International Tornado? No, not that one...

[JimC]

Late 50s/early 60s PY lists show an International Tornado. It can't be the B class cat that was designed in 1965, so what was it? Dinghy, keelboat, another multi or what?

[davidh]

Jim,

ha - that's an easy one! It was supposed to be the new international 2 man boat BUT instead ended up with more chance of winning Crufts than of getting the nod from it's parents, the IYRU. Think crossing a Sharpie, an FD and some ugly duckling genes and you'll be there.

I've some pictures somewhere but - suffice to say that it didn't get the nod! Funnily enough, one came up on fleabay a year or so back!

Shout if you want more details

D

[Rupert]

It was an Uffa Fox design - actually as the International inland 2 man dinghy - like the Flying Dutchman, the original remit was for a lake boat.

If you have pics, David, that would be wonderful. I recall that one on ebay a while back. It is a shame it didn't live up to what it should have been, but I suppose we got the FD because of that.

[davidh]

Rupert,

I'll try to dig some of them out - right now they're buried in the 505 file as the boat is germane to the story behind the creation of both the FD and the 505.

Somewhere else in the file are some direct comments from people who sailed the Tornado - not very positive I'm afraid. It is just one of those things, a reflection on the changing demands that the increasingly rapid development of the dinghy was putting on designers. Uffa Fox may have had many good ideas, but he never really mastered the performance boat - that was left to the next generation.

The story of the Tornado ought to be told, albeit as part of a bigger, better tale. who knows.......................

D

[davidh]

Beware not the Ides of March, but the curse of research!

There I was, just about to start hunting out some details on the Tornado for Jim, when I clocked over on the Y&Y site that he'd also asked a question on the Javelin. So, Tornado got shelved and the search for the javelin commenced. It was one of those that I knew I knew but wanted the details.

Got it! The Javelin was Ian Proctor's second bite at doing a Cat design (his first being the ........Chippendale 'Catkin'!)

The boat was quite a beast by all accounts - somewhere in size between a Shearwater and a 'B' Class. The boats were made at Berthons in Lymington............

BTW Jim - back to your research on PYs - have you gone right back to the first 'tweaking' of the system in the late 1950s when the original numbers got multiplied out by 1.2?

Hope the info helps

As always Jim, shout if you want more detail

Dougal

[JimC]

BTW Jim - back to your research on PYs - have you gone right back to the first 'tweaking' of the system in the late 1950s when the original numbers got multiplied out by 1.2?

I had spotted that the '57 and '58 numbers I had were different, but hadn't got any further than that. I'm most concerned really with getting numbers for between 1966 and 1980.
Apropos of the early numbers though, I note that the PY for the Merlin about 1959/60 was 91. If you take off that the 4% suggested by Milledge for cotton sails, and then translate it to modern numbers you get 961.

[davidh]

Jim,

the story (as was told to me) was that the first iteration of the system was working well but the advent of the first cats required a fairly significant change. So, everything got multiplied by 1.2, which shifted everything along a bit, then the cats were placed at the far end of the spectrum (as they were then the quickest things afloat). At the time the Shearwater was pretty much the benchmark at 75 (when the FD was 78 and the 505 81). Then the first generation of cats with cross beams instead of bridge decks came in and the numbers dropped fast, 71 for a Condor, 65 for a Tornado (NOT the Uffa Fox version to be sure).

I'm doing a piece shortly on the PY system - in the next week or so I'm with the people from Sail Racer, I'm keen to see how much they have in the way of history. One of the issues has to be that of (for want of a better description) 'linear scalability' - as the numerical range spreads further and further apart, what impact this has on the degree of accuracy in the results.

With regards to the merlins, they started life at 76 (?) then moved to 91. My guess is that if you charted their PY (or, interestingly that of the 505) against time, it would essentially be a flat line through to the late 90s (early 90s in the case of the Merlin) and then both would start making a hockey stick curve upwards. I've just covered the time in the Merlins when the PYs changed and the reasons why the RYA moved in the way they did - what is interesting is on how fast their PY changed...and on how the class dealt/failed to deal with the impact this would have on the greater membership! Indeed, my researches show that in the end, the Class Committee accepted that in saving the class (from the rapid decline seen in boats such as the Hornet) they had all but killed the boat off as a 'club racer! An interesting, fascinating topic, I'm looking forward to reading your findings

D

[Clive1]

Hi,

First post on here

I used to work at ISAF in the secretariat and saw a set of drawings for the uffa fox tornado in the archives - it did look a bit of a dog and from memory had a steel plate

I bet the plans are still there - maybe they would be of interest to the cvrda?

Clive

[davidh]

Clive

I'm sure the Uffa Fox people would like to know about this, they are the people who (wisely) hold most of the stuff about UF. If it heads off to the 'National Museum' it will vanish for good - since Christmas I've written to them 3 times without an answer.

Jim C; I've been following your PY thread over on a n other forum and have some more detail for you. With regard to the MR class, the first big change in more modern times came in 1994ish, when the PY went from 109 to 107. Funnily enough it wasn't mylar sails, nor carbon rigs, or even FRP hulls that drove the change.

The big factor(s) was the arrival on the scene of the Canterbury tales design, which Jon Turner had built and then used with a raking, deck stepped rig. This was a complete game changer, for in a stroke the winning crew weights went from 25-26 stone, to 21. On a windward-leeward course (which wasn't sailed in those days) the CT was on a par with the best of the Morrison NSM IVs, on a reach however the Holt design just disappeared away! The advent of the CTs had an unexpected consequence in that the boat became ever more optimised for the open meeting/championship circuit at the expense of the 'sail anywhere' boats of earlier days.

The Class Committee recognised this but, in the face of serious competition from the RS 400, were happy to see the shortening of the PY odds, for it was evidence that their survival plans was working. A few years back, Merlins were very much the form boat of things like the Sail Juice GL series, now their PY has probably swung too far, with only the very best of the boats able to sail to 975.

Currently, much of the Py work within the MR class is linear - but this probably ignores the fact of the step change that came in during the early 1990s.....

D

[Rupert]

990 surely, not 975?

Back onto the Tornado, it would be fantastic if the plans could be scanned and made available to be seen on line.