THE HULL
In the early 1970’s, Moore Sailboats was busy building 5o5’s in the run-up to the 1971 Santa Cruz Worlds. There was no paved SCYC dry storage, and the weight limit on the club hoist was 2,000 pounds. Both Phil Vandenberg and I had ordered new 5o5’s, and I spent a LOT of time at “The Reef”. (George Olson shaped our foils.) The Moores knew they needed a product with broader market appeal, and were entertaining the idea of a small keelboat. But, until the spring of 1971, the only action was a lot of head scratching and ideas coming in off the street. Until finally (I think it might have been John Moore) said, “What about that old Grendel plug out back?”
George Olson had designed Grendel for MORC racing around three things he already had: a Cal 20 rig (which he was familiar with from the turboed Cal 20 “Sopwith Camel”), a Newport 20 ballast keel, and a copy of Skeene’s Elements of Yacht Design. However, although Grendel was quite successful racing MORC on the Bay, George knew she was too narrow and tender. This became a central topic in discussions with Ron and John.
Thus “the day the plug was spread” came about. It was a weekend, and I remember it was hot. Very Hot. I was rigging my Proctor D mast on the bench along the wall. Grendel’s plug had been freed from the mass of weeds, vines, snail tracks and spider webs that covered it, lugged into the shop and chocked upright. A lot of beer was being consumed, but it didn’t take long, before the athwartships stations were cut and it was being spread. It was just built of lath with a thin skin but, even so, a certain amount of pressure, involving bottle jacks and shims was required. By this time the corrugated iron Reef was well over 100 degrees. Finally, Ron was squatting inside the plug measuring and gesturing, when George walked across to the scrap pile behind the wood stove near my mast, grabbed a 2 x, walked back and handed it to Ron. Then, after a bit more jacking and wedging, George cut a short chunk off with a saw, and they jammed it in place athwartships at the gun’l. George stepped back, and said, “That looks about right.” And, it was. Almost.
As the plug was spread, the sheer amidships was forced downwards, to the point that it’s curve became extreme and the hull depth too shallow. In spite of this, what would become Summertime’s hull was laid up over the rebraced and inverted plug. Then, once it was popped off, about 8” of freeboard was added and the sheer straightened. This was done by constructing a Masonite mold surface along the hull’s exterior at the sheer. The glass added between the original sheer of the modified plug, and Summertime’s actual sheer, is visible in the following photo. An idea of how much the sheer was modified can be had by observing the faint line that is the bottom edge of laminate overlap, through the hole in the aft cockpit bulkhead. The line forward of the bulkhead, if extended aft, originally curved up to the corner of the transom. It’s that line that shows how distorted the plug’s actual sheer was after spreading.
With her long cockpit, small bubble cabin, and cramped interior, Summertime pre dated modern “sport” boats by decades. By 1972, she was sailing off Santa Cruz with a masthead rig. It was soon obvious that she was fast. It was also obvious to the Moores that a boat with no interior had little market appeal, and that a real hull mold was needed. So, after her “sea trials” (where just about every sailor in Santa Cruz sailed her over the summer) she was brought back to the shop, the ballast removed, the stubby added (the keel was moved forward slightly to correct for lee helm) and a female mold constructed. To help accomplish this, Ron and John hired Bruce Clayton as their first employee. Dave Roberts and Dave Engels also contributed their labor in exchange for hull kits. Bruce worked under Ron’s tutelage and later went on to develop the “Un-30” (LOA 29’ 11 3/8”) based on scaling up Summertime’s lines plan which I had drawn for Ron. Bruce got the idea for the name from Seven-Up marketing itself as the “Uncola”. The hull later became the Wilderness 30 built by Gary Caballero’s “The Hull Works” with a different sheer and deck. As Summertime’s hull mold was being finished, Ron began thinking about the deck. Ron knew I did some drafting on the side, and asked me to make some sketches of different concepts. These ranged from Grendel’s original reverse sheer flush deck, to a Cal 20 style raised foredeck, to a Santana 22 style cabin. They were all very rough, because even at this point, there were no lines of the boat on paper. She had just sort of morphed into being.
