Topper design Date...

[JimC]

Calling old bookshelves... Those books listing dinghy classes... Who has books from the mid 70s. The Topper class claims on line it dates back to 1978, but Rupert remembers the first injection moulded Toppers as 1977 and we both reckon that glass ones, before the class was relaunched, were available at least 1975/6. Who can come up with the eralist year the Topper was listed?

[Bill-Conner]

You could just ask Topper John Caig will know.

[Southern377]

A R Burrett in "Dinghy Recognition" published 1974 lists the Topper as GRP construction.

Will check other books later....

Alan H

[PaulM]

I learnt to sail in 1972 and my first boat was a Sea Snark.......I used to go and press my nose against the window of the local chandlers which contained a GRP Topper for the price of £139 (funny how some things stick in your mind for ever!), so it was at least as far back as 1973.

Paul

[Nessa]

there's a grp topper on ebay at the moment. i had a topper with a four figure sail number in 1979, and it was pretty second hand.

wrong about ebay; it's a heavily disguised plastic one.

[Graham T]

I remember going on a school outing to the dinghy exhibition at Pickets Lock the year the plastic topper was launched. The week before it had been featured on Tomorrows World. If only I could remember how old I was then....

[jpa_wfsc]

The Topper was at Earls Court in GRP in 1973... and the engineers who were looking for a project to make a large injection-moulded object were there too. They had it seems already built the moulding machine, but had not pushed it to its limits of 5' by 13'.

http://www.clockwisedata.co.uk/topper/topper.htm

Download the pdf book, dates on Page 4. A fascinating read!

PS page 22 is clearly a GRP topper publicity shot.

[solentgal]

We moved back to Hants in May '73 and I'm sure it was the first summer we were back that there was an agent for the Topper operating from a boatyard at Prinstead in Chichester harbour. They were brand new out, all GRP and I'm sure that they were being demonstrated along with either the Aqua-cat or Top-cat Catamaran... always get those two mixed up...(whichever it was I think it had a bi-pod/lateen style rig?)
I believe it was the first 2000 or so Toppers that were GRP, and sail numbers were up to 11000+ by Earls Court boat show 1979 (I bought one new at that show) I remember watching Tomorrow's World too.....was very interesting to my Dad as he was involved in plastic moulding as part of his work.
Is that really number one on eBay?? More likely a Topper that has a sail with a "1" on it from a sailing school or club maybe?? Could the hull have a mould number rather than a hull number? My Javelin has a mould number (2) and so do many boats.