Left/above: Black Soo is a development of Van de Stadt’s highly accomplished Royal Cape One Design – a little yacht that had originally been developed for inshore and coastal racing that ended up as another Van de Stadt entry in the annals of ocean racing folklore. Keep in mind that the very light fin/bulb/spade rudder RCOD was created in 1961 during a design era where anything less than heavy displacement was still frowned upon. The 30ft RCOD weighed in at just 4,000lb. And it won races, lots of races – and still delivers a better sailing experience than many modern designs. Among other designers influenced by Van de Stadt’s enlightened approach was Dick Carter who adopted a similar separated keel and rudder layout on his own breakthrough 1965 Fastnet race-winning 34-footer Rabbit (bottom)
Over 650 Pioneers were built in the
early 1960s. They won innumerable offshore races around Europe, including the RORC Class III Championship, help- ing pave the way towards the ubiquitous production cruiser-racer of today. It’s probably fair to say that the Pioneer
design in all of its aspects of construction, hull form and appendages provided Bill Lapworth with the inspiration to produce the Cal 40 design in 1963, which helped turn the American offshore racing scene similarly on its head. The builders of the Pioneer, Southern
cruising designs built out of steel, aluminium and timber. Any similarity in boat shape was, however, minimal. While most of the Van de Stadt race-
boats featured separate spade rudders and a tendency towards light displacement, S&S, along with the majority of offshore boat designers, still stuck to longer keel- hung rudder concepts. Convention simply dictated that a keel-hung rudder was safer, more seaworthy and more efficient from a hydrodynamic standpoint. But in 1958 Van de Stadt started
another offshore yacht design revolution that would both impact around the world
40 SEAHORSE
and also help to prompt an unparallelled new growth in offshore racing. Just as Zeevalk had shown the potential
of plywood as a viable construction material for an ocean racer, the Pioneer, a 30ft mini- mum-waterline length RORC Rule racer, would showcase another ‘wonder’ boat- building material: GRP. And the Pioneer was no ‘glass’ version of an existing wooden design. Every detail of the design was drawn to take full benefit from moulded plastic construction, a concept used again success- fully 21 years later on the enormously popular Dehler DB1 Three Quarter Tonner, also designed by Van de Stadt.
Ocean Shipyard, commissioned a follow- up and in 1963 the 36ft Excalibur hit the offshore scene. Like the Pioneer, the Excal- ibur was an engineered GRP design show- casing the Van de Stadt design office’s skills at creating a complete package of drawings and information. She was also fast, winning three RORC class champion - ships on the trot in 1963, ’64 and ’65. While designs like Zeevalk had pushed
the boundaries of advanced foils and light- ness in offshore-capable racers, and Stor- mvogel had showcased what was possible in the rarified atmosphere of Maxi boat racing, the Excalibur brought the Van de Stadt design message through to the guts of the offshore establishment. For sure the success of this boat inspired Dick Carter
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