So, by early 1973, there was a real need for a lines drawing of the new hull. As it happened, shortly after the ‘71 5o5 Worlds, my girlfriend Ruth (who would eventually become Karl Robock’s aunt), and I started racing my 5o5. We were too small for the boat, but we were competitive, and we really wanted a new jibing centerboard. So, we agreed to a “lines for centerboard” swap and spent spent many evenings sliding around the hull mold in our stocking feet with plumb bobs, levels, string, and a ridiculous amount of masking tape. Because Grendel’s plug had spread asymmetrically, we had a terrible time reconciling the port and starboard offsets, and finally just had to average some of the curves to make a few points reconcile, into a more or less idealized shape. I believe this lines-plan, drawn at 1” = 1’, in July, 1973, is the basis for most of the half models that have been made.
The lines plan produced an accurate sheer line which led to the current deck profile of the boat, which I drew. The profile is similar to Grendel’s, but not identical, since the sheer lines of the two boats’ actual hulls (where the rubbing strake usually is) are different. The rudder is quite different from today’s class standard. I can’t remember if that came from Summertime’s original rudder or not, but it is remarkably similar to the one currently on #2, in Hawaii, and to some of the Un-30’s.
THE RIG
George Olson did not design the Moore 24 rig. If anybody deserves credit, it’s Bill Lapworth, Jensen Marine’s designer of the Cal 2-24.
Summertime’s performance had attracted quite a bit of attention during her summer of sea trials. Several people were interested in purchasing a hull as a kit once they became available. Two of these were Dr. Robert (Bob) Wade and his son Rob. They were campaigning their family’s Cal 2-24 “Tootsie Roll” in MBYRA (Monterey Bay Yacht Racing Assoc.) and wanted a faster boat. By 1974, the first Moore 24 “kits” were appearing. I think #5, “Relma” was the first. These were all narrow cockpit boats that were rigged with recycled Proctor Tempest or Soling masts. One, #3, was “Quicksilver” owned by Andy Anderson. Andy and I were friends, and Ruth and I often sailed with him on the boat. Rob and Jack Halterman were often aboard as well. Rob and Jack had just won the National Intercollegiate Sloop Championship, sailing for UCSC in Shields sloops on the East Coast. They were very competitive.
By then, Rob had convinced his father that if you wanted to win races in a 24 foot boat the Moore 24, as it was starting to be called, was the way to go. But, what to use for a rig? At that point the Moores were not producing rigged boats. There was no class, so anything that would fit was eligible. Although Summertime sailed well with her masthead rig, the kit boats’ Proctor rigs were too flexible to support adequate rig tension. More importantly, Rob had a real affinity for the 15/16th rig on the Cal 2-24. It didn’t sacrifice too much spinnaker area, didn’t require jumpers or runners to get adequate headstay tension, yet still allowed some mains’l control. So, we borrowed Andy’s boat, stepped Tootsie Roll’s huge rig on her, and went Wednesday night sailing. This was not a setup that tolerated too many crew on the same side deck at the dock. But, in spite of being tender and overpowered, the boat proved remarkably fast. Wednesdays don’t feature long beats, and, feathering like crazy, we often rounded the weather mark with much bigger boats. I remember one race where we rounded overlapped with Xanthippe, the Simpkin’s Columbia 50, and left her behind on the run. Rob and Jack wanted to enter Quicksilver in that year’s Santa Barbara Race, but she didn’t go. Andy was on vacation and had left me responsible. I felt that, although the extra weight aloft of the 2-24 rig wasn’t much of a factor screwing around on Wednesdays, it would make the boat unseaworthy offshore. As it turned out, there was very little wind that year.
No matter. By this time it was pretty clear that the new boat would have a scaled down version of the 2-24’s 15/16th rig. More importantly, Rob’s dad, Bob, also liked that rig and he had the checkbook. I had the lines plan, my own copy of Skeenes, and knew how to make the necessary calculations. In consultation with the Moores, and Rob and Jack, I drew the sail plan for # 7, “Poltergeist”, as the new boat was to be called. Since the Wades could afford professionally made spars, they went straight to Niels Ericsson in Sausalito. I believe he built two rigs, one for Poltergeist and one for #6, “Ruby”, which was the first wide-cockpit, fully rigged Moore the shop turned out. She became the “shop boat” and the prototype for all the stock boats to follow. But, with North sails by Larry Herbig, Poltergeist was sailing earlier, because she had a race date to make.
