Atlanta Vario

an area to discuss dinghy developments
Nigel
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Atlanta Vario

Post by Nigel »

This is a new one on me. One for the dinghy database?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/330675702597? ... 1423.l2649

Unusual centreboard arrangement.
Rupert
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by Rupert »

New to me, too. Loving the orange decks! Looks like quite a smart design and build.
Rupert
Nigel
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by Nigel »

Hi Rupert,

Yes -it does look quite sleek - interesting that there is no top slot for the centreboard. The hatch at the back of the foredeck must have something to do with that. It looks a bargain for £200 if you live close enough. I wonder what the sails are like.

Just the lost class for someone to teach their dad to sail in? :P
Max McCarthy
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by Max McCarthy »

It looks as though we might get the fireball instead, there is more then to get to once I have taught my dad the basics..........spinnikar, trapeze etc. But thanks for the suggestion! :lol:
AC 298 TimeWarp
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LASERTOURIST
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by LASERTOURIST »

Atlanta of Germany is better known for the twin centreboard Koralle and its smaller brother the Kolibri.

I Think the Vario was launched a few years after the Laser and tried to snatch some of it's market share, but it was nort exactly a clone or a me- too , (as were the french X4, The Japanese seahopper, the spanish Estel by roga (still marketed and another laser clone with a
XXXXon name by Leo Bruckner another german maker) .

Obviously the germans tried to make a laser look alike...but with a few "improvements" .

It has a pivot centreboard , fully enclosed ...good for the looks but not quite so for foil care maintenance, access, and repairs,...(just changing the chafed centreboard lines is a pain in the ass)

It has a small locker , very much in the german , motor car style , that is also found on the Korralle rear deck (to clamp a small outboard)...might seem a good idea, but on small boats generally amounts to carry quite a few pints of saltwater with your sandwiches and possibly cell phone swimming in the middle...if you are stupid enough to take your cell phone on the water.

There is the well known system of two mast steps for the use as a singlehander or a 2 in dinghy.

It is an interesting feature and supposedly a bright idea ...that seems never to have fulfilled its promises.

I don't know if many british dinghies had this system but in France it was first featured on the Mousse, in the early 50's, a small trainer designed by Eugène Cornu , of caneton fame, who unsurprisingly designed some sort of downsized Caneton , when the French sailing Federation approached him for a sailing school advanced trainer...They could have selected the then booming Vaurien By Herbulot ...but it carried a smell of Glénans surphur and Communist heresy, and was not well accepted in traditional yacht clubs...

The Mousse featured wider side decks, along with a rear deck , and then proper buoancy tanks , and even a double bottom on later models, a mobile rudder blade a semi full batten mainsail , a veed bow (the vaurien was absolutely flat in the fore two thirds) and a double mast step in case a sailing school had a odd number of trainees in a course...but even with those marvellous improvements a mere 3000 Mousses were made while the unperfect Vaurien hit the 30000+ mark...because it's crude design and spartan equipment allowed for a very cheap boat and an early form of mass production.

The copyrights and building licenses were the property of the class...NOT the architect or boatyard ( that would make both LPE and Kirby red with fury nowdays )...and the boatyards making vauriens were constrained to make big batches and very low profit margins..hence the success of the "bad design" over the "proper" one

The Twin mast step was later seen on the french 420 , which had a singlehander championship along with the 2 in championship until the early 70's, and they even tried to fit a special mast step / gate to carry an unsupported mast , 0K and Finnstyle) but dropped , as the OK had attracted the bulk of budding talented singlehanders.

Here it is somewhat different as we have a singlehander with a Jib added (more in the style of the successful Pico, which was somewhat lengthened by almost one foot when the jib option became popuklar with sailing centres) rather than a 2 - in dinghy that can be sailed without a jib...


You can find many successful boats featuring obvious defects and not so successful boats that included supposedly "improvements" not being successful ...and it is the case for this boat (Atlanta folded sometime after the launch of the Vario)...i thoink that should be a warning for many boat designers and boatthinkers...
Pat
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by Pat »

The Zoom (not the Zoom8 continental junior one) is another of the two-mast-step failed-laser-competitor breed. Singlehanded, single sail or two up, two sail with trapeze. I hope to get some photos soon as a friend has just acquired one.
Rupert
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by Rupert »

I suppose the most obvious British example is the Mirror dinghy, and the Gull did it, too.

