After the concept of the sportboat commenced, arguably with light weight trailer sailers with no interiors such as the Elliot 5.9 and Ross 650/780 in the mid 80s, people started to get excited with the concept of light weight boats that embarrassed much larger boats. A sportboat could effortlessly pass 40 footers downwind with a boat in total control, at a fraction of the price.

Little wonder that by the mid 90s, there were a variety of designs and sizes appearing; different concepts like wings, trapezes and canting keels were tried with a variety of displacements and sizes.

In that era, one designer and a couple of particular designs seemed to represent the sportboat in more ways than one. The Melges 24 reached critical mass fastest and remains the largest OD sportboat fleet, and by today’s standards still remains fast. The J80 also has a large fleet worldwide, although the compromises made in being able to race offshore plus fixed keel see it not fitting the general sportboat formula so easily.

In France the open 50/60 concept has been scaled down successfully to an entire group of boats ranging from the open 500/570 up to the big Open 750 and a group clustered around 6.5m. Down south, New Zealand and Australia have arguably seen the most focused development of non rule/compromise sportboats, with the first generation of sportboat designers – Murray Ross, Jim Young, Greg Young, Greg Elliot, replaced by the big sail area large righting moment type craft of Thompson and boats like the Magic 25. Since then the formula has developed further with the boats getting lighter and sail areas decreasing as the boats have gone narrower on the waterlines, more reliant on crew weight and in some cases with racks, trapezes and wings at deck level to achieve more righting moment. Alan Carwadine, Rob Shaw, Bieker, Bennett and a multitude of one offs show this style of thinking.

Interestingly, as the sizes have evolved, we have seen 3 main types of boat emerge.

Sub 20s
In the smaller sizes, something less than 19 foot 6 or approx 5.7m means it is containerable in a 20 footer while also easily moved and suitable for 2 or 3. Of this type, we have the K6, Open 570, i550 (a homebuild plywood hard chine boat), speedfeet and so forth.

6.5s
The next size up centres around 6.3-6.5m, and includes a vast number of boats. The criteria of this size seems to be a boat that is legally trailerable as is, sailed by 3 or 4, easy to launch and move around, fairly cheap. At something like 20-30% more than the sub 20s, the performance gain for price is substantial.

From France the Open 650, Mach 650 and K650 are all wide twin rudder big rig relatively heavier boats similar conceptually to the Open type boats. From Australia and New Zealand, we have the Viper 640 and the Shaw 650 which are at the opposite end of the spectrum, offering very narrow waterline, wider at deck level thanks to wings with modest sail area and very low displacement. By reducing ballast, the boat becomes lighter, which reduces loads, which reduces requirement for sail area, which then reduces weight further aloft. Somewhere in the middle are now the Rocket 22, a rework of the Mull Pocket Rocket; SB3 which is a non hiking backstay sportboat; M20 which is a smaller Melges design also non hiking; and, the one offs from well known designers such as Dibley. The U20 is at the smaller end of this range and offers accommodation and more cruising elements however this American class is now going through a significant potential upgrade to carbon rigs which will allow it to race alongside many of the others in this size range.

The Longztse 680/Thompson 680/Thompson 650 which is actually 6.8m long and probably the original boat of this size in many ways, remains in the mix, although is technically a little larger.

Big Boats
Now in sportboats, it seems anything over 6.5m can be in some ways regarded as big. With sizes ranging up to an accepted 8/8++m as the maximum for a sportboat, this category includes a number of legacy boats coming from the earlier days of trailer sailers such as the Elliot 7, 770, 780s; the Young 780; the Ross 780 as well as a few other assorted designs such as the M24, T7, Stealth 7 and J80. A few European designs such as the Esse are in the mix although tend to be rather ballasted up.

There are also the so called ‘arms racers’ which tend to be right at the top end of operating without winches and are often far wider than road regulations allow.

From Australia, the Stealth Carrawadine design and the Bethwaite Vivace style design have proven fastest; one a day boat the other a full interior light weight racing machine. The Phuket 8 from Scott Duncanson is one of the most prevalent designs in this size range with 6 on the water. Thompson has a variety of boats racing worldwide including the T7, T750, T8 in two guises and the T830. In New Zealand, the two Shaw designed 7 and 750 have proven completely dominant at this size. The open 750 from France appears to be very quick and light, although no showdowns between the wide and the skinny boats have occurred as yet.

There is huge variation in speed within this size band, with the 7m Custard Truck being able to beat a J80, a larger boat lengthwise, by up to 20+ minutes in an hour long race held in ideal J80 conditions.

At this larger size, trailering, crew numbers and effort involved to set a boat up to race all increase exponentially. The cost increase from the 6.5m size up to a fully fledged 8mcan be in the realm of 100% higher cost, and requires an extra 2 crew, at least one of whom has to be prepared to trim a huge downwind kite without a winch. For this reason, 8m remains close to the practical limit.

Which Leads to the Future of the Box Rule
Because of the vast variation in sportboats there is now a race on to establish the next class which will continue the success of the Melges 24, which has proved the large market for the sportboats. Various boats have succeeded in certain markets, but none have captured success worldwide to date.

Within the NZ multihull fleet, after gradually suffering for years, the 8.5m box rule has been able to get all the boats back up and running; old boats have been sorted while there are now a variety of new boats under construction. The box rule has been able to pull together the older boats encouraging improvement outside of OD rules, as well as encouraging new one offs to fit the rule as well.

The advantage of a box rule is in creating a similar fleet where people race on line against each other, in places where there are either a variety of boats but no dominant one, or, as in the case of NZ’s multihulls, a couple of dominant single designs (the folding tris and the GBE) with a number of one offs. The end result has been that the older designs have been reworked and are now faster, the newer designs are more likely to take off since there is guaranteed box rule competition.

For sportboats, given the vast number of designs at various sizes, if we are to pick one size range, the 6.5m length is where most of the new designs are appearing, and perhaps the most suited to a box rule.

The SB3 started in the early 2000s in the UK, and now attracts fleets of 80+ boats making it the largest OD sportboat fleet there; however efforts to establish in other parts of the world have had mixed success – double digits fleet in Singapore, not much success in the UK. The U20 has a large fleet in USA but not all locations have enough boats to encourage OD racing all year.

The M20 is relatively new, and again is non hiking, but has a major technology advantage with a full carbon rig and the Melges think tank behind the design.

The 3 French designs all fit in perfectly and already race as a box rule in France together; however there are few boats in most of the rest of the world.

The Viper 640 and Shaw 650 are similar and have raced together in NZ where the situation is the reverse of USA with 1 Viper and 6+ Shaws.

The rest of the boats in this size range including the Rocket 22 and others are currently racing PHRF and would no doubt welcome the opportunity to race with similar boats.

For handicappers throughout the world, dealing with sportboats proves to be difficult. By creating a group of similar boats, the box rule enables close class racing. Within the sportboat scene, the 6.5m size is a logical one to develop, which provides high speed at moderate cost without needing gorilla style crews.

Tags: sportboat sailing sail news rules regulation

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 11:43 am and is filed under Sailing News, Shaw 650 sailing tips and tricks, Shaw650 sportboat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.