10
Raters
Typical 10 Raters of Today
The
10 Rater class is a development class where sail area and waterline are
controlled by a formula. The boats can
be as long as you want them to be but the longer the waterline, the smaller the
sail. A Marblehead, having a 50 inch
long waterline, could have a sail that was 1500 square inches and be a 10
Rater. Being that the sail area of a
typical Marblehead is only 800 square inches, it could still legally sail in a
10 Rater race but would be at a slight disadvantage. Some skippers would say that 10 Raters are
among the fastest classes in model yacht racing. I would flat out say that they are the
fastest, period. Boat design and
performance have a big impact in racing 10 Raters and weather plays a bigger
role with 10 Rater racing than in any other class. This results in a big challenge for the
skipper and an even bigger challenge for the designer. Since they are rather
rare, 10 Raters carry a bit of a mystique with some people.
My
father became interested in 10 Raters in the summer of 1976 after a Marblehead
race in Central Park. A group of 10
Rater skippers were getting together to race informally and the boats caught my
father’s attention. About every other
weekend was dedicated to 10 Raters so he could double the amount of racing he
could do if he entered that class. Also,
he felt that his Wind design was well suited to be a 10 Rater. He asked my
opinion and I told him he should do it. I told him to call the design “Big
Wind” and it stuck.
The
boat was designed on the workbench and not on the drawing board. He used the ribs from the Wind II and widened
them by an inch. He laid the ribs
farther apart as a way of stretching the boat to 65 inches with a 52-inch
waterline. The only new ribs were at the
very front of the boat where the planks met, and the very back of the
boat. As a result there are no complete
plans for the Big Wind design. There is
only a deck framing plan and a couple of informal sail plan ideas.
The
first Big Wind was painted black and for his first few races, he used the sails
from his East Coast 12 Meter until the new sails were finished. The boat revolutionized 10 Rater racing in
the area. Up until then, most 10 Raters
were made of wood and all of them were heavy with long waterlines and
relatively small sails. My father won
races and made it look easy and that was with the 12 Meter sails. When he put the new sail on it, the boat did
even better. Even still, my father
didn’t take 10 Rater racing seriously.
To him it was something to do between Marblehead races.
Big Wind with sails from an
East Coast 12 Meter
From
the best of my recollection there were 9 Big Winds built. He sold the same half-kits of Big Winds as he
did Wind II’s, only Big Winds were $100.
After he sold a few, his success in sailing 10-Raters waned. For some reason, some of the other Big Winds
were better. The second-best one was
owned by an architect named Carl Brosius.
The mahogany plywood deck was finished professionally by a furniture
maker and I think the paint job was done in an auto body shop. For all of the 1977 season and the first half
of the 1978 season, Carl won most of the races, if not all. The best of the Big Winds was the one that my
father built for me in February of 1977.
The
fact that my father had an uphill battle in 10 Rater races didn’t bother
him. He took pride in knowing that if
there were five Big Winds in the race, the top five finishers were Big Winds. With the success of the Big Wind design, it
was hard to see its demise over the horizon.
As it is with any design of racing vehicle, trends, progress and the
passage of time pass it by. This was the
case of the Big Winds. In 1978, one of
the owners of a Big Wind sold his and decided to put a 1500 square inch sail on
a Marblehead and race it as a 10 Rater.
At first I didn’t think anything of it but over the next couple of
years, the idea turned out to be ideal for Central Park 10 Rater racing. I feel this helped lead to the demise of 10
Rater racing in the area. Central Park
had a large fleet but the sailing conditions through most of the year were
horrible. There’s almost no wind. Those who had a Marblehead-style 10 Rater
with its huge sail area to body ratio held an advantage over the traditional
style. It became a waste of time for
someone to sail something other than the Marblehead-style 10 Rater. Outside of Central Park was a different
story. The wind in other places would
often be strong enough to make Marblehead-style 10 Raters helpless or
uncontrollable with their 1500 square inch sails and at a disadvantage when
they switched to smaller sails.
My father is leading a fleet
of over-rigged Marbleheads. Only one Big
Wind is able to keep up (far right).
In
1979, even my father abandoned his Big Wind in favor of a Marblehead-style 10
Rater. In his case he designed the boat
specifically as a 10 Rater and not as a Marblehead. It wasn’t like a Wind at all. Instead of a flat bottom, the shape of the
boat was deep and parabolic. His theory
was that in Central Park, there’s rarely enough wind to make a boat plane so
why bother trying. Also, with the deep,
parabolic shape, the boat could better handle the large sail in a stronger
breeze. The result was a rare boat that
did well in and out of Central Park. In
1979 he won the MYRAA National Championship race at Eisenhower Park in Long
Island, and in 1980 he won the AMYA National Championship in Central Park. The only race he did badly in with this boat
was the MYRAA Eastern Divisional Regatta at Mill Pond in Long Island where the
wind blasted at 30 mph, with gusts up to 50 mph. I don’t know how badly he did or if he even
finished. I don’t think my father raced a 10 Rater after I stopped racing in
1981.
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