Mercury Rising
by Dougal Henshall 1 Apr 2015 08:36 BST
1 April 2015
The Finn is a superb example of a species that has evolved to occupy a particular niche. Despite a number of challenges over the last 60 years, the Finn remains the no.1 single hander on the International scene © Tom Gruitt /
www.tom-gruitt.co.uk
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In classic Darwinian theory, the species that prosper best do so by evolving to occupy a specialised niche. This can be clearly seen in the way racing dinghies have developed, with those that have shown the most resilience to withstanding the passage of time being easily recognisable as clearly different from other classes. There are plenty of examples to be seen in every day dinghy racing. A large round bilged single hander out afloat, with an unstayed mast set right in the bow, with the helm hiking hard to get the boat upwind, clearly the boat is a Finn. In the same way, if the boat is a big, powerful two person boat, crew hard out on the wire, but the hull riding cleanly over the waves courtesy of a beautifully flared out hull, we all know that the boat is a 505.
For the iconic classes, boat spotting is easy! A 2 person hiker, with a quadrilateral top to the mainsail? One look at the clinker hull is enough to make the identification so easy – a Merlin Rocket.
But it is also an essential part of Darwin's thinking, that random variations are at the heart of change, which again is something that can easily be seen in the development of the racing dinghy (though I have no doubt that there will be dinghy designers who may take umbrage at their hard thought out designs being called 'random variations'!). Using some of the examples from above, Rickard Sarby set himself to design the Finn, after he had endured an uncomfortable Olympics sailing a Fairey Firefly single handed at Torquay in 1948. The 505 was never designed as such, but came into being as the 'variation on a theme' after a businessman scuppered the French preference for their new dinghy to be hard chined. And, as we are about to see, the Merlin Rocket could well have developed to occupy a very different niche to that which is so splendidly fills today.
Back in 1947, the Merlin (this was years before the merger with the Rocket) was very much the domain of designer and builder Jack Holt. For the first three years and almost 200 boats of the class, only 4 of the boats built had not been to his designs. Most would follow the tried and tested hull shape that was so prevalent, not to mention successful, back then. There were though some designers who wanted to break into the Merlin scene and who recognised that the current range of Holt designs were heavily influenced by Jack's wish for a boat that would perform well on the River Thames.
However, the Constitution of the new class had already been set out, with one requirement being that the Championships would always be held on the sea. Jack Holt may well have been the 'Wizard of Putney', capable of designing superb hulls for fast tacking and squeezing their way under the many bridges that cross the Thames, but his designs were clearly less than happy in more boisterous conditions found on open waters. One designer who did know about hull forms that would handle the rough stuff was George O'Brien Kennedy (whose design for the YW Dayboat remains popular through to today). His first Merlin design, Mercury would show some real Championship winning potential when the event was staged at Hayling Island in 1947. At Hayling, O'Brien Kennedy in Mercury would give Holt a real fright, as he came close to winning, eventually settling for the runners up spot.
Over the next two years, Holt would make a number of fairly small incremental changes to the hull forms he was building, but it would still be one of his first boats, number 16 Gently, that was the boat to beat.
Holt might be remaining true to his original ideals, but it would be O'Brien Kennedy who would become the first Merlin designer who was prepared to break ranks with tradition and let that 'random variation' affect his design philosophy. For the 1949 Championships, which would be held at Cowes, he developed a new boat, designed with the express intention of beating Jack Holt, plus all the other Holt boats, in the boisterous Solent conditions. In the first race it looked as if Mercury II might well achieve that aim, as in the stiff breeze and short Solent 'chop', the more flared out hull showed a distinct performance advantage over the Holt river boats. Moreover, in these pre self-bailer days, O'Brien Kennedy had built his boat with a double hull, meaning that the cockpit was fully self-draining. Although the early Merlins were '7/8th decked', in rough conditions water would still find its way into the hull, so that for much of the time, the crew would be kept busy bailing!
Nor was the self-draining cockpit O'Brien Kennedy's only radical innovation. The maximum chord wing section mast was set on a new design of roller bearing support, so that even under the compression loadings of the rig, the mast could still rotate freely. At the time, the best the crews of the Holt boats could do was to place a greased coin under the mast heel and hope for the best. The biggest change though in Mercury II would be in the finish of the hull, for the boat was smooth skinned, rather than of clinker construction. From the outset, O'Brien Kennedy looked as if he was on course to stop Holt from winning a third Championship, only for disaster to strike on the second day out in the Solent. Whilst well placed in the race, on a wild downwind leg, George and crew Chris Drew suffered a bad capsize under spinnaker. For the other competitors, without self-bailers and transom flaps, capsizing was more than often a race ending event, but with its self-draining hull, Mercury II should have been straight back into the action. However, during the capsize, the spinnaker had knotted itself so badly around the forestay, that O'Brien Kennedy was forced to retire to sort things out. (In these early days, the Merlin Rules required the outlet for the spinnaker halyard to be positioned below the hounds, thus setting the spinnaker inside the fore triangle).
