Best in Show: The Galvez's US 104 or US 107

Paul and Yvonne Galvez have been taking their real beauty in International 14 restorations, US 104, Lorelei, a cedar planked, probably an early post-WWII International 14 of mysterious origins, out and about in California. First stop was the modern 2018 International 14 Worlds in San Francisco where the West Coast rag, Latitude 38, named Lorelei the most photographed 14 at the regatta. A most amazing feat given the surfeit of all the new technology; carbon, mylar, racks, double trapezes, gathered at the World Championship.

And in 2019? Best in Show! From Paul's email;

"Last year, we also took her to the Newport Beach Annual Wooden Boat Festival where she received Best in Show. The same show was cancelled this year for obvious reasons but we look forward to next year."

Paul sends along some photos of the all-varnished beauty of  Lorelei on display at the International 14 Worlds in Richmond, California.

---

Paul and Yvonne accepting the "Best in Show" award at the Newport Beach Annual Wooden Boat Festival.

Four Early Canadian 14's

North American International 14 history kept trickling in during my hiatus at posting to this blog. Interesting history of four early Canadian 14's popped up over the last three years.

---

KC-166

Mark Merritt has been pursuing the history of his Corneil International 14 and reached out to Rob Mazza, Canadian International 14 historian, who sent this email and photos of Peter Jarvis's Corneil, KC-166. From Rob's email:

"I finally heard back from Peter Jarvis, who I ran into at the Toronto Boat Show in late January. He sent me the attached photo and note on his George Corneil Fourteen KC 166 from 1956. This was the 2nd to last 14 built by George Corneil. So that KC 142 sail number on the battens in the boat may not be that improbable!

I have in my records:

KC 127 - Nimbus - Paul McLaughlin - 51 Bourke
KC 133 - Moonbeam - Harvey Bongard, Bruce Kirby Harry Jemmett - 51 Bourke
KC 144 - Wee Irish? - Bud Whitaker - 54 Bourke
KC 166 - - Peter Jarvis - George Corneil - 1956
KC 173 - Soo-perb - Mike Pruett, Dick Vine? - 1st Proctor 1 in Canada - 1954 in England?

Mark, there seems to be no question that the boat you have is indeed a George Corneil, and probably dates from the early 1950s, and may well be the 3rd to last Corneil built if the 142 sail number is to be believed.

Rob"

Peter Jarvis KC-166

And Peter's note to Rob  Mazza.

---

KC-5

Maureen Flagler sends along photos and a history of two Bourke "bones" boats that have been in their family, KC-5 and KC-25.

"My sister... was able to find some photos. In addition she has attached photos of an earlier I14 that my Mother and Father sailed from Ottawa during WWII. It was originally named Alisada and renamed to Eagle II. The registration for that one is KC5. We don’t know when that boat was sold or to whom."

---

KC-25

"After the war, our parents lived in Oakville and we believe the Chinook (KC25) was built there with Bill Gooderham... We think he is from the Gooderham family of Gooderham and Worts Distillery. KC25 (Chinook) has small ribs throughout the interior. The photo shows the interior of Chinook – KC25."

Maureen says that KC-25 was last splashed into the water in the 1980's. (The date that this photo was taken.)

---

KC-26

Ryan Grinnell from Toronto Canada sent this email and photos about a famous Canadian 14.

"...International 14 that has been in my family for over 50 years. Her name is Conneda and I even saw a reference to this name linked to Charlie Bourke. Could this be the same boat? The sail number is US 424 and according to my dad, via my late grandfather, it was the first molded plywood I14."

Ryan Grinnel's grandfather sailing.

Again, from Rob Mazza's International 14 history, published in the RCYC newsletter, we have the history of Conneda.

"In 1946, with the help of Prof Parkin and technician Jack Noonan (a Brittania member and dinghy sailor, as was probably Parkin). the National Research Council hot-moulded three Bourke designed 14's and, according to Kirby, a very special fourth one for Bourke himself, called Conneda. Her clean rib-less interior was admired by all. "You don't take a sponge on board, just a duster," said Paul McLaughlin. The first three boats stayed in Ottawa to further build that fleet, while Conneda went to RCYC and was later sold to sailmaker Colin Ratsey in New York."

