Ian Bruce

The wider market is rotomoulds currently, which can be seen as uninspired, and are certainly seen as being designed by the brand, not by the individual. Was good to see Dan H and Glen Truswell having their names on the blurb for the Hartley 15.

Iiiiiiitick, it was Paul Handley.

The curious thing is, the if you really think about it, the job of designing a rotomould mass market boat is potentially considerably more difficult than designing a championship winning Merlin Rocket.

With the latter all you need to do is tweak a few well established variables within a stagnated design space, give a competent builder an unlimited materials budget, and pay a rock star crew to sail it.

With the former you have to engineer a boat that will be structurally sound with some not very co-operative materials, work out an internal layout that will deal with the structural problems and be congenial for the crew, then alter all this to be able to be built with minimal expense, make sure the boat is interesting to sail yet viceless, make it visually appealling, aand consider all the other factors that will make it sell well and so it goes on. The fact that so many entry level boats in the past have been regarded as not very good suggests how difficult this is...

And, going back to Ian Bruce, his legacy is his contribution to a number of classes that had this non-headline making production engineering sufficiently well sorted out that they have sold in their thousands and helped grow the sport. It's no mean legacy.

Edited by JimC - 28 Mar 16 at 1:12pm

I suppose that one definition of a 'good' designer is someone who designs boats that people want to sail. Entry closed at 120 for the 20th anniversary nationals in one class must mean something and all those well laid out, stable, comfortable but fun little Lightnings (is there a modern equivalent?) indicate long lasting designs.

Originally posted by JimC The curious thing is, the if you really think about it, the job of designing a rotomould mass market boat is potentially considerably more difficult than designing a championship winning Merlin Rocket. With the latter all you need to do is tweak a few well established variables within a stagnated design space, give a competent builder an unlimited materials budget, and pay a rock star crew to sail it. With the former you have to engineer a boat that will be structurally sound with some not very co-operative materials, work out an internal layout that will deal with the structural problems and be congenial for the crew, then alter all this to be able to be built with minimal expense, make sure the boat is interesting to sail yet viceless, make it visually appealling, aand consider all the other factors that will make it sell well and so it goes on. The fact that so many entry level boats in the past have been regarded as not very good suggests how difficult this is... And, going back to Ian Bruce, his legacy is his contribution to a number of classes that had this non-headline making production engineering sufficiently well sorted out that they have sold in their thousands and helped grow the sport. It's no mean legacy.

I can confirm its a right b@stard. I mean a fascinating challenge. Esp as you have to be pretty confident to press go on alu tooling.

No Richards talked about building the Bug at the show one year. Just ensuring that the plastic was going to the right places meant sawing up several hull, and that doesn't begin to look at actual sailing performance. I'm guessing that there are experts in the manufacturing process who get involved at a fairly early stage, Dan?