Charter site

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Another Flint Launching

Ive just received an email from Flint builder, Ken Newey advising me of another launching of what is turning out to be a very popular design. Most of the boats built to the Flint design have been constructed by amateurs, and Im very happy to say that as long as decent quality ply is used, the boats go together fine. This is very gratifying, considering the extreme amount of twist in the developable panels used for the hull construction. The resulting shape shows lots of curce and concavity, which makes for a smooth ride in choppy conditions.

Photo of the first Flint, launched about five years ago?

Here is the text of Kens email: -
Hi Ross,

I notice you have other completed Flint builds on your website and thought it appropriate to send you a shot of mine. It took a bit longer than hoped to complete, but thats only because I didnt really do anything during winter and only got back into finishing it in October/November. As it is, its not quite complete - I am in the process of painting it - Ill follow up with another shot when its all done.

First time out (and each time since) I have had the whole family on board (~200kg) and used a 2hp Honda to push it along - cant really saw how fast I went but it seemed to be quite reasonable. I look forward to taking it out on my own. Final weight is estimated to be about 60kg, but you can see I have added to the gunwales.

I am also thinking about setting up the sailing rig and have built (not yet glued up) a mast using the birds mouth technique. The staves are roughly 20mm x 10mm so the finished mast should be around 50mm in diameter. The timber for the mast came from a 1.2m length of oregon verandah post ripped into 28 strips which were then scarfed to produce 8 x 3.5m staves. Not sure how this will turn out - but it was pretty simple to make. I will be using a timber plug in each end (protruding at the tip to take loops for the forestay and shrouds). Does it need any other internal plugs for hardware? I dont think so but I am working it out as I go along.

Regards,

Ken Newey

Kens New Flint, showing her nicely made inwales. Boat yet to be painted?

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