Given the fun and party factor in MORC racing it is no surprise that Doug Peterson was a titan of the genre… long before he became an America’s Cup-winning legend. Doug is seen up a ladder giving his successful MORC flyer Mr Vengeance a polish in San Diego in 1986. Peterson’s previous MORC racer Perfect Stranger (top right) was less refined but similarly hard to beat, especially in a breeze. MORC designs were often home-built, particularly on the west coast – this (right) is a Stranger design being garage-built in 1985. To the great benefit of the class and particularly of its more impecunious enthusiasts, with these two designs Peterson quickly proved his lightweight easily driven approach could match the heavy, more costly boats that dominated on the opposite side of the country
called MORA that was popular in the north half of the state. However, inhibiting both for new boat
construction was rampant US inflation of up to 15 per cent killing ‘investment’ for all but the very wealthy… who were anyway usually not interested in the small boat market. It took tremendous effort for some to find the funds to build and outfit a com- petitive raceboat, even at the relatively small sizes of a MORC yacht. Often a syndicate would be formed, also neatly solving the task of crewing the new yacht. One of Andrews’ first boats was an example of this approach: his successful 30-footer Details. ‘We had a syndicate of eight owners to
build that boat at Dennis Choate’s yard,’ he said. ‘Our target budget for being ready to sail was about $70,000-80,000. This got us a boat built in three months with E-glass, polyester and balsa core. The boat we produced has held up well too, and is still being actively raced in Connecticut.’ Construction of Details marked the
start of a long and productive relationship Choate was to have with Andrews, leading through dozens of custom and semi- custom offshore and inshore raceboat projects, that continues even up through recent times. Choate’s boats represented good value for money with a southern California location in Long Beach that was close to the largest customer base. Andrews reckons 1982 was the peak
period of MORC activity in southern Cali- fornia, a year when the MORC Interna- tional Regatta was being held at California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey and dozens of boats were available to sail. These represented a wide variety of types and sizes: the Schumacher-designed Capo 26 (followed later by the Capo 30); Nelson- Marek’s Schock 30; Bob Evelyn’s Evelyn
44 SEAHORSE
25; Andrews’ own 30-footer Details, Graham & Schlageter’s S2 7.9 and many others. Subsequent locations for this championship were spread around some of the less well-known yachting locations in the US: Milwaukee, Sarnia (Ontario), Duluth and Fishing Bay (Virginia) are but a few of the quiet yet active and diverse venues you don’t hear too much about among the big-boat cultures.
Typeforming Being a single number rating rule, MORC designs were prone to typeforming. This was also due in part to some of the teams at the serious end of the class, aiming at the ‘Internationals’, even going as far as to tailor new designs specifically to the sched- uled venues. Yes, there was a serious side to MORC racing too… A standard regatta format of three windward-leeward races plus two short and long point-to-point distance races also drove design trends as the teams knew a long time in advance what they were preparing for. Because of the format, venues and
rating styles, lightweight planing MORC yachts were not encouraged. By modern standards the designs of the time look heavy (around 3.5 tons for the 30-footers) with lots of hull rocker for upwind perfor- mance and ample sail area upwind and down with overlapping masthead head- sails and masthead symmetric spinnakers. Often the lighter-built boats carried
internal ballast, but the push to make hulls and decks light was offset by penalties for the use of ‘exotic’ materials – plus price limits on material costs and a mandatory simplicity of build technology. For example, until some high-tech
custom builds started to appear in the 1990s most MORC yachts were built of
E-glass and polyester and employing hand- lay-up. ‘There was incentive to make the middle of the boat quite strong, so thick laminates in this region of the structure were common, along with materials like laminated plywood to maintain stiffness and handle rig loads,’ said Andrews. Physical weighing was used for
measure ment, but so was flotation trim, and keeping the bow down for measure- ment was favourable. Accordingly, as on some of the IOR boats of the time, inboard engines were located forward, just aft of the mast and close to the CoG of the boat. Since beam waterline was measured there was some tendency to push beam at the deck out and aft to harvest righting moment from a hiked-out crew. Rigs were alloy in this pre-carbon era.
They could be light but they had to be strong enough to handle the loads gener- ated by big sails and big crews, with short spreaders and shrouds located well inboard IOR-style to allow narrow sheet- ing angles for the large headsails. These were mini-yachts rather than
being the overgrown dinghies that by now dominated European Half and Quarter Tonner fleets; hence winch loads and rig loads were comparatively much higher. Keels were either trapezoidal or elliptical without massive draft, as was also the IOR fashion of the day. Andrews said this typeform did not
always suit some localities and their style of racing. Light-air regions saw a growth in specialist designs aimed squarely at these conditions. On the west coast, especially on breezy St Francisco Bay, the opposite was the case with a plethora of heavy-air flyers appearing (many of them popular production designs) with less sail area but lighter displacements.
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