Fast Boats in the ‘Spirit of Tradition’
There has been a wonderful resurgence of wooden boat racing in New England over the last few years. Much credit is due Steve White, of Brooklin Boatyard, for getting the ball rolling, and to Wooden Boat Magazine, also of Brooklin, Maine, for their continuing support. The main event is the annual Eggemoggin Reach race, but the Castine-to-Camden and Camden-to-Brooklin feeder races are now well established and popular as well. The racing has a vintage car racing feel, part competition and part parade, and in most classes the sweep of the sheerlines and the depth of the varnish are as important as the finish places. However, in the ‘Spirit of Tradition’ class the competition is a bit more, well, spirited. This class is open to contemporary boats that are built primarily in wood, and most show a classic, long overhang style above the waterline. Below the waterline, however, modern fin keels and spade rudders are the norm, and carbon rigs and high tech sails are allowed. The raison d’etre for the class is to encourage the continued development of new wooden boats that, over time, can replace the older ones that inevitably sail off to that great boat shop in the sky. The more immediate result is a diverse class of attractive boats, and some very competitive racing.
Pleione (Link)
Bruce Dyson has been enjoying the Spirit of Tradition in his Taylor designed International 8m since 2004. Bruce built Pleione (www.8mrpleione.com) nearly single-handed in the small shop attached to his Marblehead home. The build took him 4 ½ years, but the result was well worth the wait; Pleione is drop dead gorgeous, and impressively fast to boot. She has had consistent podium finishes in events as varied as the 8m NA and World Championships in Toronto to the PHRF NE Championships in Marblehead, and she has simply dominated Spirit of Tradition racing in Maine. Coming as an outsider to what had been largely intramural affair between boats designed and built in Maine, Pleione was soon referred to as “that damned 8m…” by the locals. She has four wins and four seconds in the eleven ‘Maine Wooden Boat’ races she has completed, and would have more were it not for the heavy ‘spread the wealth’ rating penalties she has incurred for her top finishes in previous years. Especially impressive was her remarkable 1-1-1 sweep 1n 2006, that included a first to finish in the Castine Classic race, despite the fact that the Spirit of Tradition class is the last one to start. (Pleione ghosted by every boat in the entire fleet in that race, including two Spirit of Tradition 75-footers). Light air and fog are often a challenge on Penobscot Bay in early August, but because of all the great boats participating, old and new, one always goes home smiling, no matter what the race results.
Pleione stretches out on much bigger boats, new and old, on the Eggemoggin Reach
Pleione rolls upwind with no competition in sight
At speed, Pleione puts her long overhangs to work
Glory
Glory is another of our recent designs that is very much in keeping with the Spirit of Tradition. Above the waterline, her long, graceful overhangs, sweeping sheer, capped bulwark, and small counter stern all reflect a classic style. At the same time, both below the waterline and aloft, the focus is on contemporary performance, with high tech construction, hull, appendage, and rig detailing that are all state of the art.
Glory’s light weight construction allows a high ballast/displacement ratio, and combined with a carbon rig, it provides ample stability to support her generous sailplan. A self-tacking jib, a ‘socked’ asymmetrical spinnaker, and modern, sophisticated deck hardware (including an electric main halyard winch) allow a small crew to handle this big power with confidence. For blue water passages a removable inner headstay carries a heavy-weather staysail. The jib furler and backstay adjuster are both located below to keep the deck clear and the look clean. Her long ends give her unusually large gear locker volume and deck area, both vital to enjoyable cruising. Her interior is elegant, straightforward, and practical, with an owners’ suite forward, a wide open main cabin amidships, and a guest cabin aft. It is finished in a classic ‘Herreshoff’ style, trimmed with cherry brightwork.
Glory’s long sailing length and narrow beam give her an exquisite meter boat feel, and she rolls smoothly upwind without pounding. She does not surf and plane wildly downwind like an ultra-light racer, but she does stretch her long overhang legs and can reel off mile after high speed mile in total control off the wind, without spilling the drinks. Her sail area and stability are very carefully matched to her sailing length, displacement and wetted area, and all of her performance parameters are precisely ‘tuned’ for typical New England sailing conditions.
Her unusual combination of classic style with contemporary performance sets her apart from (and usually well ahead of!) everything else on the water. No doubt the best compliment that can be paid to her is that in addition to her owners’ Wednesday evening racing habit, they sail her nearly every weekend, from May to October. Boats that spend their weekends on the mooring typically belong there. The fact that Glory is found there so seldom says it all.
Glory stretches her long overhang legs upwind
Glory enjoys a quiet glide across Buzzards Bay
Daysailor (Link)
This recent design is another high tech, contemporary offering that is also entirely in tune with the Spirit of Tradition. Above the waterline, the sweeping sheerline, long graceful overhangs, and small counter transom evoke, but do not blindly mimic, an earlier era. At the same time, below the waterline and aloft, the hull, rig, and appendage details are state of the art, and focused on combining the performance of a racer with the ease of handling of a comfortable day sailor.
The hull shell is a light weight, high tech ‘wood sandwich.’ The inside and outside skins are both carefully optimized laminates of ‘E-glass’ cloth and unidirectionals, combined with epoxy resins and Western Red Cedar veneers, and bonded to a core of 3/4” CoreCell foam. The hull over the keel is solid glass, and there is a ‘belly pan’ of bi-axial ‘E-glass’ over the bottom amidships. The keel loads are further supported and distributed by a sophisticated composite structure of integrated keel floors and longitudinals, all bonded to structural bulkheads and berth faces. The composite chainplates are fabricated of unidirectional carbon fiber, bonded to a locally reinforced area of the inner skin. The interior panels are ‘E-glass’ and foam core composites, bonded with biaxial ‘E-glass’ tape to the adjacent hull and deck surfaces. All of the laminations are vacuum-bagged and post-cured to an elevated temperature that is carefully monitored via thermo-couples and controlled by computer.
The deck is an 'E-Glass' laminate over varying thicknesses of CoreCell foam. The skins are reinforced and higher density core is used in way of all deck hardware. Unidirectional reinforcements are carefully oriented to resist the compression loads imposed on the deck by the headstay, backstay and mast. Methodical weight control is a high priority throughout, with all moldings and components carefully and individually weighed before assembly.
The light weight construction allows a high ballast/displacement ratio, and combined with a carbon rig, it provides ample stability to support a generous sailplan. A self-tacking jib, a ‘socked’ asymmetrical spinnaker, and modern, sophisticated deck hardware (including electric main halyard and main sheet winches) allow a small crew to handle this big power with confidence. The jib furler and backstay adjuster are both located below to keep the deck clear and the look clean. This design is intended primarily as a daysailor, so a primary focus is on an especially roomy and comfortable cockpit. Her interior is intended to be simple and practical, with generous headroom, and it is finished in a classic ‘Herreshoff’ style, trimmed with cherry brightwork.
An enduring Spirit of Tradition design needs to have more than a long, low, sexy aesthetics, a carbon mast, and perhaps a touch of exotica such as an outsized mainsail roach. The fundamental physics of sail area, stability, displacement, wetted area, and fin details are immutable, and Mother Nature grants no Mulligans. A boat with too much sail area for her stability will always be an unpleasant chore to sail in a breeze, and a boat without enough power for her wetted area will always be ‘glued to the water’ in light air. It is no accident that good all around sailboats always have not just some, but all, of their critical performance parameters appropriately balanced and precisely matched to the sailing conditions that they encounter most often. This 44-ft design is carefully optimized for the light air that predominates in New England, and we expect her to be a leader in the Spirit of Tradition for a long, long time.
