In extremis… the heavy-displacement Mini-12 Metre Illusion (note the stern wave, top) and the light RSAero, both designed by Jo Richards. Illusions are still raced in a number of enthusiastic pockets around the world, but the design was even more significant as the prompt for the Mini 12 Metre class that evolved in Newport following the 1983 America’s Cup, which then morphed into the 2.4M class used at the Paralympic regattas of 2000 and 2004. This was then replaced at the Paralympics by the 2.4mR One Design designed by Peter Norlin, which was used up to the 2016 Olympiad when Paralympic sailing was removed from the IOC slate. With its immense 12 Metre ‘correlated’ displacement, the Illusion was moved around on a trailer or car roof after the removal of multiple bags of lead shot which were dropped into the moulded keel before going afloat. At the complete other end of the spectrum, the RSAero (left) was created as a modern Laser and it delivers on that task with knobs on. The boat is so light it is easily carried around, making a launching trolley a luxury rather than a necessity, and the choice of three individually optimised rigs allows the boat to be raced hard by sailors weighing from 40kg to 95kg. It is also very fast, a joy to sail (and easy to right after a capsize!)
design have won most of the Burton Weeks since then in many different hands. Early in his career Richards also made
his mark as designer in a very different form. Aged 10, while saving up for a National 12, he had been contemplating a radio-controlled model yacht, but then came up with the idea of a compromise – a model you could sail while actually sitting/ lying in it. It wasn’t until 1981, to help fund his Olympic campaign, that Richards finally created and built the Illusion, effec- tively a one-person 3.6m-long 12 Metre and a precursor to the 2.4mR paralympic boat. The Illusion ended up having licensed builders in Australia, South Africa and the USA with over 1,500 units built in total. Aside from his work with yachts
Richards has also over the decades forged a strong and successful career as a dinghy designer. This started to come together after his Olympic sailing. ‘We did a lot of work with Hyde Sails on the FD and devel- oped some good designs. Then after the Games Eddie Hyde asked me to look at some sails on a Dart Stampede beach cat – it was a pretty simple problem and we’d sorted it in five minutes. ‘Then they asked me what I thought
about the boat and I told them. Tim Coventry [the then CEO of Performance Sailcraft] got quite upset! But two weeks later he came back and said, “Well, you’d better come and fix it then!”’ So began a fruitful relationship with
54 SEAHORSE
Laser that got underway in earnest in the mid-1990s with the Pico. For Richards, having been so keyed into developing pure performance for his entire career, this rep- resented a different, but no less intellectu- ally stimulating, challenge – to produce a robust, cheap beginner’s dinghy. Firstly it required that both he and Laser
consider things that the market wanted, but might not have considered: ‘One of the defining things on the Pico was that begin- ners wanted to be able to sit on one side deck and put their feet against the other to feel safe, so that determined the width. Also you don’t need a transom in a self-draining dinghy, but beginners don’t feel comfort- able without a back end in the boat…’ Another challenge was not only getting
to grips with, but also advancing, roto- moulding technology. Rotomoulding per- mitted vastly reduced set-up costs com- pared with polypropylene
injection
moulding (as the Topper was made), which required highly accurate tooling at a time before CNC milling was widely available. Thus the Pico became the first ‘triple
skin’ rotomoulded dinghy, meaning that it not only had inner and outer skins but a core in between (of similar material to the skins but including a foaming agent). ‘We started the project before it was technically feasible to mould it like that… so we were pushing the frontiers a little.’ Richards was unquestionably drawn to the blend of art and science required in
rotomoulding, where the aim is to get the powder to coat different areas of the mould as required by, for example, heating parts of the mould to different temperatures and rotating the mould through different axes at different speeds. However, the process came with some trial and error, requiring a proper cooling jig. And if they didn’t inflate them correctly, ‘when they came out they lay there like a jellyfish on the beach… ‘Often we would make as many as 50
prototypes before production.’ Even today the art remains, as there is still no structural engineering software that comes close to being accurate for rotomoulding because it is so process and/or ambient air dependent. Over the years around 21,000 Picos
have been built, in addition to the Vago, Bahia and Bug – other rotomoulded dinghies for Laser that Richards designed, although he acknowledges that as they are all boats for ‘institutions’ he is less proud of the amount of plastic this has left ‘littered on the beaches of the world’. Elsewhere Richards has also designed a
rotomoulded four-person rowing gig for the Sea Cadets in the UK, of which over 800 units have so far been built. With new models from Laser drying up
during the 2000s, Richards was involved in an attempt by Oman Sail, then spear- headed by ex-Performance Sailcraft (ie Laser) boss David Graham, to establish a brand new range of dinghies to be built in Oman. Sadly, after three or four years of negotiating, the Omani government fund- ing earmarked for the project was diverted away. However, over subsequent years many of these designs evolved into models that RS Sailing have put into production. First was a rotomoulded 16ft starter
catamaran, the RSCat16, while one of the Omani singlehanded dinghy prototypes
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