LT, that was a great read, as normal - I'm always amazed at how few European dinghies ever got a toehold in the UK, and how little even those of us with a fair knowledge of dinghies and sailing know of the culture and background of sailing just a short way away - I think I know more about Australian and NZ sailing than European, but I guess it is a language thing as much as anything.

Any day when you learn something is a good one, even if it is spent at work...
Rupert
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by LASERTOURIST »

I supporse UK had some sort of early start in dinghy making and had plenty of choice, while back on the continent we started later and from (almost) scratch (except for the prolific Caneton class that was loosely restricted and gave birth to the 505) .

There were not so many contacts between UK / commonwealth except in hign level events (olympics , Worlds , Kiel's week) before mass diffusion of cars (not yet granted in the 50's) and trailering, except for a rather restricted bunch of people who did go to international events.

Herbulot knew about his time's deelopment in the 14't restricted dinghies (there were some reviewing of the most advanced british int'l 14 as of 1939 in the manuals he published for the wartime sailing schools and he more or less made his 15'ft dinghy as a simplified copy of the best intl 14's he knew) and also knew about the olympic boats as he had competed in the 1932 / 1936 and 1948 Olympics.

Curiously the first Vaurien (built in Viannays flat in Paris ...and taken out forcibly, having to destroy the window frame , a well known gag that also tookplace with the 1st ever 505) used a british Firefly (olympic 1948 singlehander) mainsail and a jib from the small argonaute Keelboat trainer...but i dont know if the same sailplan was used for the production boats.

IMHO the "from scratch" approach had some advantages, and some disadvantages.

On the plus side is the lack of prejudice about what a good and proper boat should look like.
Some winning boats did look "awful" but performed surprisingly well

In the offshore domain Tabarly's Penduick 2 3 chine plywood crude boat was somewhat laughed about when it entered the american CCA Bermuda race , was said to look like a DIY boat, but proved light and fast and almost wiped out the traditional Stephens designed american yachts...that were far less spartan inside and much heavier...same applied for the Harlé Muscadet and Armagnac that were really fast in the british JOG races .

Same can be said of the 420, it was a fresh approach to what a 14 ft trainer should be and t made quite bold use of Fiberglass in the late 50's, even the centreboard case was fibreglass, while most GRP dinghies of the period (including Lanaverre's own finns and 505) used a (now problematic) wood case on GRP hull....that british makers retained on some Parker 505's well into the 60's.

Even in a 1970's british boatpark , the 420's definitely looked more modern than the numerous enterprises, GP14 and Mirror's, with the extra benefit of little maintenance needed.

On the minus side , UK boat builders enjoyed a kind of ready for use hull shapes and rigging tricks database (with the intl 14's and other restricted classes), while this side of the channel , designers and makers went for a sucessful one designe in a "al by myself approach that could lead to real "dogs "being launched on the market...the worst mistake being Finot's /Beneteau Wizz.

The "fresh start" approach also led to french people quickly abandon dinghy sailing in favour of Windsurfiong and catamaran sailing when prices rose with the "arms race" in the popular 420 / 470 classes
davidh
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by davidh »

i'm with Rupert on thanking LT for the insight into european thinking way back then.....

BUT...

Firstly - Pat: there is/was a zoom in the dinghy part at Roadford..... but the concept of the twin option rig, even in a single hander, goes way back. Indeed, the Elvstrom Trapez probably achieved much more as a twin handed boat than as a single hander....

Another example- the S Herbert designed 'seafire'. Now that as a single hander intrigues me... quite Phantom like in many ways..... though I would imagine it to be hard work in a breeze.

And LT.... I hate to dissapoint you, but your story about 505 number 1 is incorrect. Number 1 was built in a proper boatyard by professional builders and was actually 'out of the door' even before John Westell had completed the final set of plans....

Dougal
David H
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by LASERTOURIST »

IHello!
I thhink the 505 story is a bit more complicated ...and it must be remembered that the 505 was a kind of préfiguration of Concorde...so had history both sides of the Channel

The precursor (Coronet) was undoubtedly a british boat made by a british boatyard...but it could not be counted as a 505 as it was a good half metre longer .