EARLY RACES
The Wades’ goal all along was the 1975 Ano Nuevo Race, the opener in the MBYRA series. That race then started and finished in Monterey, encompassing a 40 mile beat and return. Poltergeist was finished in time, but barely. After a few shakedowns, Rob, Jack, and I sailed her across to Monterey on a Friday afternoon for the Saturday morning start. There had been a spring storm the week before and, as the front passed, a strong northwesterly filled behind. We did the 20 plus miles across to Monterey in two hours and change with a reef and # 3. We slept aboard Friday night in Monterey
marina, convinced by the boat’s motion and the roar of gusts through nearby rigs, that we were embarked on a fools’ errand. But, by the time Dr. Wade arrived the next morning with the victuals, the front was in Utah and wind had died to a whisper.
As one of smallest boats in the fleet, we knew the race was going to be a marathon, not a sprint. But the light air start favored us; on the long port tack back across to Santa Cruz, we paced a well sailed Cal 3-30 and Ranger 33. There were a lot of tacks between Santa Cruz and Ano Nuevo buoy, most of which I spent below, shifting sails and wedging myself up into the weather jump seat. Often overlooked today is the fact that, once a boat with lifelines is heeled, due to the hull’s tumblehome, a crew member perched in the weather jump-seat exerts virtually the same righting moment as one the rail.
We rounded Ano Nuevo buoy after dark in about 25 knots of cold northerly. Rob and Jack had helmed the whole way with Dr. Wade hunkered down in his gear on the rail. He was tough and quite fit for his age. He had boxed in college and, as a doctor, he knew the importance of pacing. This was good because, by the time we rounded, Rob and Jack both looked like they had just scaled K-2 during a solar flare. But, we had a fresh helmsman who was also an experienced 5o5 skipper, and a little red North star- cut, heavy air kite. We set. Control was fingertip. The speedo went to 10+ and never dropped below until Monterey’s lights were well within view. We passed more than a few of the bigger boats that had rounded ahead of us and easily won on corrected time. Poltergeist went on to win that year’s MBYRA season championship, and Santa Barbara Race. I was unable to make that race, but I was available for the next Ano Nuevo Race which she also won.
Her victory the second time around was largely due to an unforced navigational error on the part of her main competition. This was a new, very well set up Santa Cruz 27 named “Kurzwiele” owned by Randy Parker. This race was the design’s competitive debut and she was crewed to win. Shortly after the start, which was considerably windier than the previous year, we watched with dismay as she powered away upwind with six on the rail. We followed the same game plan as before, but by the time we rounded, they were long gone. We pretty much rhumb-lined it back to Monterey while they went offshore in search of more breeze. Way offshore.
The fog moved in. The breeze died away. We spent probably the last 2 hours slatting to finally finish around 2:30 AM. As we moped across the line, we were greeted with almost hysterical giddiness by Ruth, and Rob and Jack’s girlfriends, all three of whom were perched on the very end of Wharf No. 2. “Guess who won,” they shrieked. “Kurzwiele,” Rob replied. “No, YOU DID! She hasn’t finished yet!”
This was long before GPS. The RDF bearing from Ano Nuevo to Monterey virtually lines up with the axis of the Monterey Peninsula. But, when approaching from offshore, the signal travels over it. Kurzwiele followed that bearing in, and ended up off Carmel. Because of the fog, by the time she realized her error it was too late. While we were slatting, she was slowly beating back up around Point Pinos.
In the space of one year Poltergeist had won two Ano Nuevo races, MBYRA, and the Santa Barbara Race. Ruby may have preceded Poltergeist out of the mold, but it was the latter’s success that insured that she became the basis for the fleet that exists today.
Paul Tara, November, 2022