My records indicate that sail number US-424 was indeed registered to Colin Ratsey, so it is a good bet that Ryan Grinnel's family does indeed own the famous hot-molded Bourke "Conneda".

---

From Tom Vaughn's International 14 history, here is a photo of Conneda. Certainly the most naked 14 ever. There couldn't be a more stark difference between the Uffa and Bourke "bones" 14's of the pre-war era and this new-fangled hot-molded 14.

Seattle Fleet Numbers from 1950 to 1963

View below in PDF format. It is best to put the file in another tab on your browser for viewing. Click on the pop-out icon (box with an arrow pointing to the right) on the top right of the PDF box to put the PDF file in another tab.

Catching up - another US One-Design surfaces

This blog has been dormant for most of the summer. It happens.

I have been receiving some emails and here is one I would like to share (look at the post following this one for a Douglas and McCleod 14 that is up for sale).

Allan Pickman of New Hampshire has picked up a Douglas and McLeod Int. 14 and has posted on the Woodenboat forum about his find. The hull looks very restorable. Unfortunately he is thinking of putting a rig other than the normal International 14 rig into her.

From a photo I lifted from the Woodenboat forum.

U.S. One-Design # 269

I had just got off the phone with George Moffat, who had modified and raced USOD US 268 in the mid 1950's, when I turned back to the computer and found an email about the next 14 in the number sequence, USOD US 269, built by Pat Curtiss in Erie Pennsylvania, in 1947.

From Pat's email:

"Here are a couple of photographs of US 269 which a friend and I built in high school from a Douglass and McLeod kit in 1947 in Erie, PA . The kit came with the centerboard case installed, so the difficult carpentry was done. We did all the rest . It was quite a surprise to the local small boat sailors to see the impressive performance of this boat. We sold the boat in 1952 and I don't know its fate.

By the way, the picture on Mar 2 of the interior is not a Douglass and McLeod model which was very similar to the Thistle, with a number of lateral slats forward near the mast step, and a number of lateral slats aft near the transom. There were two flotation tanks, one forward of the mast and the other just forward of the transom.

US312 was also in Erie PA in 1948 but we were never able to get a larger class going. We did race the boat at Put-in-Bay, OH a number of times."

Interesting about Pat's comments on the standard interior layout of the Douglass and McLeod One-Design. I do know that finishing off the shells, as Pat and his friend did, was a common way to get into the International 14 class in the 1940's and 1950's, and with all the amateur completions, there may be a wide variety of interiors. The interior layout I featured in a previous post as being of a One-Design was typical of the Uffa 14's being built in the late 1930's and was carried over to the early Fairey Marine 14's in the late 1940's. Come to think of it, the photo in that previous post may be a early Fairey Marine 14 and not a US One-Design. Oops! (After some thought, I've corrected that previous post.)

The two pictures, Pat sent along:

US One-Design Classic International 14 (Part 2)

Southern California becomes the center of the USOD class

Somewhere in the late 1940's the nexus of U.S One-Design International 14 fleet activity (the one-design now switched from the R.I.P. design to the Douglass and McLeod hot molded Uffa Fox Alarm hull shape) moved from the Rochester fleet to the Southern Californian fleet. And as one dynamic mover-and-shaker exited (the founder of the US International 14 class, George Ford of Rochester, retired from 14's and started another successful yachting career on the Great Lakes in a Sparkman and Stephens designed yawl), another one emerged, a Southern Californian, Dick Fenton, the Commodore of Balboa Yacht Club, Commodore of Southern California Yachting Association, and by 1948, president of the nascent U.S. International Fourteen Association.

Details of the rise of the Southern Californian USOD fleet are somewhat sketchy; it would be best to first go back and reread the excellent early Southern California history as put down by Peter Gales. It is at the 1948 "International Championship Regatta", hosted by George Ford and the Rochester Yacht Club, that the Southern Californians demonstrated how strong a one-design International 14 fleet they had organized in three short years. Six Californian 14 teams made the cross-country trip out east and they left with the majority of the prizes.

What do we know about the USOD from the  1948 "International Championship Regatta"?