It made history in the IYRU trials (about as fast as the FD ..but the FD was chosen to treplace the obsolescent 12 M2 Sharpie that had poor characteristics in rough weather, the Melbourne 56 olympics race had been something of a demolition derby.

The best French Caneton helmsmen ( among them Tiriau of Nantes had been in the 1956 olympics and had sufferred the "demolition derby" ) had joined the trials but their boats were hopelessly traditional and outclasssed so they approached John Westell to make a shorter coronet that would comply with te canton rules (5M plus or minus 1% gives 5M+5CM).

Then on the new boat construction was started BOTH sides of the channel , as soon as Westell had issued the revised blueprints.

A book Published 1967 by Clamann Levy By Parick Chapuis, Then a leading l'Equipe journalist, avid dinghy sailor and Grand son of Georges Paul thierry (one of the founding fathers of french light sailing gives a good account of the start of the 505 class both in France and UK

The Blueprints arrived in France on January the 15th 1952 and a team of CAneton sailors (Alain Cettier, JJ Herbulot J Laverne ex golden Medallist J Lebrun and Jean Peytel) immediately started to lobby for the (still in the blueprints ) boat to be endorsed as a one design Caneton.

They tasked Michel Bigoin (who was a skill crafttsman / designer at Dornier aviation France to build the prototype boat.
(Yes, not all the german aircraft / aerospace engineers went to the US like W Von Braun despite the infamous "paperclip" brain kidnapping, some other nations had got a minor share)...

Bigoin (who would later found a successful boat design office whith Andre Duvergie) immediately started the job working after hours in the backshop of a Daniel Mazo a pghotographer and avid racer whose shop was located in centre Paris (Boulevard saint Martin)

Alain Coyaud (Publisher of "cahiers du Yachting") sourced the wood from SNBCC and paid for it .... The boat was indeed a mite to for the door frame and some demolition had to be done before the very first 505 proper could be carried out .

It should have been christened "[b]Président le Pivert[/b]" (a private joke to make fun of the then President of Cannes Yacht club , and creator of Ski Yachting, Doctor Le Pivert, an eruptive mediterranean stereotype who had had many a clash with the parisian and atlantic sailors)
Somewhere in the christening ceremony the name of Le Pivert was dropped for 'diplomatic reasons " and the boat was simply christened President.

According to the same book construction also began the other side of the channel at Fairey marine, more or less at the same time , using the autoclave laminated wood process that had been used for the mosquito twin engine fighter.
The first fairey marine boat called Fairy Tale was first owned by the boss of Fairey Marine , Chichester Smith
Ralph Waldham ( editor of Yachts and Yachting, which had piublished the blue prints in the UK, as cahiers had in France) bought one of the very first Fairey Marine 505's as dit Jack Knights, the famous british yachting chronicler.

Of course Fairey marine could at the time deliver more boats , with a really powerful industrial tool that had been dimensioned for wartime aircraft production, and most early 505's were Fairey marine boats , or at last fairey marine shells, finished in french or english boatyards.

The first France / UK match (Copupe de l'YCIF a west parisian club) was held in France as early as 1954 in ouistreham , near Caen, and tghe british team won, partly out of better skills, partly because they had opened huge "windows in their transoms , to bail out water quicker) (yes the chop in adverse tidal conditions can be quite horrible off Ouistreham)

The french team was Roger Tiriau/ Emmanuel Lebec , Jacques Lebrun / Michel Briand ( Who would later be a leading figure in La rochelle boat industry) and Armand Isphording / Jacques Aubry.

The UK team was Charles Currey (a semi professional sailor working for fairey Marine/ Austin farrar , Richard Creagh Osborne / Derek Pitt - pitts and Max Johnson, crewed by John Westell , the 505 designer.
Still according to the same sources , while the first two teams had broght their boats to Cherbourg na freighter and then towed them to Ouistreham (yes the Britanny ferry Portsmouth caen, line was yet to come..) the third team elected to load their 505 on a big cabin cruiser...and arrived so late that they had to mast and rig their 505 in the open sea, with the powerboat anchored off ouistreham beach.....

The rest as ythey say is history, with another semi professional sailor from Fairey marine, Eric Olsen Winning a "One of a kind" US contest in Riverside connecticut in 1955.

