I dont know how I missed this but several years ago, sailing coach Dan Brandt at Richmond Yacht Club introduced a Laser with an Opti rig. I would imagine Richmond Yacht Club, being just off to one side of the very windy and choppy Berkeley Circle on San Francisco Bay, would find a very depowered Laser of great use for their junior sailors. Come to think of it, at this time in my life, this is just my speed for racing a Laser in anything over twenty knots.
More info on the LOpti can be found here.
Also, at about the same time the LOpti came out (2011) there was, that year, another performance rig introduced for a Laser.
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The Cricket class was a 15 foot, chined, V-shaped, catboat with wishboom that died out in the early 1960s. By that time the Cricket fleet was only found at the Miami Yacht Club and, given the small numbers at the demise, it is today, a forgotten class. But in digging through U.S. sailing history more comes out about the Cricket.
The Cricket class was designed sometime during the 1890s, in or around Atlantic City N.J, where it became extremely popular. Reports indicate hundreds were built and about one hundred were racing out of Atlantic City in 1900. It was, as far as I can determine, the earliest example of a chined, V-shaped sailing dinghy in the United States. More about the early development of the Cricket class (who was the designer? what prompted the design? when did the class die out in Atlantic City?) has been hard to come by.
In the 1920s, when Northerners began to flock to the remote, but bucolic winter paradise that was Florida, the Cricket class was also exported in numbers from the New Jersey shores. It was reported that twenty five Crickets were shipped to southern Florida with most of them destroyed in the hurricane of 1926. The Cricket class would rebuild in Miami and would form the core of the Southern Florida Sailing Association (later the Miami Yacht Club) when it was organized in 1928. The Cricket would become the boat to beat in the free-for-all under 150 sq. foot (sail area) class.
When, in 1931, Bill Crosby designed the Snipe for the Florida West Coast Racing Associations free-for-all Trailer class, he must have been mindful that his Snipe would initially be compared against the Cricket class, at least in Florida. Between the two, the hull design similarities are striking. It does seem that Crosby started designing his Snipe using the Cricket as a baseline and then added user-friendly features (a sloop rig with a high boom being the most notable one). The Snipe went on to international fame, the Cricket, to oblivion.
Some photos:
A smattering of classic Florida sailing dinghies; on the left, the Optimist Pram, behind the Pram, a Mothboat, in the center, a Cricket, with the other Cricket, bow on, in the foreground. Behind the Cricket is a Suicide class.
Crickets launching at Miami Yacht Club, late 1950s.
Crickets going upwind. In all three of the ones in view in this photo the crew are hiking using skinny hiking boards.
The closest we have to a set of lines for the Cricket was this one-design commissioned by St. Petersburg Yacht Club as featured in The Rudder, 1919. The lines look very close to a copy of the Cricket although the length for this one-design is a foot longer than the Cricket.
A blog post about an earlier New Jersey dinghy, the Philadelphia Tuckups of the 1870s can be found here.
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This video covers this summers Supernova National Championship and is one of the better sailing dinghy drone videos now flooding the Internet. Though the video is a little bit long for my taste (and the music sometime jarring to my old ears), it is a high quality production by Limitless Image Aerial Photography. The Supernova is an English hiking singlehander, one of a plethora of singlehanded dinghies thriving in the English market. It is considered a big guy singlehander sporting a full battened rig on a stayed mast.
The Supernova Facebook page can be found here.
Of a tactical note: Despite the huge onus the new rules put on coming in on port tack at the weather mark, it seems a lot of sailors still do it.
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Ive covered the Three Bridges Race before on Earwigoagin, a 50 mile jaunt around winding narrow rivers, under low hanging bridges, in the English Norfolk Broads. Here is a drone video of this years event, no sound, just bucolic images of classic sailing classes starting the race under typical English summer weather, alternating glorious sun with grey belly cumulus. From the text blurb accompanying this video:
"The 55th Three Rivers Race was the first time aerial photography was allowed by organisers, Horning Sailing Club. Richard Kemp of Skyhover used an octocopter to photograph the start of the race . The three rivers from which the race gets its name are the three northern rivers of the Broads (Norfolk, UK), the Bure, Ant and Thurne. There are numerous Windmills and pumps such as the white Thurne Mill along the route.
At first the race sounds simple, an out and back course, in which you must round four marks and return to the start. It begins to sound trickier when you discover the course is in the order of fifty miles in length. It requires great planning and skill to navigate in unpredictable tides and variable winds. Many of the classes are for historic boats built in Norfolk and Suffolk for the difficult local conditions: such as the River Cruiser (first built 100 years ago) Yare & Bure One Design, Norfolk Punt. The greatest outsider challenge comes from the extremely fast Thames A Raters."
Navigators & General Three Rivers Race 2015 from Skyhover Aerial Video Norfolk on Vimeo.
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In the discussion of what are the fastest planing angles for hiking singlehanders (see the comments to this post) and how to determine them, Jim Champ sent along a link to his excellent how-to article on using a smartphone as a GPS course tracker. In following his procedure, except for the smartphone, everything else seems to be free. Highly recommended reading for the geeky sailor somewhat strapped for cash.
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For some reason my favorite drone sailing videos are the ones filming the American scows - (there is more Over here ). This video features fleet racing in the big monster ILYA scow, the As.
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As mentioned in my post on the Lark Scow - The Laser of the 1900s, Thomas Day of The Rudder magazine encouraged the home-builders of the Lark to be inventive; there was no strong concept of one-design strictness at this genesis of small sailboat development. So builders strayed from the plans, building Larks with yachty looking counter sterns, with cuddy cabins, longer and shorter Larks and they gleefully sent reports of their modifications into The Rudder and Thomas Day published them.