1. A one-design rule had already been hammered out by 1948, as the regatta was split into two series; a three race series for the US One-Designs and a three race series for the "Open" International 14 (the Canadians were having none of this one-design; led by Charlie Bourke, they were happily developing new designs - also being hot molded). The USOD fleet met the requirements for the 'Open" rule (the English 14 development rule) and sailed  for the "Open" series trophies as well.
2. The one-design rule allowed lighter 14's than the open rule as some of the USOD's had to carry correctors to meet the 225 lb. hull weight minimum when racing in the "Open" rule.
3. In the light air to drifter series, the 1935 Alarm hull of the USOD would prove as fast as anything designed up to that point; five of the USOD's scoring better in the "Open" series than Charlie Bourke's 1944 'Conneda". (This was nothing out-of-the-ordinary as, much later, a re-rigged USOD would win a light air regatta in the 1970's against the latest Kirbys and Proctors.)
4. Obviously Douglass and McLeod was selling the USOD, either as a hull or a complete 14, to anyone who wanted to front the money. Since the USOD was the only 14 game in town for the United States in the late 1940's, the Douglass and McLeod USOD filtered into the East Coast - besides the fleet in Rochester there was a small fleet in Essex Ct -,  though the majority of boats were going west to the burgeoning fleet in Southern California. The East Coast, like the Canadians, would never buy into the one-design rule, but (and this is where the confusion comes from) the Douglass and McLeod Alarm hulls would always be referred to as the U.S. One Design (USOD), or One-Design for short, even though, on the East Coast, they would never be raced as a one-design.

Below is the somewhat famous photo of the kingpin of the early Southern Californian USOD fleet, Dick Fenton, in his Douglass and McLeod number 116 (note the caret symbol under the 14 insignia - designating this 14 as a one-design), sailing with a reef in the main.

(To be continued.)

U.S. One-Design Classic International 14 (Part 1)

U.S. One-Design International 14 - Pre-WW II and immediate Post-WW II

There is considerable confusion when I write about the U.S. One Design International 14 (this being the most common Classic International 14 hull being found for restoration). The International 14 has always been considered a development class. but there was a period before WW II, and the decade after WW II,  that major areas of U.S. 14 activity were sailing the 14's as a one-design, with their own rules. (As an aside, U.S. International 14 history is peppered with one-design classes that come directly from the International 14, such as the Jet 14, the Gannet dinghy and, more recently (1990's), another class called the One Design 14, based on the Jay Cross Mk 3 hull, built and marketed by Peter Johnstone.)

The history of the U.S. One-Design International 14 class starts pre WW II, in 1936, right at the beginning, when the founder of the U.S. International 14 class, George Ford, had local boatbuilders producing ribbed copies of the Uffa Fox "R.I.P" design in and around Rochester, New York. George Ford noted the success of American one-design classes of that period (the Snipe, Lightning, Comet, Star) and reasoned it would be better to get this new International 14 class, based on the English rules, off the ground in the U.S. as a one-design hull. George Ford's desire to mass produce a one-design 14 was immediately hamstrung by (in copying from Uffa Fox), the very complicated method of building these "R.I.P" hulls (double planked, about 80+ steamed ribs, thousands of copper rivets). George never quite solved the problem of meeting three criteria at the same time; how to build a "R.I.P." 14 down to weight, strong enough and, given the labor intensive construction, how to build them at a profit. It's hard to determine how many of these R.I.P copies were built (20, maybe 30). In 1938, the Rochester group ran into Sandy Douglass from Ohio at a Put-In-Bay regatta and shortly after that, Sandy Douglass started building ribbed 14's to a more modern and faster hull design than "R.I.P", that of Uffa Fox's later "Alarm" design ('R.I.P" being designed by Uffa in 1931, "Alarm" being designed in 1935). How many ribbed "Alarm's" Sandy Douglass built is unknown. (I've seen the total number of U.S. ribbed 14's built, both "R.I.P" and "Alarm" hulls pegged at 37, but this may be conjecture).

After WWII, around 1945, Sandy Douglass, now in partnership with Ray McLeod Sr, started producing both his famous Thistle sailing dinghy and the "Alarm" design International 14's using the hot molding ply veneer process developed during WW II. (The hull shells were molded by U.S. Molded Shapes in Grand Rapids Michigan - formerly U.S. Plywood - and then trucked back to Vermillion Ohio for completion.) Given the ability to mass produce hot molded ply hulls, the hull of choice for a One-Design International 14 now switched over to the Uffa Fox "Alarm" design. The Rochester fleet, already solidly pro one-design, was now to be joined by another fleet as one-design proponents; the new, upstart International 14 fleet in Southern California. (to be continued.)

