Boat Plans And Patterns | Opera Class

Boat Plans And Patterns

To the south west of Liverpool, the Wirral peninsular forms the northern shore of the estuary to the River Dee. The unique geography created a deep water sea-lake, the Hoyle Lake around which were established fishing communities and safe havens in the protected waters was far back as Roman times.

The Hoylake Sailing Club was established in 1887, in response to the silting up of the river and channel at the turn of the twentieth century the members decided to adopt a shallow draft boat which was suitable for the area. The boat they chose became the Opera Class, a 16 foot gaff rigged clinker boat, based on a design by club member Captain Winchester and built locally by another club member and boat builder Alex Latta.



The first race of the Opera Class took place in 1902 and boat numbers quickly grew to 17. The class celebrated its centenary in 2002 with 14 of the original boats still racing at Holylake Sailing Club, another boat "La Poupee" is on display at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.



In 1909 one of the class "Orchid" made a voyage to Ardrossan, in Ayrshire, Scotland and then acros the Irish sea to Ballycastle in Northern Ireland, a remarkable voyage for a 16 foot open boat.



All the photographs are kindly provided by John Hughes who sails his Opera Class Iolanthe, named after the operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan.

Opera Class boats at Hoylake Sailing Club

1: Fidelio
2: Aida
4: Valkyrie
5: Country Girl
6: La Poupee
7: Princess Ida
8: Geisha
9: Carmen
10: Orchid
11: La Boheme
12: Betty
13: La Tosca
14: Silvana
16: Iolanthe
17: La Gioconda

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Plywood Boat Plans | A the spectacular mega yacht designed by Philippe Starck

Plywood Boat Plans

The French designer, Philippe Starck is best known for his furniture and kitchen gadget designs, including his iconic lemon juicer. He is not, as far as I know, a naval architect, yet the most exciting and, to my mind, most beautiful of the worlds billionaire mega-yachts has its origin on Starcks drawing board.

Starck, whose work ranges from designing boutique hotels, the Virgin Galactic “spaceport” as well as that stylish juicer, claims to have come up with the idea for “A”, as the yacht is called, in 3½ hours. Naval architects, including Britain’s Martin Francis, and Blohm and Voss, the German shipbuilders, then took over and adapted the design project.

Starck always insists that form must follow function – in other words the purpose for which an object is designed should dictate its shape. This 5,900 ton, 390 ft. yachts shape is reminiscent of a battleship crossed with a submarine. Evidently Starck appreciated that a yacht is, in essence, a big boys toy, and that for this big boy, Russian billionaire owner Andrey Melnichenko, 36, only the biggest, “baddest” looking toy battleship on the boating pond would do.

Apart from sheer stylish looks, the clean lines of the exterior answer another function – that of security. The lack of any external features such as rails, handholds, or openings makes it very difficult for pirates or other undesired visitors to board the ship. For the same reason, the helicopter pad on the bow is easily rendered unusable by extending a telescopic mast through the deck. Clamshell doors hide all the access points, including the garage for the 2 launches, extending harbour gangways and even the anchor cable fairleads.

The yachts twin engines deliver 24,000 hp for a 24 knot cruising speed and a 6,500 mile range. Accommodation includes a palatial (quite literally) owners suite, 6 luxurious double guest cabins, and quarters for 37 crew plus 5 of the owners personal staff, secretaries, assistants, etc.

The yacht is variously said to have cost $200 to $300 million. Crew salaries, maintenance and running costs are unlikely to be less than another 5 to 10 million a year. So, its not enough to be very rich indeed - Wayne Rooney rich, for instance - to own this yacht. You need to be able to spend twice Waynes annual salary, every year, just to run it. Fortunately for Mr. Melnichenko, whose wealth is conservatively estimated at $2-3 billion, he can.

