Yachting Magazine, April 1937

 

The Yankee One-Design Class
By
W. Starling Burgess

 

IF IT be true that "Competition is the life of sport," yacht racing in America is becoming more and more seriously handicapped by the lack of competition. In any other sport that is worthy of the name, state, national, and international organization has brought about not only a uniformity of rules but a uniformity of the implements of sport to the end that a competitor who has attained local success may aspire to higher and wider fields of endeavor. This not only results in greater satisfaction to the more conscientious and talented competitor, but greatly benefits the sport itself by providing the impetus which spurs the beginners to higher goals.
 
In so far as racing and sailing rules are concerned, we have had for some years, thanks to the Y.R.A, a quite satisfactory state of affairs. But the various measurement rules have failed to provide uniformity of boats or to establish permanent popular classes. Like many another problem in this country today, if you are poor enough, or rich enough, you needn't worry. But if you happen to be neither healthy enough nor young enough nor poor enough to "take it" in a Star or Brutal Beast, nor plutocratic enough to build to an open class every year, yacht racing is a tough game.
 
In no other sport is a man's progress so limited by the size of his purse. If he can afford a Six-Metre, an "R" or a 30-Square-Metre -- boats forty feet or so over all and costing $5,000 or more to build, he is assured of good, hough spotty competition. I say "spotty" because none of these classes has attained "national security," and their popularity varies from year to year and from locality to locality. 30-Square-Metres, for instance, happen to be in vogue at Marblehead this year, "Sixes" here, and "Rs" there.
 
But if a man cannot afford to build to an open class, the outlook is discouraging, for we find that in the next smaller classification -- boats 30 feet or so over all and costing from $2,000 to $25000 - represented under the Big Three rules by "T" boats, Y.R.A. 23 footers, Five-Metres, 22-SquareMetres, etc., only half a dozen boats have been built in this country in as many years. There is the choice of making a doubtful investment in an old class or of bringing in foreign boats -- which isn't quite cricket with most yachtsmen. The Universal, International, and Square-Metre Rules, then, have failed to establish permanent classes of small boats, and it is an astounding fact, which cannot be attributed entirely to the prospects of the Yankee Class, that there are few, if any, boats building this winter to any one-design class of this size.
 
This unfortunate condition results not from inherent faults in the rules but rather from the confusion of having so many good rules at the same time.
 
But, rules or no rules -- which should affect only open classes -- there will always be the need of one-design classes for those who are more interested in competition than design as well as for those who cannot afford being outbuilt.
 
That the one-design field extends up to and beyond the $2,000 price class has been amply proved by the great number of such classes, racing and cruising, that have been launched in recent years. Our harbors (and beaches) are full of them. In New England there are "Triangles" at Gloucester; "M-Bs" at Marblehead; 17s" at Cohasset; "15s" at Marion; "Ss" in Buzzards Bay; "Interclubs" at Edgartown, and "Seniors" at Wianno - all providing nothing but local competition. The Southern Massachusetts Yacht Racing Association cannot find a single modern fleet with six well-found boats in it with which to hold intersectional races. If they take "15s", the Marconi sailors don't know how to hoist a gaff -- or vice Versa. If they use "S" boats, the Wianno Champs don't know how to put a rope around a winch. And so it goes.
 
The rapid growth in the popularity of ocean racing is due as much to a healthy rule situation as anything else. The skies are no fairer and our boys are no saltier than in the past. But competition is better regulated in this branch of the sport, thanks to the Cruising Club of America.
 
The Stars are very much alive because they have provided more good, clean, hard sailing for more men than all other one-designs combined. But it was the unselfish spirit behind the class, not the boat herself, that put the class over and keeps it an outstanding sporting success!
 
All of which leads us up to the raison d'etre of the Yankee One-Design Class.
 
Several years ago, a group of former Marblehead yachtsmen met at Edgartown. They had moved their summer residences from the North Shore to the warmer waters of Vineyard and Nantucket Sounds, where everything was to their liking but the racing, which still smacked of the quahaug influence. There was much talk of modern boats, but little action -- except for a slight flurry of "30-Squares" in 1934. But the idea kept cropping up and it blossomed out -- not as a Nantucket Sound Class, but as a New England Coast Class.
 
The idea of having a coastwise class in New England is not new. The M-B (Marblehead-Buzzards Bay) Class, built in 1926, was an attempt to produce one. This class might have fulfilled its expectation but for one fatal mistake. The boat was not designed for Buzzards Bay. Whenever a design is attempted to meet varying local conditions, the most difficult or most strenuous condition to be encountered must obviously be taken as the "design condition." A class to be raced successfully as a coastwise class in New England must, therefore, be designed for Buzzards Bay.
 
That it is not asking too much of Marblehead yachtsmen to put up with a rough water boat is proved by the success of the 30-Square-Metres there. These able, short-rigged boats were created for racing and cruising in the Baltic and North Sea, where the rugged conditions much more resemble Buzzards Bay than Marblehead. "S" boats, starting behind the "30s," in spite of their short rig, are today the most popular class at Marblehead.
 
