French Moth

an area to discuss dinghy developments
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Alan P.
Posts: 138
Joined: Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:15 pm
Location: Allier, France

French Moth

Post by Alan P. »

Came across this ad whilst browsing Leboncoin. Almost a national pastime here although I have recently sold my mk3 Gull and a kayak through it.
To my non Moth eyes this boat appears to be old and quite unlike anything I can recall seeing in the Uk. It comes with a wooden mast and boom.
I must stress that I am definitely only looking but I'd be interested to know what the CVRDA Moth fraternity make of it.

https://www.leboncoin.fr/nautisme/1612600877.htm/
OK 1211 Peter Crew wood 1968
Gull 2892 Hartley MK6 Plastic 2014
Streaker 1582. Home built. Wood 2005
bornagainmothie
Posts: 222
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2012 1:28 pm

Re: French Moth

Post by bornagainmothie »

Thanks for sharing this Alan, I suspect Dougal will be interested because it looks very much like the Westell designed 505 type moth or similar. I have posted it on the lowriders facebook page in case anyone can add more info.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/4226079 ... on_generic

Cheers

Lyndon
LASERTOURIST
Posts: 368
Joined: Wed May 30, 2007 9:54 pm
Location: France

Re: French Moth

Post by LASERTOURIST »

It is a Moth "Atlantique" and it was made by Lanaverre of Bordeaux (the 420, Finns, 490, Jet) before they took up milling the Europe moth in big quantities
The sail was made in dacron (or rather french "tergal" but coton style (narrow multiple panels)and the sail logo was a red capital M in a blue circle (not the Europe one nor the butterfly logo).
There was one sailing at my former club (Coutainvile West coast of Cotentin somewhere north of Mont st Michel) back in the early 70's and it was considered dated at the time though it performed reasonably well in handicap races .
It was not a bad boat and quite a few were made the really(almost) watertight side tanks (420 style) style provided real seagoing capacity and an empty boat after capsize / recovery.

Of course it was not in the "mad tinkering engineer /designer/experimenter" spirit of the int'l moth class but it provided a no nonsense, seaworthy, trouble free and almost maintenance free light singlehander for atlantic use, more time on the water and less in the workshop; a great improvement on other earlier moth designs, much in the style of the laser versus OK dinghy .
I think it was launched in the very early 60's (1961???) and by then it was really a revolutionary design
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