Obviously the interior décor is super palatial. I wont even try to describe it. You can find more details in the Wall Street Journal video and on the sites to which I have linked below. But the accessory I really like, and which makes me warm greatly to the scarily rich Mr. Melnichenko, is the uncompromising design of the yachts twin 30 ft. motor-launch tenders. He could easily have bought a couple of off-the-shelf plastic speedboats, and in spite of the fact that each one of these beauties probably cost as much as a very nice house in Torremolinos, he clearly would have nothing that was not rare and spectacular for his yacht. This, for Mr Melnichenko was probably no more of an extravagance than my purchase of a pair of shiny bronze rowlocks, instead of perfectly serviceable plain galvanised, for my 10 ft rowing dinghy.

As another great designer once said, “God is in the detail”.

Links:

Italian saint-andres blog story

Sunday Times Article

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Boat Plans Skiff | Jean Marie Finots Ecume De Mer

Boat Plans Skiff

In 1967 Jean-Marie Finot, who had recently married, decided to give up the idea of becoming a yacht designer so that he could concentrate on earning a reasonable living. As he is now one of the top half-dozen yacht designers in the world, this was very nearly the biggest mistake of his life.

As a sailing instructor at the Iles de Glénan school - “the only place in France you could really learn to sail, at the time” according to Finot - he got to know Philippe Harlé, the chief instructor, who was leaving to set up a yacht design practice. Jean-Marie, too. wanted to learn about yacht design, so he took a lowly position as Harlé s assistant in order to pick up some experience.

The apprentice Finot did actually design a couple of boats for the Harlé practice, but as a recently married man he wanted a career that would support a family, so he gave up his yacht design ambitions and left Harlé . However, as a favour to a friend, he agreed to design one last boat, Ecume De Mer, a small cruiser/racer of which it was intended only two would ever be built – one for the friend and one for Jean-Marie himself. This would be, he decided, his last design.

The pair looked around for a French yard to build the hard-chine plywood boats, but none seemed interested. Finally a Dutch builder, Walter Huisman, heard of their project and, impressed by the young designer, offered to build one boat at a reasonable price, provided they would campaign it in a number of races, including the International Quarter Ton Cup competition. Although this entailed modifying the plans to create a slightly larger boat, agreement was reached.

In the Spring of 1968 Huisman delivered a bare painted hull. Finot and his friend went to Holland, and spent some time fitting her out with deck gear and rigging, before launching just in time to enter, as agreed, the Quarter Ton Cup. (photo: Huisman prototype Ecume De Mer in hard chine plywood) With such a lack of preparation and tuning they couldnt hope to win there, but later, with a fully sorted boat, they won the important Delta Race. Their success attracted an Australian, Eric Bradley, who took home modified designs for the boat with slightly reduced freeboard and a coachroof, retaining however the plywood hard chine hull. Several were built in Australia to this specification.

The following season, back in France the prototype boat won race after race, and even returned briefly to Holland to win the Delta race again. Soon this phenomenon caught the attention of the French boatbuilder, Mallard, who contracted to build a series of boats to the design, in GRP. Once again the drawings were modified. Away went the chines to be replaced by a rounded hull shape. The stepped sheerline and flush deck were replaced by a conventional sheer and a short coachroof. Though the efficient racing deck layout was retained, with halyards and controls led aft to the cockpit, on the inside the accomodation was re-designed for comfort in harbour rather than racing. There would now be standing headroom, a dinette, a toilet, and a separate forecabin.

The production Ecume De Mer (colour photo from Mallard 1969 brochure) was a sales success from the start and remained in production, unchanged until 1975 . A 100% standard production boat won the Quarter Ton Cup in 1970 against strong international competition, and a modified, but nevertheless series-produced regatta version with a flush deck won again in 1972. Hundreds of owners had countless successes in offshore and club racing, while hundreds more enjoyed family cruising in a robust and capable boat.

Further modifications were made to re-style accommodation and coachroof, giving more headroom in the heads in 1975. This version won the 1977 Boat of the Year title and was chosen for the 1978 "Tour De France" race. It continued in production until 1980.

