History of the Modern M
An article written by Roger Stollery in 2001 for Marine Modelling International.
Roger has since updated the story for us here.
What you need to know about this fantastic class
Introduction
If all you want to know is how much do they cost and where can you get them, think in terms of figures from just a few hundred pounds and look through the MYA Yearbook (ARYA Radio Waves) and other sources given at the end of this review. However for the sailing enthusiast, for whom model yachting is more than just products to buy, read on. Dedicated sailors and those curious about what makes a boat go have always been keen to experiment with models because of their inexpensive nature. The freedom for personal expression in design, construction and handling has always made this attractive in a modern culture full of complicated restrictions, rules and regulations. It has led model yachtsmen to take great delight in testing their skill in the development of sailing boats at a small scale against the very best, honed by class competitiveness. Development by simple trial and error can happen quickly, without much expense and is often at the cutting edge of knowledge, providing examples, which are later taken on board by bigger craft.
As the class will be celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2007, this review starts with a little history. Back in 1931 Roy Clough was tired of his fellow Marblehead Model Yacht Club members discussing the complexities of full size rules in classes like the International 6 Metre and wanted something simple. He wanted a few basic restrictions that anyone could understand to provide the biggest boat that could be transported easily. He measured the back seat of his car, which just happened to be 50 inches wide. That became the length limit along with 800 square inches of sail and a few other restrictions to keep boats simple. This was a stroke of genius for which many thousands of Marblehead sailors have been very grateful because transport became a key factor in the success of the class.
This simple idea had an immediate appeal and soon spread across the Atlantic. The lines of the first successful Marblehead, 'Cypher' designed by Francis E. Curtis show a hull shape that was probably popular on Redd's Pond, Marblehead at that time. It had a waterline length of only 40 inches, an 8 inch beam, a 9 inch draught, a 60 inch rig height and a displacement of 13 pounds.
Bertie Littlejohn's 'Iris' was the first Marblehead design to be published in the UK's Marine Models in March 1934 and illustrated a profile not unlike the full size sliding seat sailing canoes of that era. This design was intended to illustrate the potential within a rule giving such freedom and had similar dimensions to 'Cypher' except for the waterline length, which was increased to 48 inches with a proportionally increased displacement of 17 pounds. It accurately predicted the future trend of sailing length, more or less universal after the 1940's and a seaworthy forward deck plan with some flare in the first three sections. These boats had cotton sails and Braine steering gears.
Some boats were built in the UK pre-war, but design development started in earnest in the 1940's and 50's and all the dimensions other than the 48 inch waterline length increased. Cotton sails were replaced by impervious varnished terylene, which increased the drive from the limited sail area. Rig heights increased to improve efficiency in light airs and all this increased beam, draft and displacement progressively up to the mid-1960's. Vane steering gears allowed bigger jibs to be used as well as much bigger spinnakers downwind. The popular idea was that a bigger and more powerful boat would always beat a smaller, weaker one and the climax of this idea was the publication of the lines of Dick Priest's 23 pound, 12 inch beam 'Bewitched' in 1963. This was a beamier and heavier version of the very successful 'Witchcraft' produced 10 years earlier, which already had a beam of 11 inches and a displacement of 22 pounds. Despite the success of the heavier boats like 'Witchcraft', particularly in the hands of Chris Dicks, there were still a few examples of 'David' beating 'Goliath'! These came from the board of Bertie Littlejohn with his later designs, 'Elusive' and 'Plover', which were about 21 pounds and between 9 and 10 inches beam. Although they used relatively shorter rigs than the 85 inch tall light weather rigs developed by Chris Dicks and his colleagues at the Clapham Model Yacht Club, they were still a force to be reckoned with.
The hull construction was usually either planked or carved from a 'glue sandwich' of planks cut to either the buttock or waterlines shown on lines drawings. All of these designs carried ballast in a flatish keel shape with draught not more than 11 inches. Keels were connected to hulls by keel bolts through frames like many full size yachts today. As a result the bottom of the hull had to withstand big bending moments when heeled and the all-up-construction weight without ballast was quite heavy at about 7 pounds.
