CHUCK PAINE DESIGNS PART 3
MY BRITISH EMPIRE
...and my masterpiece
London Boat Shows played a large part in Chuck’s life, leading to the Bowman range and causing him to become a boatbuilder again to get the first Victoria 34 there on time. And then there was Wings of Grace
F
or the 1983 London Boat Show, Victoria Yachts came up with the idea of stationing their designer on their stand, engaged in the act of designing yachts. They had lined up a few members of the press to come and
photograph me working there, even a television station from Southampton that had offered some airtime. I had my weather eye open for a new boatbuilder to build my designs and Rival Yachts were at the top of my list. Their previous designer had passed away and the time would come when they would need a new design. Not wanting to be an ambulance chaser I struggled with how I would introduce myself without appearing overly aggressive. Luckily I was spared the trouble. Just in case an opportunity might arise I decided to spend my time stuck at that table sketching my idea of the next Rival Yacht. The largest yacht in the Rival line was a 41-footer and the next smaller a 38 so I figured 40ft (12.2m) was about right. I had a sketch just about finished on my third day on the stand when two impeccably dressed ‘city types’ walked over and peered down curiously at what I was doing. It turned out they both owned Rival 36s and were at Earls Court looking at larger boats. They loved their Rival 36s and would have preferred to stay with the same builder if only he had something larger that appealed to them. They took one look at my sketch and there was the answer. They dragged me and my sketch over to the Rival stand and introduced me to Charles Maunder, MD of Rival Yachts. They said in unison: “Charles, if you build this design and add it to your line, we’ll each order one.”
BOWMAN 40/42/48
Along the way the Rival name was dropped and the name of the company changed to Bowman. A Bowman 40 and Bowman 42 were built on the same hull. The 42 was lengthened in order to create more stowage space in the lazarettes and a sleeker appearance. And a deeper, much higher performance keel and rudder were designed
50 CLASSIC BOAT JULY 2011
BOWMAN 40 & 42
LENGTH OVERALL 40ft/42ft
(12.2m/12.8m) WATERLINE
32ft (9.75m) BEAM
12ft 7in (3.8m)
DRAUGHT 4ft 11in/ 6ft 6in
(1.5m/2m)
DISPLACEMENT 21,400lb
SAIL AREA 748sqft (69.5m²)
to replace the shoal-draught Scheel keel that had been standard on the 40. The deeper keel was a 6ft 6in (2m) draught, slightly flared fin keel, applicable if you wanted to race the boat. The rudder on the 42 was a skeg- supported type, in response to the demands of open ocean sailing. It’s not slow, though. This 25-year-old design won her class in last summer’s Round the Island race, despite (or perhaps because of) being nothing more than a conservative, very well mannered cruiser. Within two years of its introduction the Bowman 40 had become one of the best-selling yachts in Britain. The management saw the upward trend in yacht sizes and decided to add a larger yacht, the Bowman 48. They wanted the hull to be as similar to the 40 as we could contrive, except that the newly invented ‘Paine keel’ would be adopted for better performance. The deck was another matter. Bowman hired us to design a ‘pilothouse’ style aft-cockpit version while their in-house design department undertook the deck-saloon version. Looking at the two versions today I have to admit I like theirs better. Les Davies was the head of their design department and was clearly a very talented designer in his own right.
Bowman 48s were fast in comparison with many of the traditionally styled yachts of the time, and had a lovely, predictable motion at sea. Bowman yachts are still being built by Rustler Yachts in Penryn, Cornwall.
VICTORIA 34 By 1985 Victoria Yachts were firmly established building Victoria 26s and 30s and the demand kept on growing. At the London Boat Show in January of that year Peter Gregory, the managing director, began talking about a larger boat. We settled on 34ft (10.4m) and ‘British traditional’, an idiom I believed I had come to understand better than any then practising British designer. Peter asked me to send him a preliminary sketch once I got home to the States. If he liked it his plans were to introduce it at the next London show – that is, in less
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