The mass production of fiberglass 505 (OK , rather soft ones, that had trouble in sustainig the high shrod loads that became common with the advent of "boat killer" tension devices) was Lucien Lanaverre..he was no sailor at all , but sought something less traditional and more avant-garde sort of buisness to keep his buiness running.
(He was a semi indiustrial cooper for Bordeaux vineyards and thoughtthis job had little future...how wrong).

He was approached by an enthusiast salor /engineer Christian Maury , who was one of the first frencmen to master the polyester/fiberglass molding that had been almot a top secret experimental US process in the mid /late 40's.

The first "plastic" finns and 505's were manufactured somewhere around 1957/ 1958 and the 420 (designed bt Maury as a way to shoehorn a 505 in only 14 feet) followed suit as early as 1959, but had to undergo much adjustments and alterations , both by its ideators (Latxague and Leherff in socoa sailing centre) and by other Caneton racers before it was considered fit for the big production run...
LASERTOURIST
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by LASERTOURIST »

There may be some inconsistencies about the dates in the story as the Loosdrecht and La Baule trials dates are variable according to various sources
The book by chapuis was written in 1967 so seems wel documented, with many precise references and should be reliable ..but...

The FD class and 505 class data about the IYRU trials give 1952/1953 or 1953 1954 respectively but the basic story is still the same : Coronet rejected , then the caneton class endorses the revised /shortened coronet and then production of the 505 proper starts both sides of the channel.

Maybe you have information about the correct dates.

The very first french 505 carried all thrée class logos ( coronet ducal crown, Caneton standing duckling and 5O5 numeral logo) as i have seen on the (very worn out) first set of sails on 505 F8 owned by the Hédouin family in my own club in Coutainville in the 70's.

I think it was a Fairey marine shell , possibly with Fairey moded sidetanks , finished in France

With a (then top notch) set of new Cheret sails that particular 505 still with wooden spars held its own agains more recent boats in local copmpetitions inthe early 70's.
Rippler
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by Rippler »

My father Peter Montague owned Fairey Tale in the mid 1960s and sailed her from Horning SC where there were a fleet of about 10 505s at the time. I have recently discovered a photo of her taken at this time, although cannot post this, as it exceeds the 80kb limit!). I believe she remained on the Broads for several years after this date, but do not know what ultimately became of her.
Pat
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by Pat »

If you can't post a photo, see my sticky post on pictures at the top of this forum section or email it to me for posting.
(Half Cut and What a Lark Removals Ltd)
LASERTOURIST
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by LASERTOURIST »

Seems stange but many performance dinghies of 50's and 60's design could be DIY owner built while the cheap vaurien was a professional builder only job (until recently).
I even saw some tornado ex olympic cat built in the workshop of Ecole Nationale de Voile in Quiberon.

The now extinct sailing section of the ACBB at Boulogne Billancourt near Paris and close to the ex Renault Plant on the Seine banks started with three ex-caneton and ex rowing guys who decided to build a 505 from scratch in the late 50's : They used the crossed veneers on template method (had to build a "skeleton" first to put the veneers). They had no autoclave to cure the glue so the boat was probably a bit softer than the fairey made shells.

The boat was christened "les 3 cloches" (the three bells , after the then famous melodramatic Piaf song: 1st bell being birth, 2nd Bell marriage and finally 3rd bell death) but it was a self targeted pun from the three builders and co-owners as cloche also means Bummer or jerk in french argot.

They did not stop there either...as plastic and fiberglass was all the rage in 1958 - 1959 with the 420 being mass produced (sort of) by Lanaverre and Rocca manufacturing sleek fiberglass speedboats , canoes and utility boats, they polished and waxed their wooden 505 hull and made a fiberglass mould for the other club members wanting to join the nascent 505 class. Some 10 or 12 505's were built this way.
One could think that with the price of dinghies rocketing to ridiculous heights it would be a good idea to revive the DIY stuff...but no..
nowdays top class carbon fibre-vacuum bagged- aerospace specs...etc 505 need such a level of skill and tooling to be competitive that a DIY boat would be doomed from the start.
Rippler
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Re: Atlanta Vario

Post by Rippler »

Thanks Pat. Got there in the end and photo below
Attachments
505 K15 Fairey Tale at Horning Sailing Club in late 1960s
505 K15 Fairey Tale at Horning Sailing Club in late 1960s
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