East
Coast 12 Meter
My
father became interested in model yacht racing after reading some articles in a
magazine. The one he liked the best was the East Coast 12 Meter by the way they
looked in the pictures. The East Coast
12 Meter class is a one design class where the hull has to be purchased from a
licensed dealer. The sail design must
fit the pattern dictated in the rules.
The deck, sail and mast materials are not restricted or controlled by
the rules.
In
1972 the family went on a vacation in Florida. The trip was suggested by my
father although my sister and I had been asking about it for years. On the way there we stopped at the house of a
man named Rodd Carr who, believe it or not, was a licensed manufacturer of East
Coast 12 Meter hulls. My mother grumbled
her disapproval in a Marge Simpson kind of way every time she looked at the
boat through the remainder of the vacation.
It was her opinion that we could have picked it up on the way back so I
wouldn’t have to share the back of the station wagon with it. I didn’t mind at all though. I thought it looked rather sleek. It was black.
He never built a black boat before.
They were always white or wood colored.
After
we got home my father worked on the boat and finished it in a few weeks. It looked like a cross between his earlier
sloops and his scale models. It had a
planked walnut deck that looked better than any furniture we owned and it had
his typical shoebox-top hatch.
Around
this time he befriended a man named Dave Holmes who then built his own East
Coast 12 meter. They set up a course at Wampus Pond
and raced each other almost every weekend. The problem with East Coast 12
meters was that there weren’t too many in the area at the time. Other than the two of them, there wasn’t
anybody to race against so they explored other classes of boats but still
continued to sail these as well.
In
1976, the class championship was held in Richmond, Virginia. Combined with a
regatta called the Mini America’s Cup, it was a two-day event. They decided to attend and I got to tag
along. I don’t remember how they did in
the Mini America’s Cup on Saturday. That Saturday night, we saw Jaws in a drive-in
theatre. I had already seen it the year
before and I was warned that if I started giving away any of the story, I would
find myself outside the car looking in.
Sunday
was the Championship race. My father
came in 6th. Dave Holmes came
in 16th. My father was rather
angry. Dave Holmes didn’t talk about it
with me. What bothered my father was
that in his opinion, a few participants had taken advantage of a loophole in
the rules regarding boat construction.
“Did
you see some of those boats out there?” he groused.
I
shrugged my shoulders.
“There
were some big differences between a couple of those boats and our boats.”
He
was right about that. Some of the boats,
including the guy who won, had the back ends cut back (called a reverse
transom) and pinched decks. A pinched
deck means the boat was wider at the waterline than at the deck. My father was not alone with this
sentiment. There has been some serious
debate within the class members as to the legality or the effectiveness of a
pinched deck. I would have to agree with
my father on this.
This
is my opinion on the subject: It has
been argued that a pinched deck does not affect the width of the boat at the
waterline and therefore has no affect on the boats performance. I would concede this point but counter with
these two points:
1)
The hydrodynamics of a boat with a pinched
deck would definitely be different from a boat that did not have a pinched deck
when the boat heeled (leaned to one side) like it does when sailing in a
windward direction. This difference
defeats the concept of a one-design class.
2)
If
it didn’t improve the performance of the boat, why do it? If it hurt the performance, I doubt these
folks would have travelled so far to race an inferior
boat. These were the top skippers in the
class. They would be the first to notice
improved or reduced performance. If it
had no impact on performance, why do it and risk the credibility of the class
being a one-design class?
The argument is moot today since the loophole
was closed a long time ago.
Anyway,
after we got home, he never sailed the boat again and sold it that fall.