Boat relationships Chart v0.1

[Rupert]

Red and grey squirrels are indeed a case of convergent evolution, something seen in dinghy design rather a lot, too. Purple squirrels, I fear, are an evolutionary dead end. A bit like the Tonic, really!

[davidh]

Neil and Ed,

thanks for the heads up on the possible software options..... once I know the 'what' then I can start looking at the 'how'.

Actually, using the whiteboard has been a pretty good way of getting the ideas out of the head and in to another format. What I'm mindful off, is that though most of us on here know more or less what the story is, out in the big white grp world this is not the case. However interesting it might be to explore so of the more archane paths taken by designers in their search for both speed and commercial success, most people would quickly loose the will to live.

BUT all is not lost! How is this for an idea?

If (if ever there was a sentence started in hope, this is it!).... IF I can make this work and be intelligible on a wider basis, I think there is a chance that I could get it made into a folded up wall chart- the sort of thing that the mag could maybe give away to readers. If that were to happen, I see no reason why the chart couldn't include the cVRDA banner (plus website details) as one of the sources of information/detail on dinghy classes. Clearly one cannot have pictures of 300+ dinghies, not to mention 30 or so designers, (it would be more like wallpaper in that case) but some could have pictorial representation.

Better still, the wall chart could be released in conjunction with a multi-part series of articles! It could work.....but needs a lot more work first!!

By the way - the white board now runs from Thames A Raters and Punts, International 12s, but the real eye catching feature is just how central the development classes were. Not just the 14 - but the 12, then the Merlins....... these boats are right at the heart of the story.

Once I've got the detail clear.... I'll try the software packages you've mentioned.

cheers

D

[Ancient Geek]

But you can (Have pictures and designers - links to wdb sites video etc.) on a CD or DVD. Possibly cheaper to produce than a wall chart these days!

[JimC]

Not just the 14 - but the 12, then the Merlins....... these boats are right at the heart of the story.

I'd put it the other way round myself: for 90% of its history the 14 was largely irrelevant, having sent itself down blind alleys with poorly judged restrictions. The Merlin/12 hull design route, on the other hand, spun off a whole number of classes and its particular low wetted area/restricted water design route is highly significant in UK design.

[Michael Brigg]

I can't remember who said:-

It's all Greek to me.

But thinking back to those happy days in the Latin classroom, the bit I loved was the Greek mythology bit.

I have a book from back then with a comprehensive family tree of the various Gods, Demi-Gods, Protean creatures, Giants, Nymphs (I seem to remember someone looking for one of those on this site) and humans. It was a complex but nevertheless more or less comprehensible diagram and departing from my previous support for a diagram using a rather limiting Linnaean style of taxonomic classification I must say the Mythological family tree shows many parrallels to the process of boat design:-

There are many varieties of deity and creature.
All it seems are capable of immortality by on means or another.
Some are remarkably, even (in the case of Zeus) astonishingly prolific.
There appears to be no limit on the variety of cross breeding.
Incest is almost obligatory.
Age and generation does not appear to present a barrier to performance.
There are various strict rules which are constantly being broken.

And yet the whole thing stands up.

In the case of David's wall chart of course there is the added problem of weaving in all the others, Valhalla, Dreamtime, and "The Great Spirit" just for starters along with the less well known stuff like Beadle the Bard, Narnia, and The Black Rabbit, not to mention of course The Dark side!!)

[Ancient Geek]

Is Michael Brigg a Wykehemist I wonder? Certainly a rounded education anyway!

I would suggest however that the smaller rise of floor and smaller sail plans more emergency bouancy and decks is what led to the International 14 - Merlin Rocket / National twelve divide together with probably no less effect the social divide between 14's and the other classses not for nothing did the great Humphrey Shakewell call the home of the Hepplewhites (14's) Tatlers Hard!

[Michael Brigg]

AK said:-

Is Michael Brigg a Wykehemist I wonder?

Hmmm. William Wykehem, a man whose influence like Zeus was astonishing. Interestingly his "New" College Oxford (actually now one of the Oldest) has more architectural influences in its structure than any other college I can think of, and is also IMHO the most beautiful,especially the chapel reredos.


I think rather more of the Harry Potter films were shot in the cloisters there, than in the Christchuch (but that didn't stop Woolsey's "unfinished folly" from getting all the glory.

Sadly I didn't go to New College but I did manage to avoid Winchester.

Call me a Wykemist, and I'll call you Royal again!

[JimC]

I must say the Mythological family tree shows many parrallels to the process of boat design

It also occurred to me that the Family Trees constructed for Rock Bands by Peter Frame might be a potential model... I just knocked one up for the Cherubs to explore the idea. The Cherubs are probably particularly complicated because of the International dimension, and I've incluuded maybe one fifth of the deisgns I have recorded for the UK, and have very very scanty Aus and NZ data, but it stillillustrates the potential complexities... Linked, becauseits 1280 pixels wide...

http://www.devboats.co.uk/cherublineages.gif

[Ancient Geek]

Michael if you find it insulting I apolgise, after all, "Manners makyth man"!
So where did yoy get your all round education?
In the fens?

[Michael Brigg]

Wykehemist? Meh!

(A word newly arrived to the Oxford Dictionary and for an ancient institution such as Winchester, entirely appropriate.

William Sewell was founder of my alma mater which was far less ancient than Winchester although interestingly he was himself in fact a Wykemist.
(So you didn't quite "Shoot the Rabbit!")

Thereafter I sampled both The Perspiring Dreams and the Muddy Ditch in the fens.

"Manners Makyth Man" was William Wykeham's Motto, also the motto for Winchester and New College and Curiously also the motto of my Prep school,
of which Ed is also an alumni, so he should be equally familiar with it! Perhaps that is why you won't find him shouting "UP UP UP!"

