skandinavian cruisers

[martin schulz]

2 weeks ago I went down south to Bavaria for a meeting with 1. my client 2. our Expo-professional. After very hard and tirering 4 hours we (my client and I) decided that the Expo-guy should take us out on the Lake, because I knew he had bought himself a "Schärenkreuzer" (a typical crusing type of boat used in Shkandinavia mainly between all those Bays they have).
A great day we had - esspecially because we beat all those plastic-boats easily - and we only had 2-3 Bft. But those boats with their long overhang fore and aft and that big fore-sail we didn't have any problems to make 4kn.
Do you guys have that kind of boats over there too? I mean - they are not for going out in bad weather, but for sailing/cruising on Lakes they are great.

[martin schulz]

I found another picture, which shows the characteristical sails and the long overhangs:

[Wild Wassa]

Hi Martin, I do like the look of the racing boats in the photograph directly above. Could you please direct me to the site where you found the photograph, if it wasn't the only photograph of it's type found on the site.

I have been thinking about doing a large painting on canvas, this is the feel that I'm after. I need a bit more to look at, though.

All the best. I think that the boats that you select for posting are very interesting, even Alinghi.

Warren.

ps, The tonalities of the sails I find very pleasing.

[ 11-06-2002, 02:09 PM: Message edited by: Wild Wassa ]

[martin schulz]

...no sweat, this is the site:
International 30 square meter class

(click 1st on "Fotos" and then on "Bild für Bild")

But if you are looking for that certain feel on the picture, I have some of the RumRegatta 5 years ago, where there was hardly any wind and all those big working boats were creeping around the buoy.

[Wild Wassa]

Thankyou for your trouble Sir.

Don't hesitate to post your shots. I certainly would like to see them.

Warren.

ps, I'm back, fotos. A good way to spell photos.

[ 11-06-2002, 02:16 PM: Message edited by: Wild Wassa ]

[ahp]

The Square Meter classes were never very big on this side of the pond. The Museum of Yachting, in Newport, Rhode Island has two. One was designed by LFH for "Sis" Hovey. She took it to Europe in the 1930's and competed very well with it. That is recounted in an article in WB. I have sailed this boat.

The other one was designed and built by Knud Reimers. It was being restored and will be sold when complete.

[martin schulz]

Originally posted by ahp:
I have sailed this boat.

That is all? No, not satisfying! You have to give me more!

That was the first time I sailed one of those and it was amazing how she just took off. In squalls she would gently lean a bit on the side and then immediately gather speed.

[Thad]

The type we might call a knockabout -- sloop rig small cabin. There was a significant fleet of 30s here in Marblehead until the 1950s, when the boats mostly were sold to the Great Lakes. I know a few people who sailed them here. Your description of the sailing quality is perfect, and characteristic of light easily driven keel ballasted hulls with generous sail area. The square meter classes typically have tall rigs and a hooked mast for a high aspect heeling the hull to it's point of stiffness as the wind pressure is transformed into forward motion. Fun.

[Norske3]

MARTIN...Hull without the cabin reminds me of the Dracken Klasse....http://www.gerdragon.de

[Phil Young]

I had a Tumlare designed by Knnud Riemers for a few years. Similar style, but canoe stern. Just beautiful to sail, perfect balance, lovely response to the breeze and the helm, just a very very nice boat. Designed for for sheltered water, half cabin, open cockpit, low freeboard. 27'L X6'B X3'6"D. But also incredibly seaworthy, I found myself out in a full gale in the southern ocean one time, nothing between me and antarctica. 60knt wind, 12metre waves. I'm here to tell the story.

[martin schulz]

Originally posted by Phil Young:
I'm here to tell the story.

So, what's stopping you?

[Norske3]

PHIL HOW COULD YOU PART WITH A TUMLARE!...THEY ARE SO RARE... [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ACB]

Yes, Martin. We have a few. Uffa Fox tried very hard to popularise the "skerry cruiser" classes, espescially the 22sq metre and 30 square metre sizes, in the 1930's. His timing was not so good, really. After WW2 Colonel HG Hasler took a 30 square metre named "Tre Sang" and went offshore racing in her - and won the annual points trophy!

Of course, today the rules would prohibit such a craft - open cockpit, no lifelines or liferaft...

Also, after WW2 all the German yachts of this type were seized by British forces and taken to Britain - these were often 55 sq metre boats - where they were called "Windfalls"!

Today there are a few square metre boats, kept by very enthusiastic owners, but they are "high maintenance" boats in our conditions - the stresses of sailing in coastal waters shake them up, and they need frequent repairs done by the few, very good, very expensive, yards who understand them. But we do have some.

[martin schulz]

Of course. A friend of mine sailed the YLVA on last years Americas Cup Jubilee in the Solent.



The funny thing he told me was that he usually didn't have even a slight chance to win against all those faster, better equiped boats with professional crew. Except that one day with lots of waves, 7-8Bft and squalls. all those fine, slender fast boats with huge overhangs couldn't master the conditions, always hammering in the waves. he said all he had to do is count the booms and masts flating in the water to know that he had advanced a little in ranking.

