Sail Number of the Day

International Canoe Summer meeting 1948.
35 is Storm Petrel, the first of 3 Uffa Fox Canoes built that year - the first since the war. 35 was apparently the only one that could be persuaded to measure without measurement bumps! She won two races in the New York Canoe Club trophy that year. Storm Petrel was recorded still in existence in 1980, I have heard nothing later.


Bit out of sequence, but I forgot a couple of days ago. This is Wake, a very famous Canoe built in 1937, but fitted with the fully battened mainsail in 1946. This was the first modern style fully battened mainsail on a Canoe in the UK (and probably one of the first two or three full stop), inspired by Manfred Curry's books. Wake is believed to be in a Swedish Museum.

Photos and information from Andrew Eastwood's UK Canoe History "From the Rob Roy to the International Ten Square Metre Canoe".

Edited by JimC - 04 Feb 14 at 12:15am

Roger - I'll leave you to do Rannoch if I can do Terrapin tomorrow ;-)

As promised Terrapin - Merlin 36, another boat with history, as it was Ian Proctor's first Merlin and he was third at the very first Merlin Nationals, behind Jack Holt in Gently (see no 16). Ian obviously disliked the big wooden mast as he went on to experiment with alloy masts and start Proctor masts, now Selden.

A couple more early 50s Canoe shots, of 36, Mederka, again from Andrew Eastwood's book. Again I haven't seen any records of this one since 1980. Interesting that, even with an early cut and the wholly inadequate kickers of the early 50s, you can see how the lower leech stands up better on 31s fully battened sail than on the soft sails of the other boats.


Edited by JimC - 05 Feb 14 at 3:40pm