[Leica] Re; Boating PESO S-Class sailboats

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Richard,


Lovely pictures of a classic sailboat. Excellent old designs seem to hang on
forever. The S-Class and the Star sailboats are good examples. So too is the
Leica camera, Barnack or M.


http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/rtaylor/PICKS/2010_boating/300_8374.jpg.html


The S-Class sailboats were designed by Nathanial Herreshoff in 1919.
Herreshoff was the dean of American boat naval architects and designed and
built 5 America's Cup winners. The S-Class boat is a classic  "old
fashioned" racing sailboat characteristic of the early 1900s. It shares the
same relationship to modern racing boats as the Leica does to modern
cameras. Fast sailboats of that era were slim and had a relatively deep
draft. They were often referred to as "plank on edge" style boats. The
S-Class boat is smaller than it looks from Richard's pictures. It is 27.5
feet long with a beam of a bit more than 7 feet. If you had long arms, you
could reach from side to side. The mast curvature is not accident. It helps
the sail hold its shape better and increases sail efficiency. The last boat
was built in 1941 but the class proved so popular that 95% of the boats
built are still sailing. Here are the specs of the S-Class boats:


http://sailboatdata.com/VIEWRECORD.ASP?CLASS_ID=73


The S-Class was inspired by the Skerry Cruiser, another fast sailboat of
that era dating from 1907.


http://www.squareskerryyachts.net/30m/index.html


The Skerry Cruiser is a Swedish design incorporating every known trick for
making speed under sail. The Skerry Cruisers are absolutely beautiful boats
but they are so difficult to maintain that few are in use today. Hereshoff
was determined to develop a similar boat which could be raced and maintained
by ordinary club sailors. Judging by the popularity of the S-Class boats, he
succeeded.


Just for the record, modern club racing sailboats tend to have flat broad
hulls and fin keels, rather than narrow hulls and deep full keels. They tend
to be scaled up dinghies rather than smaller America's Cup racing boats.


There are two S-Class boats and one Skerry Cruiser in my sailing area. A 14
foot Force Five, a Hobie Cat,  or a Laser could easily beat them in a race
but that's sort of like saying that a hopped up motorcycle could outspeed a
classic Rolls Royce.




Larry Z