recovering from a fall while working up a mast. The Taipan stunned everyone who saw it; with the existing 18-footers solidly built weighing close to 300kg and carrying five or even six crew, Taipan was the opposite: sleek and light, with a 3/16th plywood single-chine hull and three crew onboard, sailed with overlapping genoas strongly influenced by the Flying Dutchman class. And she flew, finishing second in the Australian championship in her first season, hampered by small spinnakers and a too short spinnaker pole. Taipan represented Queensland as part of the Australian team that went to New Zealand in 1960 for the JJ Giltinan Trophy, but oddly it was ruled that Taipan needed holes cut in the foredeck to make it class legal as an ‘open boat’, which resulted in reduced hull stiffness and taking on a lot of water. Breaking the rig didn’t help either, but Taipan won a race and came fourth in the series. Benny then returned home to Australia with a fire inside him to build a winning 18-footer, recognising that Taipan had been designed and campaigned with virtually no experience in skiffs. So the next boat was to have bigger spinnakers, plus take a lot of influ- ence in aerodynamics from Manfred Curry’s designs, particularly his 20m racer Aero. Venom was born, winning the 1960/61 JJ Giltinan series on the Brisbane River in some races by close to 10 minutes and changed the 18ft skiff class for ever. It wasn’t just the design of Venom that was so significant, it was the attention to detail that was important to Benny. Details like drilling holes in spreaders and spreader attachments to reduce weight, plus the development of the wings and winglets on Venom’s and Taipan’s rudders in an attempt to reduce rudder ventilation at speed. In the photograph of Carl Ryves (opposite) you can clearly see the winglets on the leading edge plus the wings at the base of the blade, proof he was thinking of wings and tip vortex issues 23 years before members of the New York Yacht Club claimed he lacked the intellect to design Australia II – because of his ‘lack of education’. That argument always struck me as absurd. Did Charles Nichol- son have a college degree? Or William Fife? Or Laurie Davidson? Bruce Farr, much to his headmaster’s annoyance, left school at 16, and the maestro himself, Olin Stephen, left MIT after one term (due to yellow fever), choosing not to return. Nobody questions these brilliant individuals’ natural ability…
Benny had an intense focus on what was important in front of him but, having achieved that desire to create light and aerodynamic components, his interest often shifted to the next project and it was clear that others needed to maintain and manage the projects alongside him – including his most famous creation, Australia II. John Bertrand has said that ‘total perfection for Benny was for the boat to implode into a million pieces once it had won the America’s Cup. That is of course a design dream you don’t want to go near, but that was Benny’s mentality, to refine everything.’ In Newport in 1983 after a series of breakages due to their light- weight obsession, which nearly scuppered the Australian challenge, Alan Bond and Warren Jones handed over responsibility to the pragmatic boatbuilder Kenny Beashel, to ensure all the fittings onboard were strong enough to continue to race Dennis Conner on Liberty. Benny was consulted – but Beashel was given the respon- sibility of ensuring that nothing else failed during the Cup battle. The 18ft skiff Taipan is now in the Australian Maritime Museum after a significant restoration and relaunching in 2007, with Carl and Dick Sergeant advising, plus Carl and Alysoun Ryves securing funding from supporters of the project, including Alan Bond. So with Taipan already back on the water, Carl Ryves decided to build a replica of Venom as the original boat no longer exists, having been burnt to the waterline after ending up as an oyster punt on Moreton Bay. Identical to the original, but with an aft bulk- head creating additional buoyancy for modern safety considerations, Venom sailed against Taipan and is still in immaculate condition. I asked Carl how the Venomsailed, and he paused for a second, thinking back to the 2007 Taipan-Venom reunion and then said, ‘Like a Rolls-Royce! A beautiful boat, so balanced, you could sail it and let the tiller go. And Benny would have guessed all of the lines and how they worked together…’
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