Jerry Montgomery On Tradition

From the archives

Article by Jerry Montgomery

Recently my friend Geoff Prindle dropped by to see how the hull plug for the new 16 was doing. Eventually we spread drawings out and the discussion got under way. He’s working his way up to starting on a new boat that he’s been drawing on (drawings must age for a while before being used).  He’s been agonizing on an ultra-light, high performance monohull of about 20 feet, inspired by the new generation of maxi ocean racers that have low freeboard, a fine bow, and a very wide, flat transom. The real reason for this boat is to make a fast boat that will plane, without requiring a “real” spinnaker, which requires a relatively skilled and enthusiastic crew. Off the wind it will use a bow tube that will extend forward from the bow and an asymmetrical spinnaker, and will normally reach on the downwind leg, gybing as needed. 

This boat will only work if kept really light, and Geoff plans to make it of foam with a layer of carbon inside and out. Ballast would be a bulb at the end of a very high-aspect daggerboard. He’s talking about a draft of about six feet, which would make the location of the lake bottom very important. It almost sounds like a temporary keel to me! I think a diskeeling would be inevitable.

After a few beers and dragging out some of Lyle’s line drawings and sailplans, we moved on to a discussion of the other end of the scale: tradition. We associate traditional boats with certain characteristics, like wood planking (usually), full keels, spring sheers, outboard rigs, considerable deadrise in the hull, etc. These characteristics came about from necessity, not to look traditional. Spring sheers were to keep the water out from head and following seas. Planked boats with wood decks were heavy and didn’t rise to headseas like modern boats, and they didn’t pick up and go like lighter boats in following seas; so the seas washed over them if the freeboard at the stern wasn’t pretty high. 

In this country, in the days of sailing ships, Douglas Fir, then called Oregon Pine, was the premium mast wood, and before the intercontinental railway the only way to get it was to haul it around the horn. Sail area was limited by the length of the trees, but more important was the need to keep sails small enough to handle, and it wasn’t until glue was developed that masts on smaller boats (“yachts”) became lighter and more efficient. 

Boats are as they are because something worked and was slowly improved until perfected for the purpose and surroundings, or until a new material appeared, like glue, fiberglass, or aluminum. I would definitely call the old wood cruising  and workboats traditional. They had long wood keels with a lead or iron shoe. They couldn’t have a high-aspect fin keel like more modern fiberglass boats because there wasn’t a good way to hold them together and on the boat—too much stress to focus on a small area. Are Lyle Hess’s great cruising boats traditional? I’d say so—definitely when made of wood. How about if they’re made of glass?  Do they then become “imitation” traditional boats, or, more kindly, modern traditional boats?  Maybe there’s no problem with modifying the word “traditional” with an adjective.  

Is the Cal 40, from the 60s, a traditional boat? It was a radical design (Bill Lapworth) in its day, partly because of fiberglass, and partly because of the old CCA racing rule. That rule was a measurement rule started in the days of wood boats, and when glass boats came along it was discovered that rule didn’t penalize weight enough, and Bill exploited that flaw in the rule. 

I learned most of my boatbuilding at Jensen Marine in the 60s and was the foreman on the Cal 40 crew through most of its production. I remember that the Cal 40 won the Transpac one year, taking six of the first ten places, if my memory is correct. It won races and sold well until it was recognized that the CCA rule would be replaced by the International (IOR) rule. That was a shame because CCA boats were better boats than the ones designed for the IOR. 

Can we call the Cal 40, and others of that time, traditional boats?  Maybe traditional racer/cruisers? The Lapworth boats certainly weren’t the first to be made of glass, nor to have fin keels, but I think they were the first significant ones. That they rated well and won races because of it doesn’t detract from that they were fast and great-sailing boats, with or without the stupid rule. My memory going back that far is a bit foggy, but I think the Cal 24 was Lapworth’s first glass boat. It had a cutaway full keel, as did the Cal 30, which came soon after. I was not privy to the thinking on all that, but I’d love to know. 

We think of canoes as traditional craft, but look at the evolution of Canadian-style canoes. The old birchbark canoes had highly recurved stems and lots of tumblehome in the sides, necessary for strength and stiffness. Gradually, with the development of better materials, particularly glues, the need for the high, recurved stems went away, although the tubular shape is still in evidence today.  Most of the modern, high-end canoes are made of Kevlar or carbon, and stems are very low in comparison, especially the stern.  Just high enough to keep the water out, and any more is simply extra windage and weight. I have an open, marathon canoe made of carbon that weighs 26 pounds, and I have a one-person outrigger canoe, also made of carbon, that has a hull weight of just under 20. 

The outrigger canoes are traditional in the Pacific islands and were made of hollowed logs (no glue needed!) and were pretty heavy. To increase freeboard at the ends they lashed on slabs of wood and crossed open water with them. Now we make them with a roll of carbon and a jug of resin. A brush, scissors, and a trim knife and we’re in business.

Here’s an interesting quote from John Welsford: “A small boat of traditional flavor is in reality a caricature. To get the features that say ‘traditional’ and give the boat its flavor, there needs to be subtle exaggeration, and this can be hard to achieve without either over or under doing it. The designer has to pick out those characteristics in the ‘parent’ that make it memorable or individualistic and translate those into a form that says to the viewer, ‘Look at me, I’ll be like my daddy when I grow up!’”

He’s got a point, and I’m guessing his thinking is a lot like mine, in that I believe form needs to follow function. •SCA•

First appeared in issue #62