Condiciones del entorno

DIGBY TAYLOR was a New Zealand household name aftetr his Whitbread Round the World efforts in the Davidson designed Outward Bound and Farr NZI Enterprise. Outward Bound was winner of the small boat division but NZI Enterprise lost its mast, forcing a retirement after the third leg. Ambiance aboard was not good and after that debacle Taylor withdrew from sailing and media attention to concentrate on his computer design business. As an academic exercise in late 1986 he tried his hand at computer yacht design. Few, if any, had entered this field in New Zealand at that time and Taylor eagerly showed his results of a 16 metre (52.5 feet), narrow, Melbourne/Osaka racing monohull to Davidson – who saw mistakes and suggested improvements. This resulted in immediate performance jumps in printout figures and the final design was computer drawn in two days in early December – with building beginning soon after.

“I would give up sailing rather than sail another Farr design; NZI cost us heaps – we went to get a professional approach, wanted detail which is worth having but ended up doing it ourselves – we got promises rather than performance ………. But we’d done a deal price and I guess we got what we paid for. This time I went to Laurie with some sail area to displacement numbers and made a drawing with him; this I showed to people and potential sponsors but got not much reaction. I was very interested in computer yacht design, (which was radical and modern thinking then - but of course not now) bought Autoyacht software and although I still had no sponsor, took Laurie’s numbers, put them on computer and weather analysis of the Melbourne/Osaka course and worked with Bill Webb on a velocity prediction program. We came up with a narrower beam and a different sail area; I found an enthusiastic sponsor and told Laurie that the design was partly his, partly mine but that I was not confident and lacked design experience, couldn’t afford to pay him but could he help me with the design, you just give me instructions sort of thing. I didn’t know proportions but he had his own numbers of course; he fiddled the lines to fit his numbers (it was better to do this than rely on velocity predictions) and he was always right – he was better than the computer. Anyone who asked me questions after that, I referred them to Laurie. The final boat was totally different to Davidson’s Jumpin’ Jack Flash but station 3 was similar. The result was an unreal yacht which had spare performance.”

However it was a last minute effort to make the Melbourne/Osaka start on March 21. Many observers felt Taylor was courting fate. Even so the hull, foils and rig were

finished in less than ten weeks and the yacht, named Castaway Fiji, was launched in early March – allowing only two weeks to get to Melbourne. The design was long on the waterline with a narrow overall beam of 3.8 metres, carried a deep bulb keel with a draft of 2.9 metres and was ultra-light displacement – very similar to an

enlargered version of Peter Nelson’s Vim – although Davidson likened it to a round bilge version of Spencer’s Infidel/Ragtime with the Spencer chine replaced by a hard turning bilge like a BOC yacht. But because of the Melbourne/Osaka Rule and unlike the BOC designs, Castaway Fiji had no water ballast and so lacked that extra sail carrying power of the round the world singlehanders. However with its masthead rig, sail area was enough to

above and opposite: Taylor/Davidson Melbourne/Osaka lightweight Castaway Fiji

give the yacht a high sail area to displacement ratio of 27 (most yachts of that period had a figure around 20) –

and from computer prediction figures, would be as fast as Outward Bound to weatherf and faster than maxi NZI downwind.

“With a new boat as radical as Castaway Fiji, there is concern that there may be a structural problem or defect. But after the rough Tassman crossing we had begun to develop confidence with our boat. We decided to go two hours on two hours off. Sailing alone at these speeds in the middle of the night on a 16 metre

lightweight was a wonderful experience. I couldn’t let go of the helm, my tiredness forgotten and Colin got four hours extra rest before I shouted to him for breakfast. Later in the day the wind strengthened to 35 knots;

Castaway Fiji surfed along doing what she was built for but two or three hours after dark the small moon was obscured by cloud and the complexion of the sailing changed. It was time to drop the spinnaker – we did not want to lose the rig in a wild broach at more than 20 knots. The speedometer had been pegged at its maximum

for stretches of 15 minutes at a time. In the dark we did a good takedown in 25 knots of wind and I heaved a sigh of relief.”

That was the last sight Taylor saw of his crew because later Castaway Fiji flipped in the dark after colliding with something and ripping off the keel’ Taylor, asleep, was thrown forward from his bunk, struggled out the hatch and then clung to the yacht’s transom until rescue came. In Auckland accusations flew: the keel bolts had been incorrectly sized, or incorrectly fitted and Taylor had been suicidal in rushing the launching of Castaway Fiji. However there was no evidence, save for distant Orion photographs taken of the inverted hull and protruding keel bolts to base claims. Inadequate boat preparation may have been the reason for the loss of crew and boat but in apportioning blame people forgot that the examining bodies of human endeavour are not armchair rules but the elements, which find feeble humans no contest.

Yacht surveyor and designer Ray Beale pointed out his views: “The extreme keels with their mean little flanges – such as Taylor’s boat, numbers of Elliott’s and also Gray Dixon’s keel on Alan Mummery’s Ice Fire, can’t be engineered to stay on boats. More will fall off. Lead to steel doesn’t work and I’ve seen Ice Fire, Ross’s Blast Furnace and numbers of Elliotts regularly up on the hard, their keels working. And yet the original steel cased keels done by Spencer and Stewart 30 years ago, some of which have had shocking groundings, are still on the boats. Also these thin fore and aft keels are not good in a hard breeze; I’ve seen Elliott’s Sneaky Frog, Excess and the E9 get bowled over in a wind – they can’t get enough way on and have too much above water windage so they go over – you pays your price. Of the extreme boats the ones I’m most impressed with are Jim Young’s Rocket 40 over in Sydney, quicker than a maxi downwind and easily the fastest 40 footer around – and Murray Ross’s M1; that boat is miles faster than Elliott’s Party Pro and even beats Woodroffe’s big Davidson.

Although of short life Castaway Fiji made a performance impression but the yacht will be remembered more for its infamy than its speed – however Castaway Fiji was one of the earliest of the short handed

lightweights to appear in this country – and that makes it an important milestone. Although ending in tragedy, one has to admire the vision and determination of Taylor to push to the boundary edge – this pioneering attitude is where real progress, even with mistakes, is made.