Designed by legendary US powerboat racer Dick Bertram, Brave Moppie was an exemplar of the deep-V hull form that was first pioneered by Ray Hunt. Brave Moppie dominated powerboat racing on both sides of the Atlantic during the mid-1960s. Interestingly she was also the only diesel powered design able to take on the petrol boats which made up the majority of race entries during the period – also setting a diesel-powered speed record of 59.6mph
An ingenious mind
Many Seahorse readers will immediately associate the name of Raymond Hunt with the invention of the Deep-V form which brought about a revolution in powerboat design. However, Hunt also delivered a prodigious output of innovative sailboat designs. US Naval Academy historian Tom Price looks at some of Hunt’s very notable successes
As the clouds from America’s Great Depression began to part, yachtsmen, with the promise of a better future, turned towards their home waters and dreamed of boats. Without a lot of cash in their pockets but anxious to race and enjoy themselves on the water again, they turned to smaller boats. The concept of equality in competi- tion in some ways matched Roosevelt’s New Deal and numerous, mostly local, one-design classes began to emerge. Perhaps the most unusual, provocative
and innovative of these affordable new boats that emerged in the pre and post- WWII era were those from the drawing board (actually a tilted grand piano top) of
42 SEAHORSE
Ray Hunt. His designs were innovative and even revolutionary (but odd looking to the traditionalists), using the advantages of light-displacement hard chine hulls, extremely narrow beam, a separate rudder and skeg, fine symmetrical ends, maxi- mum waterline length and, most impor- tantly, the newly developed wonder material – plywood – to form variants of the same concept. Somewhat unambitiously named after
their working sail area, they were the 225, 110, 210, 310, 410, 510, and the somewhat mysteriously conceived 1010, known together as the ‘Ten’ series. All of these were relatively inexpensive and generally as fast as the comparable, far more beautiful Interna- tional and Universal Rule boats of the time. To appreciate these designs some insight
into the designer will help. C Raymond Hunt was a nautical polymath. One of the very best racing helmsmen of the day, Ray Hunt was one of those maddening oppo- nents who just ‘knew’ when to tack and where to go, through a combination of experience and ‘mystical awareness’. A designer of both classically beautiful
boats such as the 39ft Concordia Yawl and the graceful 12 Metre Easterner and brutally odd but efficient ‘ten’ series boats, the unique, ubiquitous Boston Whaler and the fastest rough-water powerboats of the day, Hunt’s conceptual understanding of
how any boat will best go through the water was unrivalled in its diversity. It is fascinating how the majority of the
greatest racing yacht designers are artists of a sort first and engineers by necessity. The best, like Olin Stephens, and later, most famously, Doug Peterson, hired excellent draftsmen and assistants to fill in the details; they were aware of their limita- tions yet channelled their genius through getting the best from their support staff. Ray Hunt had an excellent designer and
draftsman, Fenwick Williams, to draft his designs and naval architect Arthur Martin to help bring his ideas to fruition. Drumbeat, for Sir Max Aitken, was
Hunt’s most successful design for a British client. Aitken’s choice was influenced by the success of Hunt and his family crew, who sailed their Concordia 41, Harrier, to a five-race sweep of Cowes Week in 1955, against the best British yachts of the day, But for a turnbuckle failure she would probably have won that year’s Fastnet Race, having comfortably led around the rock (although designed to the CCA Rule, in the UK Harrier inevitably raced under the RORC rating rule which further enhanced her success at Cowes). Hunt’s philosophy was to give the
longest and fastest boat for the buck (I am guessing that moorings and slips weren’t charged by the foot then). All these boats
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110
