later,
Suhaili
was becalmed again, and Knox-Johnston repeated his underwater caulking job on the starboard side. The leaking stopped almost completely.
8
A YEAR AFTER he had loaned Donald Crowhurst £1,000, Stanley Best, the Taunton businessman who had made his fortune selling caravans, had become disenchanted with the poor sales of the Navicator and the prospects for Electron Utilisation, and he wanted his money back.
In a letter dated 20 May 1968, Crowhurst wrote to him arguing that, contrary to what Best might think now, the company was about to capitalise enormously on his own entry in the Golden Globe race. He was planning to have a trimaran built, and he stood every chance of winning. The trimaran, he wrote, was a new and controversial type of sailboat, poised to become âthe caravan of the seaâ. Moreover, he continued, âthe trimaran is a highly suitable platform for the electronic process control equipment. The only equipment available so far is crude and works along entirely the wrong lines ⦠If the practical utility of the equipment I propose can be demonstrated in such a spectacular way as in winning the
Sunday Times
Golden Globe and/or the £5,000 prize and it is properly protected by patents, the rapid and profitable development of this company cannot be in any doubtâ.
What he said made sense. Multihulls were the coming thing. In 1960 an American, Arthur Piver, had built his own 30-foot trimaran,
Nimble
, out of cheap plywood for $2,000 and sailed it across the Atlantic from Fall River, Massachussetts, to England, with a stop in the Azores, in twenty-eight days at sea at an average of 136 miles per day. This was within hours of Eric Tabarlyâs (nonstop) record-breaking passage of twenty-seven days, four years later in the 1964 OSTAR. In 1961, Piver sailed from Los Angeles to Honolulu in his 35-footer,
Lodestar
, in fifteen days at an average of 150 miles per day. These were unheard-of speeds for cruising boats in the open ocean. In England, James Wharram started building slender-hulled catamarans based on Polynesian craft and sailed them across the Atlantic. Yet these two vanguard designers were considered cranks by the yachting community, which generally discounted the long-term seagoing possibilities of such light, unballasted craft. But then two catamarans did well in the 1964 OSTAR, and the impressive win by Derek Kelsall in his trimaran
Toria
in the rugged 1966 Round Britain race began to swing the balance of opinion. Eric Tabarly took one ride aboard Kelsallâs trimaran and decided to build his own for the 1968 OSTAR.
Multihulls had too many advantages to ignore: they were more for less. Being far lighter than monohulls, they were cheaper to build. Large and spacious inside, with double bunks and large galleys, they sailed upright with very little heeling, and they gave their crews a drier, more comfortable, less frightening ride than traditional sailboats. Many sailors whose wives had not enjoyed sailing found that they were happier and more willing to come for a weekend cruise aboard a catamaran or trimaran. And multihulls sailed fast â two or even three times the speeds of single-hulled vessels of the same length. They were the racing vessels of the future.
Multihulls had one downside, however: without the ballast keel and self-righting properties of traditional sailboats, once they flipped over they stayed that way. If anything, they weremore stable upside down than right side up, with their mast and sails poking down into the depths acting as a splendid lightweight keel. This happened only rarely, when an overcanvased boat was pushed too hard by a racing crew. But a primary piece of equipment that Donald Crowhurst was working on, he told Stanley Best, and would employ in his vessel, was a revolutionary, electronically activated, self-righting mechanism that would prevent such a capsize.
If Stanley Best had asked anybody about trimarans in 1968, they would
Suhaili
was becalmed again, and Knox-Johnston repeated his underwater caulking job on the starboard side. The leaking stopped almost completely.
8
A YEAR AFTER he had loaned Donald Crowhurst £1,000, Stanley Best, the Taunton businessman who had made his fortune selling caravans, had become disenchanted with the poor sales of the Navicator and the prospects for Electron Utilisation, and he wanted his money back.
In a letter dated 20 May 1968, Crowhurst wrote to him arguing that, contrary to what Best might think now, the company was about to capitalise enormously on his own entry in the Golden Globe race. He was planning to have a trimaran built, and he stood every chance of winning. The trimaran, he wrote, was a new and controversial type of sailboat, poised to become âthe caravan of the seaâ. Moreover, he continued, âthe trimaran is a highly suitable platform for the electronic process control equipment. The only equipment available so far is crude and works along entirely the wrong lines ⦠If the practical utility of the equipment I propose can be demonstrated in such a spectacular way as in winning the
Sunday Times
Golden Globe and/or the £5,000 prize and it is properly protected by patents, the rapid and profitable development of this company cannot be in any doubtâ.
What he said made sense. Multihulls were the coming thing. In 1960 an American, Arthur Piver, had built his own 30-foot trimaran,
Nimble
, out of cheap plywood for $2,000 and sailed it across the Atlantic from Fall River, Massachussetts, to England, with a stop in the Azores, in twenty-eight days at sea at an average of 136 miles per day. This was within hours of Eric Tabarlyâs (nonstop) record-breaking passage of twenty-seven days, four years later in the 1964 OSTAR. In 1961, Piver sailed from Los Angeles to Honolulu in his 35-footer,
Lodestar
, in fifteen days at an average of 150 miles per day. These were unheard-of speeds for cruising boats in the open ocean. In England, James Wharram started building slender-hulled catamarans based on Polynesian craft and sailed them across the Atlantic. Yet these two vanguard designers were considered cranks by the yachting community, which generally discounted the long-term seagoing possibilities of such light, unballasted craft. But then two catamarans did well in the 1964 OSTAR, and the impressive win by Derek Kelsall in his trimaran
Toria
in the rugged 1966 Round Britain race began to swing the balance of opinion. Eric Tabarly took one ride aboard Kelsallâs trimaran and decided to build his own for the 1968 OSTAR.
Multihulls had too many advantages to ignore: they were more for less. Being far lighter than monohulls, they were cheaper to build. Large and spacious inside, with double bunks and large galleys, they sailed upright with very little heeling, and they gave their crews a drier, more comfortable, less frightening ride than traditional sailboats. Many sailors whose wives had not enjoyed sailing found that they were happier and more willing to come for a weekend cruise aboard a catamaran or trimaran. And multihulls sailed fast â two or even three times the speeds of single-hulled vessels of the same length. They were the racing vessels of the future.
Multihulls had one downside, however: without the ballast keel and self-righting properties of traditional sailboats, once they flipped over they stayed that way. If anything, they weremore stable upside down than right side up, with their mast and sails poking down into the depths acting as a splendid lightweight keel. This happened only rarely, when an overcanvased boat was pushed too hard by a racing crew. But a primary piece of equipment that Donald Crowhurst was working on, he told Stanley Best, and would employ in his vessel, was a revolutionary, electronically activated, self-righting mechanism that would prevent such a capsize.
If Stanley Best had asked anybody about trimarans in 1968, they would
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