36/600’s
The
36/600 is a development class similar to the Marblehead class. The predominant requirements are that the
boat be 36 inches long and have no more than 600 square inches of sail area. The class has been around since 1971. My father became interested in 1979 when
Central Park added 36/600 races to their schedule.
There
is something about small boats that intrigued my father. I’m not sure if it’s the way the waves seem
bigger or the wind seems stronger or if it’s the fact that smaller boats are
easier to transport. Something about
them got my father’s attention in a big way.
As I pointed out in the Classic Scale Models chapter, he started building
scale models based on his 36/600 hulls.
His
first 36/600 was based on the original Wind I design and he did quite well with
it. Even I did okay with the one he
built for me. The first ones had
mahogany plywood decks. The later ones
used model airplane film. The class allowed
multi-mast boats so he built and raced a couple of schooners built from fiberglass
shells from the same mold. One of the
schooners was built to look like a scale model.
It didn’t win anything but it didn’t do that badly, either. When he grew tired of racing it, he added a
few more sails and turned it into a topsail schooner. People were quite impressed with it and some still
talked about it many years later. He
stopped making boats for other people at this time so there aren’t too many of his
36/600’s around. If he sold any
half-kits of his 36/600, I don’t know about it. He made four boats that were donated to the
Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains, NY. The patients sailed them in the pool. He also built four smaller versions of this design
that were donated to Blythedale Children’s Hospital
in Valhalla, NY.
Back
in those days, the 36/600 class also allowed multi-hull boats so he
experimented with catamaran as well. His
catamaran was a dismal failure. The wind
in Central Park was too light to take advantage of the lack of need for a
ballasted keel. Even though he was doing
well with whatever boat he had, the open rules at the time allowed him to try
so many different things and the boats were small and easy to build. In spite of the amount of enthusiasm my
father had sailing 36/600’s, I only have this one picture. In case you are wondering, the boat is white.
Move on to the International One Meter
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