Roger's first Marblehead was cold moulded in thin ply our increase strength and reduce weight to and cost just £5 with 3 suits of sails all set in a luff groove on an aerodynamically shape mast. Of course, being a young teenager at school everything was home made! At today's prices this is approximately £165 and is still close to the cost of materials for the modern Marblehead. A professionally carved boat then would have cost 10 times that amount - about £50.
A revolution was on the way as the 'David' approach of reducing weight showed more and more promise. Weight after all, according to that famous yacht designer, Uffa Fox, is only useful in a steam roller! This line of development was transformed by the use of the bulb keel which immediately allowed the lighter, narrower boats to have the same stability than the 'Goliath' types, but had much less drag. The most dramatic difference in performance was on the reach because these new Marbleheads could plane on this course sailing whereas the 'Goliaths' could not. The 1964 National Championship was won in reaching conditions by Roger's 1960 'Brandysnap' design, a 9 inch beam, 19 pounder only made competitive by conversion to a bulb keeler.
Much more design freedom was introduced with the new reinforced plastic construction. Interestingly Roger's first published design 'Daredevil' looked much like a modern One Metre with a raised foredeck and sunken afterdeck. The difficulty of making the stiff glass reinforcement go round that sharp corner in the stern sections led to a more easily built rounded section shape used in the trio of designs produced in 1966; the 20 pound 10 inch beam 'March Hare', 18 pound 9 inch beam 'White Rabbit' and 16 pound 11 inch beam 'Mad Hatter'. The rounded sections were used primarily to make them simpler, easier and quicker to build with two part mouldings, split at the line of maximum beam, minimising hull and deck skin area, construction weight and wind resistance. Thin fins extended through the hull up to the deck saving a lot of weight by just better structural engineering and removing the bending moments from the bottom of the hull. The fins were made from Tufnell or Paxolin and allowing the draught to be increased without proportionally increasing the resistance. This allowed displacements to drop will still maintaining enough stability to compete to windward. Marbleheads became much more readily available as a semi-complete kits, easier for the DIY enthusiast build a lot cheaper with these developments on getting boats made specific it to order by a professional builders.
Design development was led by the Marblehead and 10 rater classes with spin-offs into the 'A' class that would come to fruition in the next decade.
The decade started with a win in the 1971 Nationals for the lightweight Fred Shepherd/Roger Stollery design, 'Hector'. The hull was a very shallow, 10 inch wide round section hull with a draught of 15 inches, driven by very simple double luff sails. It had a displacement of only 13 pounds; a record by a national champion that was not to be surpassed until well into the 1980's. Several refinements continued in the early 1970's, with more sophisticated mouldings with small vertical fins and skegs moulded in, making hulls like Roger's 'Bloodaxe' even easier to assemble. Simpler methods of construction helped newcomers to start sailing with the good quality gear at reasonable cost. Seaworthyness became an important characteristic because National Championships were usually held on exposed lakes with high, short waves reflected off the concrete lake sides. More flare, freeboard and buoyancy high up with a rounded deck section developed at the front end of boats, like the first Marblehead World Champion, the 16 pound 'Bloodaxe'. This shape combined with a wide stern allowed the bow to drive in, stay level through the wave, throw the water off the deck and eventually lift out of the wave.
