Frankenboat - what's yours?

Sam - if you took comments or the like personally, you'd never write a word! Am sat at the big writing desk of love laughing - and trying to work on the Dinghy Show talk. I need to be careful of what I say, rumour has it that the man from Kent may be in the hall somewhere.

On another day, when my mind is wandering (as it often does these day - age!)  I must collect some of my thoughts about the untimely demise of the Spice. For a while it was on the cards that I was to be asked to campaign the works boat. As you say, a tad overweight but a cracking boat for having lots of fun. You'll get the skiff purists on here, normally from the Cherub and 14s, who will mock the boat, as they do the Laser 5000, who without ever having sailed the boat, fail to give a moments thought to the thinking behind the boat 'when it was launched'.

D

Some of you posters on here really know how to make a writer feel appreciated! It is just a mere three months since this website published a lengthy, detail obituary for the great Paul Elvstom.

http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/193648/Paul-Elvstr%C3%B6m,-Sailings-Greatest

Mention is made there, because I felt it important that it was included, of how Paul sailed the 505 from the wire with crew Pip Pearson sitting out. Paul was sailing the 505 before Trine was even born and at the time of him sailing with Pip, Trine would have been very young indeed.

Of course he did go on to sail with Trine, in the Tornado cat, but then she was out on the wire - so it might well be that this is one case where the 'alternative facts' are yet again proven to be wrong.

One other small point that is of little interest except for those who like to know about these things, the relationship between the FD and Contender. When I was writing 'Hooked On - The Story of the International Contender' I interviewed at length both Carl Ryves and Craig Whitworth, who were both closely associated with Bob Miller back in the early to mid 1960s. Bob had tried a couple of hull shapes for his single hander (some of which were decades ahead of their time) but needed something in a hurry as he had a potential sponsorship deal. He was sailing the FD at the time and simple 'borrowed' the shape,

Some years (make that many years) ago, UK dinghy ace Keith Paul had both an FD and a Contender, with the hulls painted in an identical fashion - red, with a white boot top. He also had a big garden. If you put the hulls upside down, with the FD much further back, from the other end of the garden both hulls looked the same size and you had to look very hard to work out which was which. Truly, 'imitation is the most sincere form of flattery'!