Influence is a curious thing isn't it? You would never have thought a 14th century Bishop could act as a link between random members of a 21st century forum.

Davids chart will do well if it can get down to this level of granularity!

Here's that Mythical geneology; Sadly William Wykeham didn't get on it (Although his later "Pupil" William Sewell did publish a translation of "Aggamemnon")

[Ancient Geek]

V familiar with the motto, my Son is a Whykemist both school & New.
So you were at school with Clarkson or was he Repton?
My school motto -God Grant Grace- probably accounts for why as an agnostic I am graceless!

[davidh]

Jim C.

at last we come full circle - the Rock Family Tree was my starting point!!!

A great series.... very close to my heart being a 1960s/1970s rocker... music stopped for me at that point,

Just as well with my education being.... Butlocks (local School), Hamble (ditto) Southampton Technical College and only much much later - the OU.

No wonder I still have straw in my hair!

D

[Chris 249]

No red or grey squirrels down here, and ringtail and brushtail possoms don't interbreed AFAIK, and I'll leave the Greek to my father in law (one of the world's leading authorities on the popular and hotly-contested field of Homeric palimpests ) but I'll agree with Jim that on a worldwide basis the I-14 may have been through a long period of not being very influential.... it did play a part in the development of the Laser's shape, but 14ers may not be so keen on highlighting that!

I've had a go at a similar drawing, and also sketched up a state of the art
design (basically a Bieker 14) and noted where its features (from the assy
to the U sections) came from. It's an interesting exercise.

I'd argue you can also break down the classes even earlier. In the 1800s
there seem to have been several worldwide streams, which later diverged.
These are (arguably) the Canoes sailed by adventurous eccentrics; the working boats with big rigs and sailed by "watermen" of various breeds; a loose
bunch of those created from or inspired by yacht tenders and restricted-
sail working boats sailed by gentlemen; and the Raters sailed by more affluent gentlemen. In the early days, there seems to have
been a surprising amount of geographic spread in these types;
Sandbaggers influenced 18s among the working boats, Canoes were
sailed around the world, etc.

Later, these broad groupings either became isolated streams (the
Canoes), largely died out (ie the Working Boats are tiny in numbers
[Bermuda Dinghy] or dead [Sandbaggers] apart from the 18s and 12s
which aren't huge); the yacht tenders and restricted-sail working boats
grew into northern hemisphere 14s, Int 12s/12 Voetsjollen, US Moths,
perhaps Aussie 16s (although they had a different socio-economic catchment), etc.

The Raters came from the various SA x L rules about 1890. The yacht
designers used the obvious way to cheat that rule
and created what I'd call the Raters (Thames Rater style boats) which
quickly became the Patiki and US/Canadian Scow streams and appears to
have influenced the European boats. The US Scows then inspired the
Aussie Moth, influenced the US Moth, and produced the Topper, Fireball,
etc.

The European style that seems to have grown out of the Raters then had
surprisingly little direct influence in the UK and USA for years (despite the
fact that the Euro boats were so fast and advanced). The Euro style did
spread to Oz in the form of the Sharpie, which in its Lightweight form
was the main influence for Taipan along with the FD. I'd also submit that
the stable but fast FD, when it came along later, may have spread the
planing boat-with-trap gospel better than the tippier 505 etc. And of
course the cross-breeding of European and UK design created the
enormously important 505, 470 and 420.

Another branch (conscious of the need to try to avoid creating a jungle!)
could be the popular planked hard chine home builds. They seem to have
been a major factor in the US (Snipe, Comet), Europe (Piraat, 12m
Sharpie), Australia (the Moth, the 12 sq M Sharpie from Germany, the Vee
Jay, which came from the Snipe, and local classes) and NZ (P Class,
Zeddie, Idle Along). It's easy to argue that without these classes, dinghy
sailing would not have reached critical mass in their countries. They also
seem to have been the model for the later boom-time classes that
arrived with plywood.

These classes seem to have had little influence from outside of their own
countries, and they seem to have passed on very little direct influence on
design (although probably a lot of influence on tactics and handling).
However, while we may be interested in design development, you could
easily argue that the developments of this stream (Solo, Mirror, Lightning,
Sabre (Oz), Frostply (NZ), Vaurien (Fr) Opti, OK, Cadet, Sabot (Oz/US), GP,
Ent, etc are at least as important to sailing as are all the 9ers in the world.

While these early hard chine boats normally seem to have been local
designs that only lead to more ODs, in Oz the situation was different.
Initially Oz was arguably more likely to imitate or adopt overseas classes
or concepts. For various reasons, these adopted classes and ideas were
then developed further in Oz (mainly
by adding more leverage and by switching the same hull shapes to much
lighter ply construction when the technology arrived post WW2) and then
were enormously influential in changing the Skiffs from heavy and rather
slow planked boats into lightweight performance craft. In every one of the
Skiff classes, the initial shift towards light chine boats came when the
heavy planked Skiffs got a beating from dinghies or Skiffs built for
dinghy sailors along dinghy lines.

I'd be in two minds about the Skiff stream. On one hand, you could
separate 12s and 14s (because they had little shared development and
few shared spin-offs IIRC); on the other hand you've got to try to keep
things vaguely simple.

Of course, these days the skiff design lead is pretty much held by the USA and UK.

On a minor detail; the MG 14 came from the Aussie 14s and therefore
were a separate stream from the NS initially. Odd, considering the
closeness of the two classes in so many ways.

The Rs were (and maybe are) the most advanced dinghy in the world but have had amazingly little influence, so maybe they could be some tiny little vortex.....

Oh, and the very popular Thistle came from the 14 stream.