Another revolution was under way with cheap, lightweight, reliable radio control equipment from Japan, which was suitable for Marbleheads, whereas previously, enormously heavy gear was only really capable of being carried by 'A' Class models which weighed 4 or 5 times as much as these lightweight flyers. Almost immediately in the mid 1970's there was another jump in development because draught increased to relate to this new form of racing. Vane steered boats needed to sail close to the edges of lakes and this limited draught generally to 15 or 16 inches. However radio boats raced in the centre of lakes where there was less restriction and draughts increased to 18 inches almost immediately whilst displacements dropped two pounds, maintaining stability and reducing drag proportionately. Radio gear, particularly winches, developed with early home-made versions being replaced by some really good and reliable winches by David Andrews ('Whirlwind') and Barry Jackson. A greater number of boat designs became available in kit form from lots of different sources. Sails too became more sophisticated with better shaping with panels etc. to satisfy the popular demand for this new form of racing which attracted more full-size sailors who appreciated the excitement and fun created by speeding up races to a few minutes from the hours taken in their 'big toys'.
Rigs also came under scrutiny too, because it was not practical to use a large spinnaker downwind. Una rigs were tried initially to improve offwind performance and were fine in lighter airs, but handling in strong winds, like gybing, was a problem. The downward pressure of a heeled sail plan mounted right on the bow created a downward force that was difficult to resist. The RC Laser has this problem. The Swing Rig, where sail area is distributed either side of the mast, as the pivot point, removed this handling problem whilst still allowing the whole sail area to show to the wind without any blanketting.
Another important development in the mid-1980's would effect every part of the boat and have a much bigger influence on improving performance. This was the availability of Kevlar and carbon fibre cloth and other carbon fibre products developed for the aircraft and other industries. These materials allowed the weight of the hull to drop dramatically losing a pound or so without any loss in strength to bring to the all up displacement to something like 12 pounds with 8.5 pound ballast. Perhaps the most significant change was the reduction in weight of the mast and spars in carbon which were both stiffer and lighter than their aluminium predecessors. Moulding was only one of the developments and the French became very good at making timber boats with either cedar or balsa reinforced with a thin skin of glass and making film covered decks over very well thought out beam structures. This led them to take 3 out of the top 4 places at the World Championships at Fleetwood in 1986 in a mixture of very light and very strong winds. The all up weight of these boats, without ballast, was in the order of 3 pounds plus about 10 pounds of lead.
Further international participation influenced European development when the American designer, Jon Elmaleh, took the 1987 European Championship in a week of very light conditions in den Bosch, Holland. His boat 'Archer' was both light and narrow and manoeuvred well with a rudder well forward and demonstrated great straight line speed not matched by the wider and heavier European designs.
Late in 1991 preparations were being made in the UK for the 1992 World Championships in New York. UK designers knew that they had to produce new narrower designs specifically for this event to compete with the narrow local boats. The 1992 season in the UK was particularly uncooperative when came to light winds suitable for testing these machines in competition. The National Championship and all the ranking races were sailed in moderate or strong winds. What was both surprising and amazing was how these supposedly light airs specialist designs performed so well in stronger winds. A lot of work was done in tuning and getting the handling right in these conditions, but the overall impression of the 'Paradox' and 'Roar Edge' designs was that they were a big step forward because of their good all round performance.
Updating : one way to go faster?
The modern Marblehead is much more a series of components than in earlier times and when an improvement appears, that component can often be added to an older boat to improve its performance as well as that of the latest design. A good example of this was the 1993 MYA National Championship for which Graham had no boat to sail, having sold his champion boat. So, he took the more elderly 'Enigma' design and added a thin deep 'Paradox' keel. The mixture of wind conditions included some strong winds so he was able to make this supposedly out of date design into a champion.
The 1993 European Championship held at Fleetwood was also sailed in a mixture of wind conditions and was won by 'Magick 3', designed and built by Chris Dicks. Average displacements were about 5.0kg and with the draught of the new thin fins apparently reaching a natural limit of about 600mm. Owners were mixing and matching commercially available parts for their own designs. Martin Roberts with designer David Creed from Birkenhead produced the 'Stark', another very narrow design, with a 150mm beam, this time with no flare on the top sides at the midsection. This went extremely well when pressed hard to windward and in moderate wind conditions won the MYA's Race of Champions just before leaving for the 1994 World Championship in South Africa. This event saw Graham retain his World Champion's title with his 'Paradox' with Martin Roberts' 'Stark' second after leading for several days.
