Flying Moth

From “Designs by Mike Waters”

Flying Moth, International Moth boat, Mk l, ll, lll (1953-7)
In ‟53, I designed my first single hander .. a boat for the 11ft International Moth class and the Mark 1 Flying Moth plans were first sold to a fellow in Cowes, Isle of Wight for £2, where it was built for a young son. The unique feature was that it had extended gunwales, an idea I took from John Westell, after seeing his moulded Coronet design competing in the now famous ‟53 Coronation Race around the Isle of Wight ..,. that I was also proud to sail in. (At the request of the French, the Coronet was later shortened to become the 5-0-5). My Flying Moth was not moulded though, but of plywood, still using Aerolite 300 glue. The extensions were about 5” so gave a relatively narrow waterline beam After sailing the prototype, I raised the freeboard 1” and lowered the weight after finding that with such a small size of boat, structural parts get very close to each other resulting in the boat becoming heavy. This Mark ll still weighed about 100 lbs, the average Moth weight for that time period, but I was learning. With the Mark ll, I was able to interest a couple of old schoolmates (Doug Henderson and Chris Barlow) and we started a company called Single Handed Products to build these …exhibiting at the London International Boat Show (Earls Court) in 1955 where orders for 12 were taken. We set up a building site under the crude cover of medieval 13th century rafters in the ruins of Netley Abbey .., now a protected historical site. [Google: “Netley Abbey UK” if interested] I developed a special building system to incorporate the side buoyancy tanks early on with perfect end joints. Including some amateur builds, 28 were built in all (about 15 by Doug & Chris) and in the early 60‟s, one took 4th overall in the European Moth Championship, with the skip saying,‟it was a windy series but she was the fastest boat upwind, though now too heavy to match the newer, lighter boats off wind. Sadly, all the races finished downwind‟. My part of the business was „Design, sales and publicity‟, so to help the business, I campaigned my own FM#6 called Flying Enterprise, taking a 4th and 2nd at the International Moth Championship with 70+ boats on the Welsh Harp, London in 1957, and you can even get a glimpse of my close finish behind champion Ted Hicks at 1.07 in this 80 second clip of film history recorded by Pathe News, after they were assigned to film „Around Britain Events‟ when their stalwart WWll work ended. [Google: YouTube “Capsize-not likely!”] or go here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-zVxEBgfRQ About 6 years later I built a Mark lll (Crew Cut), with a Finn-like unstayed rig ..,and she weighed less, but by then, I was in Canada and away from the competitive UK Moth fleets. This one also had an experimental „variable attack centerboard‟ that went into my Record Book as Entry #023 dated 1962.