International Moth 3564

Nice work Mike, you're not as old as you think you were! Good to have you here, I like your style.

Looks like exspensive firewood dan

Im still working on her, been very busy with work and whatnot. Ive got a garage sorted to fair and spray her, so she should be on the water by mid summer all being well.

Have you got any information on her that you could pass on?

Dan

I reckon this is either a Mistral or the later development the Mirage. I had
a Mistral in the early 70's, they were solidly built and this is why it has
survived so long.

The Mirage came out in about 1975, this is a narrower version, it is
folded up from a 4 foot wide sheet of ply. A friend of mine built one,
painted it Lime Green and called it 'Hairy Nerk'.

If you measure the curve of the hull from underside of the wings it
should be 4 foot or less.

I bet those wings will give you grief, they flex, crack and then leak when
you capsize. Then it gets really fun.

For a historically correct restoration you cannot use epoxy or carbon,
they weren't available until 1978.

What sort of rig have you got? At that time it would have been a
Needlespar, home built of course, or a Sparlight DQ2. A very floppy rig
so breakages are common.

Sailmakers, Anderson aerosails with a radial cut design or Lymington Sail
& Tent, now Sanders sails. I had a Banks modified by Graham Caws. Give
Graham a call he still makes beautiful sails.

They were fully battened, using wood battens shaved down to get the foil
profile. Fibreglass battens came later.

If you cut the wings off it, you could race it in the American Classic Moth
fleet see:http://www.mothboat.com/CMBA/Building/b100000.htm. to see
what they do SKOLs in the States. They use the smaller Europe rig.

For some great advice on ply moth construction see:
http://www.moth.asn.au/building_registration.html

Go for it

Originally posted by tickler One reason that we no longer see inovation in one off boats is because everything is so hi tech these days which discourages home build.

And yet the skills required to home build a boat in epoxy/foam sandwich are far less than required to homebuild a boat with wood. And I very much doubt that the cost of a rig/gear in proportion to the average wage is less than is was back then. Obviously a Merlin is damn near impossible to home build, but that's down to class rules.

For my money the trouble with epoxy/foam boats is that they last so well... polyester/glass and wood boats were considered to go off very steadily and very slowly, so it was worth the top of the fleet regularly changing boats, yet secondhand boats were still well worth buying for the not-quite-top of the fleet folk. With foam/epoxy boats you tend to hang on to boats so much longer that many fewer boats are built and there are damn all secondhand ones.

Of course the other problem is time - so much of a scarcer resource nowadays.

Edited by JimC