Opposite: the peak of blooper fashion as the American S&S-designed (and German Frers-modified) Bay Bea leads Marionette back to Cowes during the 1977 Admiral’s Cup (this was also peak Admiral’s Cup with 19 teams competing). Every sailmaker at the time had their own take on the blooper… probably no other big boat sail saw a wider diversity of design, driven by the existential challenge of harmonising two free-flying sails as the air does all sorts of weird stuff between them. Caught in an unexpected header the blooper would immediately morph into a total horror show. Fast forward to Franck Cammas’s 2012 Volvo Race winner Groupama 70 (above) and we now have a happier take on a similar theme except that now our still free-flying downwind sail is also pretty handy upwind when you sheet it on hard… which on a Volvo 70 means sheeting to the transom. Note the offwind sheeting ‘pillars’ on each quarter
the help of the entire UK judicial system as well as the Royal Yachting Association, determined that there was some wording in a rulebook somewhere that stated that ‘No sail may be flown kite-like’. The crux of the matter was the two words
‘kite-like’ and how something that undefin- able could be used to disqualify a national team at a pinnacle international event. When asked ‘What is kite-like?’ Bouzaid’s answer was always the same. ‘Kite-like is like flying a kite. Go fly a kite and see if it is anything like what we were doing.’ It was a kind of Kiwi logic that made
sense and in the end Bouzaid prevailed. This led to a mad scramble as other teams tried to build similar sails – but it was too late. The gun for the Sydney Hobart was about to go off and the race to Tasmania was on. The New Zealand team of Pathfinder, Runaway and Waianiwa finished the race in first, second and third on corrected time; they won the Southern Cross Cup by the largest points margin ever, a record that was never equalled or beaten. I am not sure when the shooter became
the blooper, but the sail was soon being widely used and not always in a conven- tional manner. The esteemed US sailor Dee Smith noted, ‘In 1974 we went to the 1/2 Ton Cup with Animal Farm and flew our blooper upside down as that meant more sail area up high. It worked great. ‘Of course the flags came out. The only
thing that was against the rules was the numbers were upside down.’ Not until some years later did the rules committee finally get around to measuring girths on jibs… and the blooper gig was up. Bouzaid was the owner and skipper of Waianiwa and along with his navigator
Roy Dickson they were a formidable team, winning regattas all over the world. I sailed foredeck in the 1981 Sardinia Cup aboard the American yacht Scaramouche. Helming the boat was a cocky newcomer who I had never heard of. His name was Chris Dickson, son of Roy. I think I am right in saying that Scaramouchewas the only ‘old’ boat in the regatta, but with Dickson’s bril- liance we finished second overall against an international fleet of over 50 boats. Fast forward 12 years and Chris Dick-
son is onboard his Whitbread 60 Tokio in Southampton preparing for the 1993/94 Whitbread Round the World Race. It’s the day before the race was to start and he unveiled his own ‘secret weapon’ – a spin- naker but with a large area of sacrificial netting running the length of the leech. When the sail was sheeted on the netting just curled up allowing Dickson to use the sail pretty much as a big headsail. The Whitbread 60s were a new class
created for the race that year and the rules stated that the boats were allowed to carry up to two mainsails, seven jibs – including a heavy-weather jib – and eight spin- nakers. Chris had done an end run around the rules. His sail had a mid-girth of 75 per cent of foot length, meaning that it should have been measured as a spinnaker… however, this time the rules council won the day, deeming the sail to be ‘a headsail which would have given Tokio an advan- tage in certain sailing conditions’. Race director Ian Bailey-Willmot weighed
in on the situation. ‘Chris Dickson had every reason to believe that his sail was legal,’ he said. ‘It had already been passed by the New Zealand measurer but all the boats are re-measured at the start of the Whitbread in
Southampton to ensure that all the rules, including the W60 rule, are interpreted in precisely the same way.’ Dickson was forced to leave the sail on the dock. Fellow competitor Brad Butterworth,
who was co-skippering the W60 Winston with Dennis Conner, summed up the mood among the rest of the competitors. ‘I think it’s against the spirit of the rules,’ he said. ‘He just tried to get something for free.’ And the four-time America’s Cup winning Kiwi would never dream of such a thing… While Chris Dickson was prevented
from using his secret weapon in the race he had, perhaps unwittingly, started a new revolution in sailmaking. The advent of the Code 0, now one of the most ubiqui- tous sails out there and not only on racing boats but on cruisers as well. Original Code 0s were designed to qual-
ify as spinnakers under rating rules which required the mid-girth to be at least 75 per cent of foot length, but their use and design have evolved over time and along with these changes so too have the rules. The sail is still set free of the headstay,
in other words flying free like a spinnaker, but now they are commonly used to sail very close to the wind like a giant genoa. Where they are especially useful is on boats where the rules do not otherwise permit overlapping headsails at all. So back to my original question. Are
bloopers and Code 0s related? My own view is not really. They did both come about as a way to circumvent rules and in that regard there is a connection, but does it go any further? The blooper was really just a spinnaker masquerading as a headsail while the Code 0 was a headsail masquerading as a spinnaker…
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