The Hunt 510 displaced just 6,900lb on an overall length of 43ft. Slender and stiff – 5,000lb of her displacement was in the keel – the 510 was a stunningly fast and slippery yacht for her time, defeating Sparkman & Stephens’ famous 73ft yawl Baruna on more than one occasion
were not just narrow, they were scimitar thin. Hunt’s first of the line, in 1936, was the 225 – a nearly 100 per cent waterline length, plumb-ended, flat-sided machine, not excelling in looks but impressive. No less a light than Briggs Swift
Cunningham – yachtsman, sportscar racer and inventor of that famous hole – ordered one of the four 225s built and loved it for its speed – faster than his beloved 6 Metre boats at a fraction of the cost. Briggs and Ray Hunt were of similar age, as was Olin Stephens, and their sailing interests inter- twined throughout their lives. Briggs crewed for Olin in Dorade’s famous Transatlantic win while Olin crewed for Briggs aboard the 12 Metre Columbia that he skippered in the 1958 Cup races. With a length to beam ratio just shy of
6, these narrow cigars achieved some stability through their box-like shape and hard chines as well as an excellent (espe- cially for the times) ballast ratio. The 225 is 35ft 6in long with a meagre 5ft 11in beam. This boat is a flyweight at 2,450lb displacement and more than half of that is in her extreme L-shaped fin and bulb keel (1,290lb). Her raked keel, like that of Uffa Fox’s
later Flying Fifteen, is dramatic, and similar to Fox’s little design it too works reasonably well as long as there is ade- quate flow. At low speeds the bow is put down and it slides sideways until it bites; but high and slow is not an option. She has a small, low sailplan, more than
adequate for such an easily driven hull. You could buy one in 1939 for $US1,150 (still just $21,238 today). One of the last surviving 225s, Dagger performs very well
now with an Etchells rig in it (after having a J/24 rig previously). She recently won her class handily in the Newport Museum of Yachting Classic Yacht Regatta. There is rumoured to be another 225 still function- ing as a flower box somewhere in the Mid- west (form follows function). Compare the 225 in 1936 to the typical
racing keelboat of its time, like the 30 Square Metre boats, Six Metre boats, International One Designs and the Her- reshoff S boats and you can imagine what a shocker she was, particularly when she beat them on the water and cost only a fraction of the more traditional yachts. Smaller sails were cheaper, winches and fittings were minimal, and needing a smaller crew your bar and sandwich bill was more reasonable too. But her looks… Ah, her looks… they
were a little harder to accept! Back to the piano, Ray Hunt drew a
smaller, 18ft version of the slim double- ender, exploring the limits of the genre. But he found her to be too small. Then expanding the lines up to 24ft he had the master yacht builders George Lawley & Son of Neponset, Massachusetts construct the smaller 110. The boxy and plumb-ended aesthetic
was retained but efforts were made to soften the look of the boat by giving her a generously radiused sheer, stems and chine. Lawley also offered a unique radiused paint line which I find to be quite attractive in an Art Ceco, Modernist fashion. Her price in 1937 less sails was $500 ($7,071 in 2020). The construction evolved to five sheets of 12ft phenolic resin saturated paper-coated fir plywood, called
Harborite, which has proved to last quite well and retain a finish that became the savior of some of the boats… and spelled the death knell of others if moisture became trapped beneath it. The plywood skin was cleverly tortured
into an arc bottom allowing the 110 a bit of rocker to raise the ends. Another feature was that the cast iron keel, with a 45° raked leading edge, short chord fin and huge, flattish bulb on the bottom had a bolting flange on the top extending over several frames, spreading the load and greatly stiffening the midsection of the boat. This helped make construction simple, cheap and light. The chines along the sheer and topsides
were rabbeted to protect the end grain of the ply deck, sides and bottom set into them. For an inexpensive boat, build quality was excellent and 1940s boats are still raced competitively by their loving owners. The 110’s topsides were dead flat but she has some sheer and style and it’s not hard to find the look of the boats interesting, especially in the context of their times. Many sailors did and the 110 became
hugely popular despite her ‘unique’ appearance through performance that rivalled larger boats and her exceptionally low cost. The 110 sailplan was low and wide with a large genoa. The sailplan shows a number of headsail choices, but as the boat evolved the genoa became the sail of choice. It wasn’t too long before the crew was found on a trapeze, making the 110 the world’s first real sportsboat! The genoa is a challenge to tack and the
boat is shallow and undeniably uncom- fortable. Her looks became somewhat
SEAHORSE 43
C RAYMOND HUNT ASSOCIATES
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