In 1903, in The Netherlands, W. Beekhuis, owner of the boat building yard "Navis" te Loosdrecht, built a small Lark, only 3.6 meters long (11.8 feet). He built them from the time period 1903-1905 but it is unclear how many he actually produced.
The 1903 Beekhuis Mini-Lark
In 1919, A Van Gool, from the northern coastal district of Friesland, The Netherlands, built a Beekhuis type Lark with additional modifications. Having traveled to America and observed American sailboats, Van Gool borrowed the Star type keel and grafted it on the Beekhuis Lark scow hull. He made the hull longer, 4 meters (13.1 feet). He replaced the squat gaff rig with a taller gunter rig. This Larken Klasse would become very popular in Friesland and Twente during the 1920s and 1930s.
The Van Gool/Friesland Larken
In 1934, Romke Vries designed an even higher aspect, full battened gunter rig for the Larken Klasse. By the end of the 1930s the more modern O-Jolle singlehander centerboarder was cutting into the Larken Klasse numbers and, as the Finn dinghy and OK dinghy were introduced after World War II, the class continued to lose popularity. In 1965, the class made its last appearance at Sneekweek, seemingly destined to fade into obscurity.
That is until 2004 where a group of Larken Klasse enthusiasts banded together to start restoring the old Larkens and build new ones. In the short span of 11 years they have built the class up to where they are now getting a vibrant 20+ turnout at the major regattas. An amazing resurrection of a true classic!
The newer Larkens have adopted a more modern keel with a separate rudder. The lead ballast is 34 kg.
The present day Larken Klasse on a reach (Anyone know who the photographer is?)
A vintage photo of a happy Larken skipper.
At this years Sneekweek regatta, artist and small boat racing enthusiast, Jan Tekstra decided to jump into a different class each day and record his race on a GoPro. This is his Larken segment.
Acknowledgement: All of the history of the Larken Klasse was taken from this article by J.K Kuipers As I was tossing this post around my brain, the German Segel Reporter beat me to it by about two weeks and brought out Michael Kunsts post on the Larken Klasse.
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This is one project of the super-rich where the beauty just radiates outward into one colossal superlative and, even if you are to the left of the political spectrum, all you can say is, "Well done, well done!"
LES VOILES DE SAINT-TROPEZ 2015 - DAY 3 : Cest bon ! from GMR+G1 on Vimeo.
My post on the resurgence of the J-class can be found here.
An aside
Is it me, but doesnt one of the professional sailors look a lot like Otto (Kevin Kline) from a "Fish called Wanda"
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The previous header photo featured a French Classic Moth Mariposa (Spanish for butterfly) sailing in tandem with a Nantais Vintage Moth (blue sail) at the French annual Classic Moth rally and regatta which was held yearly during the early 2000s. The strong sheer gives Mariposa a traditional look which suggests a traditional round bottom shape.
Nope. The header photo above is an optical illusion as other photos reveal that Mariposa is actually a multi-chine plywood shape (a three-planker) with the bow sections developed and pulled up.
Mariposa has a flat rocker panel that starts just in front of the daggerboard case and a topside chine that curves up to meet the gunwhale about 600mm from the bow. The developed bow suggests this Moth was built using the stitch and glue method.
The French Classic Mothists weigh their Moths like the Americans - on a bathroom scale. The scratched up bottom shows that Mariposa is not a coddled racing dinghy - and gets plenty of use.
An in-the-water shot of Mariposa shows the topside chine clearly disappearing into the gunwhale. This Moth design is visually appealing - Mariposa may not be much of a racer but thats OK.
The designer is the tall gentleman on the left. I have no idea who he is. Maybe some reader could help out on identification?
Update, August 14: Dominique Banse to the rescue with the designer indentification. Thanks Dominique!
"There is an article about this Moth in the French magazine “Chasse-Marée” number 147 from November 2001. The owner builder’s name is Bertrand Warion. The boat is built with 5mm plywood and weights 76 kg."
Update September 29, 2015: Designer Bertrand Warion adds a comment to this post updating us on the latest with Mariposa.
"Hello ,I am Bertrand Warion who designed Mariposa and usual reader of your blog.
The boat is still in good condition with great modifications, large cuts to flatten the bottom rocker and new cockpit plan, more "modern" but quite unconfortable for me. [I am] thinking to ameliorate that point.
I did not sail Mariposa [for] 5 years (leaving job, town) and [now] mainly designing and building others boats but i will recondition the boat soon.
Here are some new Mariposa pics.
There are a few enterprising readers of this post who could put together their own version of Mariposa, at least in model form. Earwigoagin is always open to publicizing such design experimentation.
Through the early 2000s the French Classic Mothists held an annual get together. I think it was originally held at one of the clubs on the Seine but then moved over to a small lake about 100 km. south of Paris, sponsored by Cercle de la Voile du Centre, Etang du Puits, (Google translation - the pond of the well), just off the Route dArgent. Though well attended, in a mystery still not explained, the annual French Classic Moth gathering and regatta just stopped. [Mystery somewhat explained - see below] .
The mystery of the French Classic Moth get-together got somewhat clearer when reader Dominique Banse emailed an article from a 2001 issue of Chasse-Marée, the French classic/traditional boating magazine. It turns out that all these photos were taken at a Classic Moth design competition that was sponsored by Chasse-Marée and held at Suc dErdre, just north of Nantes (and not at Etang du Puits as I wrote initially). There was a turn out of 20 Moths Classique, both new designs and old, as well as several IMCA narrow skiffs. There is still no explanation why the Classic Moths in France could not keep the annual event going after 2001.
I recently rediscovered on the Web, photos from Marc Morell (who took all the photos used in this post) documenting the Suc dErdre. The diversity of French Classic Moths is just astounding! Ill feed more of these photos into later posts on Earwigoagin.
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