The Yankee Committee, then, is faced essentially with the problem of designing a boat for Buzzards Bay that will still be fast enough for Marblehead. Heavy Displacement is obviously not the answer, for many reasons, the most important being the matter of cost. Small sail boats of this kind seem to cost remarkably close to fifty cents a pound -- at which price we must keep between 4,000 pounds and 5,000 pounds displacement. Furthermore, as Uffa Fox has pointed our in comparing "Square Metres" with "Metres," heavy boats are not necessarily able boats. It has taken some time to live down the superstition, inherited from the inside-ballast, fisherman type cruiser age, that heavy boats are able. Actually they are merely dry and comfortable, for the simple reason that they can't be driven to windward. But a racing boat must sail to windward when cruisers may be comfortably bobbing up and down getting nowhere.
 
Hull form is all important; not merely must the prismatic coefficient, the length-beam ratio, and the distribution of the displacement be correct, but, especially in sailing boats, the form and amount of the overhands. Whether the stern is long drawn out or cut short abaft the water line, no vital effect is observable in the boats performance; but extreme forward overhang always leads to a wretched sea boat.
 
Here is where the Yankee Committee will face the acid test. Not that there is any question about the kind of bow for a light displacement boat in rough water -- or any water. Every designer and every design-conscious skipper (of which there are, fortunately, several on the Yankee Committee) know just what bow is indicated. But this is a world of fancy as well as fact. And most yachtsmen today fancy long, "graceful" ends in a racing boat. They are the style. All real racing yachts, from "J" sloops to 30 Squares, have them! Why? Not because designers think they are pretty, or even like them, but because the rules develop them!
 
Fifty years ago, before the rules, our harbors were filled with really beautiful yachts designed by artists rather than mathematicians. Clipper bows, graceful sterns, trailboards, the things which still make a turn around the Constellation, designed buy my father in 1889, the greatest thrill for me in sailing at Marblehead, were commonplace. These graceful craft, designed to please as well as perform, and not to fit a rating, had little forward overhang. And it is well know that whenever boats have been built to true sail area rules (such as Development Class boats and Boothbay "20s," when hull forms were not "indicated"), short ends and long water lines were always drawn. Why? Because the fundamental factor in the speed of any displacement hull is the displacement-length ratio -- and long boats sail faster than short ones provided, of course, they have sufficient stability. Furthermore, short-ended boats are stronger, easier to build, and more seaworthy. What more need be said?
 
The plans accompanying this article have been chosen to provoke discussion, rather than because they please the committee. As a whole, the designs show a definite effort toward small sail area, light displacement, moderate draft, and long easy water lines. As a result, most diagonals are unusually sweet for boats of this size.
 
To me the most interesting design is No. XIII. The designer of this boat has shown real genius as an originator. The sail plan is modern, though moderate. The boom to hoist ratio is 2.5, the rake of the mast looks well and adds to the performance to windward.
 
But it is in the lines of her hull that No, XIII is most daring. 30 feet over all with 26 feet water line, double-ended yet with very easy diagonals, this boat, with her moderate displacement, should be fast and able. She is, in truth, a glorified sailing whaleboat. I should like very much to see her tried out.
 
Number XXII is, to my eye, the most promising of the lot. Handsome is as handsome does, and this boat combines the indicated requisite of hull form and displacement with a grace and shapeliness that could have been conceived only by a designer of wide experience. If her draft is not too great, and her curved transom not too expensive to build, the committee could not go far astray with her.
 
Space does not permit me to comment individually on each of the other designs published herewith. They all have their good points, which no doubt will be recognized by the committee. But, more important than their intrinsic value as designs, is the fine spirit of sportsmanship and cooperation which has prompted this contribution. It is without precedent in the annals of yachting and augurs well for our cherished sport.
 
EDITORS NOTE: As told in our February issue, the Yankee One-Design Class Association was formed to promote a new one-design class for New England, the boats to be of moderate cost. Designs have been submitted anonymously and, when the have been digested, a composite design which will, it is hoped, embody the best features of all, will be drawn, and a boat built.
 
Late in April the Yankee One-Design Class Committee will attempt to create a design along the lines indicated by the consensus of opinion and advice which will have been received at that time. At first it was not planned to design a boat until June, but so much interest has been aroused that many of the committee are getting impatient. It is also felt it is important to have a boat at the Edgartown Regatta in July.
 
Nineteen designs have been submitted to the committee, all of which have been on exhibition in Boston for several weeks and have been inspected by several hundred yachtsmen. All indications now point to a boat of the following approximate specifications: Length over all, 30' to 31'; length on water line, 24' to 25'; beam, 6'6"; draft, 4'3"; displacement, 4500; sail area, either 300 square feet or 30 square metres (323 square feet).