Supernova 30

Hi

Just to add to Nigels comments (Hi Nigel) I believe there were 4 boats built from the Supernova tooling, 'Supernova' herself being the first with a distinctive heavily cambered deck rather than a coachroof . She was followed by 'Casanova' which had a conventional moulded coachroof and iirc a masthead rig (she was at Poole YC a few years back, white hull/yellow stripe). Then came the best known 'Smiffy' which was 3/4 rig and had a revised stern for the '78 Half Ton Cup in Poole, and finally 'Demolition' in 1981 when the HTC was again in Poole, she lost the distinctive stem profile of the earlier boats.

HTH 

Cheers Garth

Had a look at the pictures of her & she's looking very good- would be tempted if I didn't have other commitments! Smiffy was also looking very tidy when I saw her last weekend at Levington marina. (Though both would look better in their original colours/stripes!)

On the subject of one-off Stephen Jones half-tonners,does anyone know the whereabouts of either 'The Goodies' (1978?) or 'Boadicea' (1979).

Building a new 1/4 tonner would be much easier but completely defeats the point of the class, and no, you couldnt race it with us as a 1/4 tonner.  Some boats have been spending £50k and more on optimisation, and when I say optimisation this is serious stuff!  Anchor challenge added more freeboard so the hull is far from standard but still rates as 1/4 ton because the hull is the same one as used before, a lot of boats now have new decks which is slightly more risky when it comes to the spirit of the rule!

check out www.runawaybus.co.uk for up to date progress of one of the nicest boats in the fleet in terms of finish, though they have had trouble downwind with the massive rig that they have stuck in it! Gave us some trouble in cowes week last year when they broached in front of us and we put a nice hole in them luckily just above the waterline!

For us we have just made the boat a bit more open plan down below and removed a lot of the teak veneer that was in the boat, removed the inboard engine, moved the forestay to the bow but kept the same mast.  This year we have a new boom and are onto our second carbon pole after breaking the last one, this time it is slightly longer.  Moved up to a 38m kite from the original with the boat which was about 30m, for the 1/4 ton cup we will not be using a genoa, we have rated for a battened jib which is 2m smaller than the genoa was with less overlap because the forestay has moved forwards.  The boat also had a new rudder in 2007 because the old one was rotten and not the most efficient shape!

Not sure how much we have spent but because we havent focused on cosmetics yet and have done most of the work ourselves apart from the rudder, moving the forestay and removing the engine the cost has been kept down (ish)

We also don't dry sail the boat, it is kept in the water but before events we come out for a few days and sand and paint the bottom, just means the boat is there for sailing whenever, costs less to keep, and still goes as fast in the big events.

Most of the fun of the 1/4 ton class is in the work on the boat and the parties, the racing is good but obviously not quite as close as one design racing.

link to felixstowe sail east results for 1/2 ton class

http://www.felixstoweregatta.co.uk/pages/results/HalfTonner_ HalfTonnerSeries.htm