Davidson Ski Company; More Information Needed

When I went digging into this North American International 14 history, I thought that only Douglass and McLeod built the hot-molded Uffa Alarm hull. I did have a couple of measurement certificates from the Seattle fleet that listed "Davidson" as a builder of the "One-Design" (Alarm shapes), but I assumed that this was probably a boat builder that was finishing off molded hulls supplied by Douglass and McLeod.

It appears that I have been wrong, as there was a Davidson Ski Company that morphed into the Davidson Manufacturing Company in Vancouver, British Columbia, and it appears they were hot-molding canoes, small sailboats and also, from my records, their own version of the Alarm International 14.

I haven't a confirmation of this, but everything points to this. I came across Phillip Merchant who posted this history on a wooden canoe forum:

"I have been doing some research on the Davidson company(s) and this is the first that I have heard of them building canoes. It does not surprise me however, as they seemed to have had many interests over the years. What I have so far is that Hamish Davidson was a cabinet maker and early on developed an interest in building skis. He built wooden skis (and I'm sure many other things) through the late 1920's and into the 1940's. There is a pair of wooden skis in a museum in Quebec circa 1940 built by him. There is also a reference to him building some of the first fiberglass skis. 

In the 1940's Davidson and Charles Hourston worked for Boeing together building the Mosquito bombers. In 1948 Davidson (with Charles Hourston) started building small boats of wood and later fiberglass. There seems to be several different companies under variations of the name Davidson."

Davidson had experience with the hot-molded wood manufacturing in building the Mosquito bombers, there exists hot molded 12 foot and 17 foot Davidson daysailors, and I have measurement certificates for Davidson built US One-Design (Alarm) International 14's - the only proper conclusion is that we have another builder of the US One-Design hot-molded hulls.

Internet research and inquiries on Davidson Manufacturing have not yielded anything in response. Hence, if you are reading this and have more information, leave a comment or track down my email address in my "About Me" section.

Pics of US 112

All pictures by Mark Woodard. Click in one of the pictures to start a slideshow.

US 112 in Mukilteo Washington

Mark Woodard writes;

I bought #112 a little over a year ago and set out to maker 'er sail again. The boat was largely complete, but was in pretty worn shape. It was a basket, a double-planked hull with "oiled silk (think umbrella) between the layers to give it an hint of being water tight. She was a basket. When I grabbed hold of the transom and gave it a jerk you could see the entire boat flex this way and that.

I soon realized that to "restore" the boat to using its original construction methods - 7,500+ copper clinched nails into 83 steam-bend ribs - could never be accomplished in my life time. So, I decided "rebuild" the boat using West System epoxy and turn it into a practical, sailable boat for 1-2 people. BLAPHOMEY (sp?)! When I first broached the approach on a wooden boat blog I thought they'd hunt me down and crucify me!

Please feel free to use my photos. I'd love to know who built my boat and when. I suspect that it might have been built by Sandy Douglass before the much more cost-effective hot-molding process came along, but I can't be sure. Two distinguishing features on my boat: The next to the closest plank next to the rail was (and is) a contrasting, darker color. Also, the sail insignia doesn't have a straight line under the 14, it's more of a mushed "caret" - a shallow "V". Any and all information on the origins of "Maureen" - my departed Grandmother - would be greatly appreciated.

My reply;

I looked in my archives. US119 was built in 1940 by Sandy Douglas and was listed as a Uffa One Design (this was the Alarm hull design that would become the basis of the Jet 14 class). I would think your hull is close in age to those dates.

The latest Woodenboat has a continuing series on Uffa Fox. I didn't realize that Sandy Douglass beat Uffa to hot moulding hulls. Sandy Douglass wrote an autobiography "Sixty years before the mast". I haven't read it but I did check Wikipedia which has Sandy getting into boatbuilding in 1938. Int 14 US 112 was built in the pre-war Uffa Fox method, diagonal planking sandwiching a waterproof fabric inner layer so if you have a Sandy Douglass boat, it was one of the early ones that Sandy built.

The assumption is that Sandy used Uffa's building methods until he was able to utilize the WWII developed hot moulding techniques. I think there are probably some people out there that know Sandy's history better than I. I wonder where Sandy's archival history went?