It has long been my contention that the model designs of today foretell the high performance full size designs of the future.:graduate:
Just one look at the giant illfated so called “J boat” on display in Auckland will illustrate my point. It is nothing but a giant 10 rater.
Have you seen the new breed of ACC boats now being brought out in Valencia?
They look remarkably like the skinny slab sided Marbleheads that are the go at present.
I know that some of the physics does not translate well from model to fullsize but you have to admit there may be something in my argument. :devil3:
As Earle Boebart pointed out elsewhere, Norman Skene (author of Elements of Yacht Design) was the chief draughtsman to Starling Burgess (designer of the successfull 1930s Js Endeavour, Rainbow and Ranger) was also a prominent model yacht designer.
The abortive involvement of Dave Hollom and Roger Stollery in the British Crusader AC campaign is better known. They did actually build a Hollom designedc boat and take it to Perth but seem to have abandoned it on grounds of ‘safe’ conservatism without bringing it to its full potential.
I have also heard that Dick Priest, designer of the great A class Highlander, had a proposal evaluated for the disastrous 1957 British AC campaign with Sceptre, but that it never got as far as the tank. From what I have heard (my father knew Dick Priest), the boat could well have been Intrepid ten years earlier.
It does not always work though. John Lewis, Priest’s friend and rival in the '50s and '60s produced a series of big lightwweight sharpies for CVol. Blondie Hasler (originator of the Single-Handed Transatlantic Race). These were not markedly succesful.
yah know, if someone had designed the brits a better boat than scepter, they might be the ones with the cup right now, not the swiss… not that i mean to rub salt in a wound or anything…
That’s OK.
And look at the original race between the America and the Royal Yacht Squadron fleet where it all started. The America was much bigger and theoretically faster than anything else in the race and got home before the wind died. The boat that was second (the story about there being none because Good Queen Vic was cross is a myth) was (I think) the Apollo. Quite definitely she was designed by one John Scott Russell who invented the ‘waveform’ theory of hull dersign on which virtually all clippers and the America herself were based. It was definitely not a case of overwhelming Yankee superiority in hull design.
Where there was a definite American technical advantage was the America’s sails, which were far ‘better fitting’ than anything seen in Europe up to that time.
ben lexcen before he had done tank tests of aus2 had made models of boats with very similar keels.