News Around the World
Do not get in the way… The 12 Metre Kookaburra at full chat during this year’s Voiles de Saint-Tropez. As well as a steadily growing fleet of restored 12 Metres, the Mediterranean classic circuit is playing host to an increasing number of well-known ex-IOR designs ranging from Half Tonners to Maxis. The 2015 Regates Royales in Cannes offered aficionados of offshore racing history a veritable feast, including the groundbreaking Doug Peterson One Tonner Ganbare, fully refurbished and the latest addition to the grand tour
NEW ZEALAND
When bar room chatter turns to the prominent New Zealand yacht designers of the late 20th century, Laurie Davidson, Bruce Farr and Ron Holland probably feature foremost. But often overlooked in these discussions is another designer of great influence, Jim Young, who combined a prolific output with a singularly inventive approach. Compared with the natural flair for self-promotion enjoyed by some of his contemporary rivals, a natural reticence and a sometimes gruff demeanour might explain why Young occupies a somewhat lower rung in the public awareness. Perhaps to set the record straight – and to settle the odd score – the 90-year-old Young has published his own book, reviewing a life dedicated to boats. He was born in 1925, but was brought up by his paternal grandparents after his mother suffered postnatal trauma and was confined in a mental hospital. She was never mentioned and Jim was a young man before he discovered that she was even alive; he was always told she died in childbirth. His interest in boats developed at a young age and remained a passion all his life – moving through dinghies and later into launches and keelboats. In the early 1950s he was intrigued by an article by Nathanael Herreshoff advocating a swinging keel to increase stability; soon he had set about building Fiery Cross, a slender 45-footer with a 7ft 2in beam. ‘To my knowledge, the canting keel on Fiery Crosswas not only a New Zealand first, but also a world first,’ he writes. The keel com- prised a 2.2-ton fin and bulb arrangement and could cant to 22.5° either side. The racing rules, of course, strictly forbade moveable bal- last, so Fiery Crossonly raced with the keel pinned – in fact, she had been in the water several years before Young even canted the keel. In cruising mode, he spent a season experimenting. To cant the keel he would allow the boat to heel, unpin the keel and let it swing to leeward, pin it again and then tack over. Voilà, off she went, easily exceeding displacement speed.
‘There was an immediate enormous performance gain and even though the keel was swung to windward, she could point higher and sail faster, because the faster you sail the less keel area you need. Fiery Crossgave us many years of pleasure. She was one of my pinnacle designs with a personality of her own.’ It was to take almost half a century for the rules of yacht racing to accept the manifest benefits of canting keels.
16 SEAHORSE
Rating rules are frequently the bane of designers’ lives – although some have flourished by pitting themselves in the eternal mental contest against the rulemakers. ‘Most local designers were not top- class mathematicians and for most of us the rating business was over our heads,’ he recalls. ‘Mathematical calculations done longhand are so involved you’d never know if you had made a mistake.’ He acknowledges that it takes more talent to design for a rule than it does for a simple fast boat. ‘I have never been happy with rules designed to limit performance,’ he writes and quotes with approval a comment by a contemporary Kiwi designer, Bo Birdsall, who said: ‘If a feature in hull design is penalised under the IOR, then it has to be good. If you want a fast boat, look at the rules, note everything that is penalised and put them in your design.’ With some relief, Young recognises that things are better now. ‘Fortunately today those rules have gone so much out of favour and the door has been opened to moving ballast and unrestricted rigs, so the quest for pure speed has finally won out.’ This is not to say he did not venture into the world of handicap racing. He was part of that New Zealand fever of Ton Cup campaign- ing with a much-modified One Tonner called Heatwave, which, by his own admission, was an ugly duckling. But Heatwavenever quite hit form at the right time and was dogged by equipment problems. When it was finally fully optimised, New Zealand chose to dispense with the customary trials and simply selected another boat to compete in the 1978 One Ton Cup in Germany. Denied the chance to represent his country in the event, Young was forced to sell Heat- wave, which acquitted itself well sailing under Danish colours. She won the triple-point long offshore race and was first to the windward mark in every race bar one, finishing third overall. ‘She would have won the Cup but for some shonky politics and rule changes mid-series,’ Young laments. ‘I think Heatwave is about the only boat to have won the 400-mile offshore race without winning the Cup.’
Undoubtedly, the yacht most associated with Jim Young is the Young 88. The concept was first mooted in an article Young wrote in 1980. ‘What I set out to achieve was a boat made for family sailing, that could sleep up to six, with a cockpit to match, with some standing headroom and comfortable sitting headroom under the sidedecks. ‘It needed to be able to be handled by one person, yet fully crewed, perform well in mixed company on a racecourse. I also wanted a
JAMES ROBINSON TAYLOR
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