So I bet a 30sqm isn't the right boat to go sailing in the solent in bad weather.

[Phil Young]

Norske, all I can say is I still miss her, but she went to a good home. I was young and poor at the time having trouble affording the mooring costs, and she had some bugs eating her stern post, not deadly, but needed fixing, which was beyond my ability or means at the time. Plus my wife was about to have our first child, and the tum doesn't have a lot of friendly space for babies. We now have 4 boys, and the tum doesn't have a lot of space, period. So I think selling was the right choice, but it was like saying goodbye to a lover. Huon pine hull, splined. White beech laid deck. Spruce mast. Steamed, laminated ribs/frames, no cracks and no sisters. (no iron frames which many of them had in europe I think)Lovely sweet sheer. She was a nice boat. Name was Zonja. Sail No 92.

[Hans Friedel]

Hi Martin

The boat on the pictures does not look like a Squaremeter it looks more like a Mälar 30. There are a lot of diffrent boat types in Scandinavia that looks like Squaremeters.

The Squaremeters were basicly racers specially the SK 22

One famus Squaremeter was the Singoalla she was a SK 150. But she was very poorly built and she was to weak.

http://sys.websajt.nu/sysjakt/jakten...202%201999.pdf

Start from page 8

But for some reason the sweds manage to sell her to Germany. But she was destroyed by a mysterius yard fire 1923

[Phil Young]

martin, the point was not really to tell the story, but to highlight the fact that I am still here to tell it, when by rights I shouldn't be. For anyone not familiar with the Tumlare, they are not dissimilar to a dragon, etchell, or soling. Not really an ocean going yacht.

The story is pretty much as follows.

It was about 14 years ago I suppose. I was a law student, and as part of the course had to do a 2 week placement with a law firm. I thought to make the best of it I'd get a placement with a firm in Port Lincoln, a nice coastal fishing town West of Adelaide in South Australia where I live. Now Adelaide is on the Eastern side of St Vincent's Gulf, and Port Lincoln is on the Western side of Spencer Gulf. Yorke Peninsula runs down between the Gulfs. Adelaide to Port Lincoln by car is 5 or 6 hundred miles. By sea its about 150.

So I thought I'd sail round with a couple of mates, a bit of an adventure, a good overnight voyage. My girlfriend agreed to drive around, and we'd have a bit of a holiday over there.

One of the guys was going to borrow a VHF radio, but that fell through at the last minute. We had no yachty instruments, like a speed log. No GPS. No EPIRB. No liferaft. (Although we did have a blow up dinghy) None of us had any offshore experience, I had done a fair bit of coastal sailing. None of us had any navigation training, but I could take a bearing and plot it on a chart.

OK, we were Young and Stupid.

It was in August, which in Adelaide is late winter, early spring. The weather generally consists of a series of Low pressure systems racing around Antarctica, each with a cold front of more or less severity. The wind direction moves around anticlockwise as the lows pass through.

St Vincents Gulf is about 35 miles wide, and Adelaide is about 40 miles up its eastern side. The mouth of the Gulf is mostly sheltered by Kangaroo Island, although the Island creates some strong currents in Investigator Straight and Backstairs Passage as the tide flows in and out. The headland of Yorke Peninsula runs across between the Gulfs, and I suppose is 50 or so miles at its base. Spencer Gulf is a bit bigger than St Vincents, maybe 70 or 80 miles across. There are a few islands around the western end of the headland of Yorke Peninsula, and some Islands and reefs dotted around the middle of Spencer Gulf. Port Lincoln is 20 or so miles up Spencer Gulf, on its Western side. Go further West and you are into the Great Australian Bight. Go South and you won't hit anything until Antarctica. They make some big weather down there.

The plan was to sail straight round in one hit. Leave Adelaide in the morning, get into Lincoln late the next day. Hopefully all between cold fronts, and ideally with the wind from the North East behind us down St Vincents Gulf, on the starboard beam across the headland, and then a tack onto Port as we head up Spencer Gulf, as the breeze swings around to a southwesterly before the next front comes through.

The first part of the plan went well, although we were a bit slower than I'd hoped. We had a nice sail down St Vincents Gulf, and across the bottom of the Peninsula. It was late afternoon on the second day when we were rounding up into Spencer Gulf that it got ugly.

What happened was that a cold front appeared, pretty much as expected. It came with a big bank of very dark cloud. Night seemed to be coming early. I thought there might be a bit of wind with the front, so we changed down to the smaller of the 2 jibs, and put a reef in the main.

Then WHAM!! It hit us. I'd never seen anything like it. A wall of water, wind and noise hit us like a steam train. The wind swung about 90 degrees, and was immediately up around 50 to 60 knots I'd guess. We dropped the main immediately, like in 2 seconds flat, then I tied myself on and scrabbled forward to lower the jib. That sail flogged itself to shreds on the way down.