Its reputation spread fast and by the 1998 World Championship in France entries from USA, Italy and Spain as well as Germany were racing the new 'Skalpel'. Normally the French don't sail at Viry-Chatillon in July because of the lack of wind, so competitors prepared for very light airs with lighter displacement and lightly constructed Swing Rigs etc. Graham Bantock remodelled the 'Paradox' parts to form a narrower 'Rad' especially for these conditions. However no-one expected that this far inland, in a Paris sub-urb, that there would be strong winds everyday! Once again Graham sailed extremely well to take the title, but was under pressure from the 'Skalpel's which won 13 out of the 30 races.
A further developed, production version of the 'Rad' called 'Strad' proved very quick in a straight line in the UK's events but appeared not to turn as well the 'Paradox', despite using the same foils. After much experimentation with fin positions etc the hull sections were modified to improve these characteristics and the result is the 'Rok' design which still has the fin and rudder from the same moulds, with a keel depth of 580mm and a displacement of 4.9kg.
At the 2000 World Championships in Spain this design was devastatingly quick in its lowest full area double luffed 'C' rig, winning 5 races by big margins early in the event to create a big lead over the multi-national 'Skalpel' challenge. However in the latter part of the event when the wind came off the land and was more gusty and lighter, its performance, at the top end of the tall 'A' rig, had less sparkle and the 'Skalpel' of local skipper Guillermo Beltri overtook him to take the Championship. This event was sailed on a large enclosed lagoon in the Mediterranean in incredibly steady breezes and big waves, quite unlike normal gusty conditions on an enclosed lake. Interestingly, the normally weaker bow shapes stayed seaworthy in these steady conditions. It was only when the wind came off the land and became gusty at the top end of tall rig, that offwind seaworthyness became a more important factor.
'Starkers Cubed' & 'Paradox' designs beating to windward
The 'Crazy Tube Too' lines are included here both for comparison with the earlier ones, to illustrate the progress already made and to encourage shapes that look forward into this new millennium. The inspiration for this boat came from the exceptional performance of the 'BOTTLE' boat, whose round midsections do not lift the hull out of the water, so maintaining its sailing length at large angles of heel. The 'Crazy Tube Too', with just four simple Swing Rigs, is a carbon hull joined a long line of maximum beam that comes out of the mould, virtually complete, as a single unit.
Peter Stollerys 'Crazy Tube Too'
on her way to winning the 2004 Race of Champions
The writer hopes that this review will create more enthusiasm for this fantastic class which has such a lot to offer to both newcomers and enthusiastic club members looking for ultimate monohull performance to complement their One Metre sailing. In the 1960's the Guildford club was revived from virtually no activity to a thriving club by Olympic canoeist Ray Blick, who travelled the country visiting clubhouses and buying older discarded Marbleheads. From the enthusiasm created, club members went on to build on this very cheap fleet to more modern boats. A similar situation exists today where there are a lot of unused Marbleheads out there, which could provide a very good value fleet for a new club. At any one time the Marblehead class has been a series of very similar, high performance designs which can still be a great deal of fun. There are also moulds of earlier designs previously used by some clubs, like Guildford, that could be used to produce very cheap hull mouldings for which the cost of carbon cloth etc. is still only about £30. With fins, leads, rudders, rigs etc commercially available from several sources there is plenty of opportunity for designs to be upgraded. The latest information about second hand boats is available from the MYA Website at www.mya-uk.org.uk. Information about suppliers etc. is best obtained from the 2001 MYA Yearbook which is available from the MYA information officer, Graham Reeves at information-officer@mya-uk.org.uk. Local clubs also often have members with boats, moulds etc. in the loft or clubhouse even, which can provide another source. Telephoning the secretary of a likely club may also provide information which will only be forthcoming if you ask.