Having made it safely back to the shore, things were about to get much worse, for as the helm and crew were stood in the shallows, trying to untangle the mess, a fast moving large commercial vessel was heading east along the main channel that leads out of the Solent. The wash from the freighter hit the beach with such force that it lifted the hull, before dropping it back onto the edge of the concrete hard. In that moment the beautifully built, smooth skinned outer hull, was cracked like an egg shell.
The special camaraderie that exists in the Merlin fleet, even as far back as then, now took control of the situation. Despite Mercury II being the greatest threat to the continued success of Gently, Jack Holt and others joined with O'Brien Kennedy to 'pull an all-nighter', in an attempt to get the hull repaired. The damage to the outer skin highlighted the problems of constructing a boat with a double bottom, as it was almost impossible to reach the inside of the affected area. In the end, a temporary repair was made, and Mercury II sailed on the final day, but the boat was never the same again. Despite some subsequent attempts to restore the hull to its original condition, Mercury II would fail to figure again in the overall results and besides, in the following year, the Rockets would be showing the value of a hull with sound sea-keeping qualities. For O'Brien Kennedy, Mercury II was his final foray into the Merlin Class, as he would move out of the fleet and on to other, more lucrative work.
These are just the sort of random events that are at the heart of Darwin's thinking. A capsize, a knotted spinnaker, these could happen to anyone. That the hull would then get irreparably damaged in a freak accident has to be the height of randomness. Had that not happened and had Mercury II gone on to win a well deserved Championships, it would have been that much harder to for the Merlin Class to ignore the benefits of smooth hulls, self-draining cockpits and more advanced rigs. Instead, following the demise of Mercury II, the rules were progressively tightened, removing the options for self-draining hulls and smooth skinned construction. The result was the confirmation of the Merlin, then the Merlin Rocket, as a boat that would have a clinker hull. Even today, when the Championship winning Winder hulls are made from FRP, they still retain the clinker effect on the outside. The words of an earlier Class Chairman sum up the situation perfectly; "The Merlin Rocket hull is clinker; period"!
But what of Mercury II, the boat that could so well have changed the future for one of the most iconic dinghies found in the UK? After the Cowes Championships, the boat was brought back across the Solent and sailed for a while locally, but already the changes to the class that would come when the Rocket DNA was spliced into that of Merlin, were leaving the boat behind. Following on from the merger of the two classes, the first generation of Proctor designs would soon supplant Holt boats at the front of the fleet. Just 5 years after Mercury II had been launched, the sea keeping qualities of the latest Merlin Rockets could be seen to be offering a quantum leap forward in performance. Obsolete and needing more work, Mercury II would eventually get dumped in a corner of a foreshore with a number of other discarded boats, where it would soon be stripped of all fittings.
Uncared for and definitely unloved, the years would take their toll on the remains of what had, in its day, been a very special boat indeed. As the hull started to come apart, some of the best of the timbers were luckily recovered, before the last remains were burnt. It has to be said that when the timbers were removed, it was not with the intention of saving the boat, but instead an act of boatbuilding cannibalism; odd bits of Mercury II would go into a pram dinghy. Then years later, other saved lengths of timber would go into keeping another old Merlin Rocket afloat and sailing.
However, in today's world of classic dinghy racing, boats from the immediate post war era are rapidly being becoming highly prized. Moreover, a boat that has either a really important historical significance, or a proven track record on the race course, can now attract a notable premium. Such can be the demand for some versions of classic boats that it is starting to outstrip the supply of remaining hulls. Little wonder then that in the Merlin Rocket fleet and other, it has become accepted practice, that in essence a new boat can rise from the remains (if not the ashes) of an old boat. More importantly, the hull shape of the boat being restored has been left remarkably open to modern interpretation.
With this in mind, it became clear that although only a few of the original timbers from Mercury II still remained, it was still possible to make a rebuild a viable consideration. To start, the Mercury Rising project team set about gathering any surviving details about the original boat. Pictures of Mercury II are few, although a number of photo libraries are trawling through their archives, but to date without result. Nor sadly are the plans still existing, but close examination of those timbers that did survive, suggested a far more flared out hull than was the norm in the late 1940s. Indeed it seemed as if O'Brien Kennedy was designing a Merlin Rocket for 20 years in the future.
At the same time as the computer generated graphics revealed the shape of the new/old boat, further work ensured that the key innovations from Mercury II would all be retained in the new boat. Thus the reborn Mercury II will remain truthful to the original, by having a smooth skinned, self-draining hull. Rig wise, Mercury II will retain the original 25ft wing mast (although now in carbon) which will once again rotate on a 'Kennedy' roller bearing system.
In conjunction with the rules that were applicable at the time that Mercury II was first designed, the hull form has been optimized for performance inland, though the boat, which will now boast a superwide hull (there was no maximum beam back then, only a minimum of 4ft 6in) could also be an interesting performer in breeze.
The textbooks say that Mercury is the hottest planet in the solar system and when it is finally launched, Mercury II aims to be the hottest property on the growing classic dinghy scene. In terms of both innovation and performance, the boat will be a wonderful tribute to one of the first really radical Merlin designers. Who knows, with a forecast for a light airs Championship Week, Mercury II could yet again grace the premier event for the class, 66 years after it could so easily have won – and thus set the class onto a very different route of development to that of Jack Holt.