Eventually 1385 boats were built to the Ecume De Mer design. Examples of this fine boat, that was supposed to be Finots farewell to yacht design and of which there should only ever have been two, can still be seen in almost any marina in France as well as in many other parts of the world. This great boat - that launched a lasting career for its designer - has itself lasted pretty well.

Ecume De Mer (Mallard, 1969 version)

LOA: 7.90 m
Beam: 2.65 m
Draft: 1.25 m
Ballast: 720 kg
Displacement: 1.800 kg
Max Headroom 1.72 m

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Pontoon Boat Plans | The Jouet Cap Horn designed by Jean Jacques Herbulot

Pontoon Boat Plans

When stories are told about the early days of short and single-handed long distance ocean racing, the names of Chichester, Hasler and the French hero Eric Tabarly are the most easily remembered. Its often forgotten that only one Frenchman took part in the first Observer Singlehanded Transatlantic race - and it wasnt Tabarly.

The lone Frenchman, Jean Lacombe, sailing the smallest boat in the race, the tiny plywood “Cap-Horn,” was, in fact, probably already the most experienced single hander among the 5 men who took part in the first OSTAR. Although up against more famous adventurers like Francis Chichester and Blondie Hasler, by the time the race started Lacombe had already sailed the Atlantic single-handed from East to West and back again, as well as cruising a great deal of the Eastern seaboard of the USA. He had done all this in his simple 21 ft centreboarder, Cap-Horn, designed by J-J. Herbulot as a low cost weekend cruiser.

(photo: Jean Lacombes Cap-Horn after the 1960 OSTAR - still with race number - Jouet Cap Horn brochure)

Lacombe had actually been in New York with his boat when he heard of the race. He entered late and set sail for for the start line 3000 miles away at Plymouth to arrive 4 days after the others had departed. His participation went, therefore, almost unnoticed by the British and foreign press who had been in Plymouth covering the race preparations but had already left the scene.

Staying only long enough to fill his water tanks and buy a few provisions for the return voyage, Lacombe calmly set sail into the prevailing wind for another 3000 mile Atlantic crossing.

Lacombes “Cap-Horn” was a compact weekend family cruiser of 21ft overall, built by Jouet, a well established boat building firm in Sartrouville, on the River Seine. It was a design that, though simple, was rather more sophisticated than the type of basic small cruising boat that was becoming popular in France in the 1950s, when the influential Glenans Sailing School began to turn out a few dozen enthusiastic young sailors every summer.

The yachts designer, Jean Jacques Herbulot, had designed most of the Glenans school boats, so this new breed of French sailor was already programmed by training and experience to appreciate the simple rather “boxy” plywood hulls he had produced previously. The Cap-Horn, however, was not hard-chine ply-over-frame construction like most of his earlier boats. It had a nicely rounded cold moulded hull, though it retained the typically Herbulot wide, clear decks and minimal raised coachroof. The Cap-Horn is now quite a rare boat, and its difficult to find much information about it, but, at the time it must have seemed a more sophisticated design than most others in its class.

The plywood Herbulot designs of the day, simple, compact, practical and inexpensive, were emblematic of French sailing in the 50s and early 60s. Just a year after the first OSTAR, however, Frances first all-GRP production cruising boat emerged from the Jouet factory, and Cap-Horns strong and lightweight cold moulded construction suddenly seemed old fashioned and labour intensive compared with the new high-tech material. (colour photo: the varnished hull of this 1964 Cap-Horn, recently for sale in France, has been well maintained and preserved.)

Jean Lacombe did complete that first OSTAR, finishing in last position after 74 days. He went on to take part again in the 1964 race (Tabarlys first win) in another Jouet-built boat, the Golif, a landmark (seamark?) design in French yachting history which Ill write about in another post soon

Cap-Horn built by P. Jouet & Cie, designed J. J. Herbulot

LOA 6.50m - (20.90 ft)

LWL 6.00m - (19.67 ft)

Beam 2.16m - (7.08 ft)

Draft (max) 1.20m - (3.94 ft)

Draft (min) 0.70m - (2.30 ft)

Displacement 907kg - (2000 lbs)

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