Before it hit we were in sight of Wedge Island, maybe 15nm to the NW. The East side of Spencer Gulf was around 10nm East of us. The wind was roughly from the SW. Visiblilty was effectively nil, maybe 20 metres or so.

I was worried about sea room, islands and reefs, and not too sure what direction we were heading in. We had no drogue, so I streamed the anchor and all its chain and warp from the bow, hoping it might turn us head to wind. Hoping also that if we approached land it might snag on something.

The waves quickly built up, to 8m metres, 10, 12. Big breaking seas, towering over us. Magically we just rose up over them, and down the other side, with hardly any breaking into the open cockpit. The anchor failed to keep us head to wind. We sat with our port quarter to the wind, the open cockpit and open half cabin facing the oncoming weather and seas. The anchor streamed aft at about 20 degrees to horizontal.

I figured we were being blown NE by the wind, but due to the attitude of the boat to the weather, making a fair bit of headway to the North. I hoped we'd pass West of Wedge Island, but not drift down onto the Eastern side of Spencer Gulf.

It was dark by now, I don't know what time. I huddled down in the cockpit, occasionally pumping out the accumulated spray and the odd wave top. The crew were in the cabin, frightened half to death. They'd pumped up the little blow up toy dinghy, for all the good that might do. They wanted to let off some flares, but I eventually convinced them there would no-one around to see them. One of the guys lost control of his bladder, it was that kind of scary. I spent some time contemplating death, and thought it would be a pity to die without having really told my girlfriend how important she was to me.

We were generally heeled over at 45 degrees or so, wind shrieking around us. The Aussie flag sounded like a machine gun flapping off the staff on the rudder head. Everything on board was soaked.

This went on all night, and all the next day. The next night the wind probably dropped to 40 knts or so, and by the following morning was down to a steady 30 to 35. We were then able to hoist the main. It was too windy for the number 1 jib, and the number 2 was dead. We hadn't hit anything, but I reckoned we'd gone a fair way North. So we headed East, on the basis that we'd eventually find the Western shores of Spencer Gulf, work out where we are, and make for a port. Early in the afternoon we spotted land, and ultimately made it out to be the northernmost of the Joseph Banks Group of islands. We adjusted our course a bit to the South, close hauled under just a reefed main, with a still nasty sea coming at us. We eventually got into Port Lincoln, at about 2300 that night. We were tired and hungry, dehydrated and probably a bit hypothermic.

The crew went ashore to find a bed for the night. I called my girlfriend to tell her we'd arrived, washed myself under a cold tap on the town wharf, and bedded down on the boat under a wet sail.

Port Lincoln is a fishing town, its people well used to fishing the Southern Ocean. They could not believe it when I turned up alive in my little boat out of that storm. Two of the local fisherman were lost while we were out there.

Felicity drove over, as we'd agreed. I asked her to marry me, and she accepted. We are still very happily married and now have 4 fantastic little boys.

My crew didn't wish to sail home, so another friend flew over to sail home with me. We had a superb trip, this time we did manage to squeeze in between cold fronts and gales. We had a school of 50 or so porpoises playing around us at one point during the night, trailing wonderful showers of glowing phosphorescence behind them. We has a great foaming spinnaker run across the bottom of the Peninsula, spray flying up past the shrouds on both sides. At one point the little one cylinder inboard actually kick started itself due to the water turning the prop.

We got home to Adelaide just as another front came through with some winds at around 40 kts, but we were just able to tuck into the yacht club before the sea got up at all.

And that’s about it.

[John B]

Thanks Phil. scary stuff eh.

[Hans Friedel]

Here is Tumlare S-52

[Phil Young]

Hey Hans, not fair. Now I'm going to cry.

[Meerkat]

Martin; That picture you posted is beauty: it epitomizes what sailing is all about to me - there are no words.

[ 11-15-2002, 03:34 AM: Message edited by: Meerkat ]

[martin schulz]

Originally posted by Hans Friedel:
The boat on the pictures does not look like a Squaremeter it looks more like a Mälar 30. There are a lot of diffrent boat types in Scandinavia that looks like Squaremeters.

Sorry Hans (funny to write someone with that typical german name in english) if that was confusing. I know that the YLVA is not a squaremeter-class, I just wanted to make a reply to what Andrew wrote. He said, that sailing a sm-class boat is not so popular at the english coast due to its rough weather, and I came up with the story of the YLVA, who did exceptionally well once the weather got bad during the Americas Cup Jubilee - BECAUSE of the different kind of construction -therefore confirming Andrews point.

The YLVA was built 1933 at "Neglinge-Varvet". The design is by Knut Ljungberg who designed this Cutter-Yacht as Cruiser influenced of course by typical english designs.


Mange hilsmer fra Martin

[Hans Friedel]

Hi Martin

Well actually I ment the boat on the first pickture.

Knut Ljungberg is mostly known for his motor yachts. Here is a list with his designs

http://w1.131.telia.com/~u13120623/docs/ljungberg.html

The Neglinge Varvet was own by the Plyms a famous design and boatbuilding family.

And yes I am half German

Hälsningar Hans