BYYB Forums

Greetings,

Watch this ...

The Queen of the Grand Banks Schooners 
(Bluenose racing Gertrude L. Thibault, music by Stan Roger)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWUD_r6E4U8

Cheers
Tom

Thanks Tom, nice piece of history from my home area.  I've been aboard the Bluenose II many times.  How can you beat Stan Rogers, what a voice!

I too have have the privilege of standing on her (Bluenose II) decks as well. She's a remarkable vessel.

Greg

Greetings,

She’s a bonnie boat indeed.  I was first under her spell in 1976.  We met as teenagers. I was fifteen, she was thirteen, and it was infatuation at first sight.  She was berthed at Foggy Bottom on the Potomac in Washington DC and was waiting for some friends to join her for a romp up the coast to New York for the 1976 iteration of Operation Sail.  But it wasn’t a long lived affair.  The next day I met triplets!!!  

The sisters Eagle, Gorch Fock, and Demark all strolled into town spreading clouds of fancy white frills and Bluenose II was soon forgotten.  A few weeks later, Dad drove me the short hop over to Fells Point in Baltimore to see them again and as luck would have it we stumbled upon a pile of wood covered in tarps next to a sign that “Pride of Baltimore II”.  They were building her out in the open on a wide flat patio next to the harbor.  The more I saw of the Pride, the more I like her.

Now that I live near Lake Michigan, the only one who comes to visit is the Pride.  Oh sure, some of the local gals are nice, Niagra comes to mind, but with the exception of Europa, Bounty, and a few other ASTA members, the rest of the beauties will not sail the fresh waters of the Great Lakes.  I am guessing that they want to keep the wooden hull of Bluenose II in salt water for it's preservative quialities. Oh well, such is life.

I still have fond memories of Bluenose II.  I have a half finished wooden model of her in Holly, Walnut, and Rosewood. While doing research for the construction of the model, I stumbled upon some interesting facts.  The original Bluenose was a very special boat indeed.  Built as a real fishing vessel for the Grand Banks fleet, she turned out to be the fastest schooner built and for 17 years straight she beat all challengers for the International Fisherman’s Trophy until they all collectively retired from racing. She even trounced the schooners from Gloucester that were built specifically to beat Bluenose, even though they were more racing yacht then fishing boat.

Twenty plus years after Bluenose was lost in the Caribbean, a private concern decided to build another Bluenose from the same plans. Bluenose II was built in the same yard by some of the same shipwrights who built Bluenose.  They even found some of her original lines still on the lofting room floor.  How does Bluenose II stack up to the original?  Slower!  Even though she is an exact replica (a rebuild) and has access to more modern sails and rigging, Bluenose II’s maximum speed is quite a bit slower than that recorded in the logs of Bluenose.  The same captain sailed both boats, and that was his opinion as well. Nobody understands why.

Cheers,
Tom

Tom, the new Bluenose is slower because they lost the generation of builders that actually understood the lofting floor.

In generations past, the lofting floor was not a place where the lines of the yacht were precisely placed, so molds could be taken. It was a place where the designer, his staff and trusted builders would access the now full size shapes and make adjustments. A yacht could be ruined (many were) by the wrong changes, but on the other hand, things often changed from offsets to what we call "reconciled lines", which is the full size lofted drawing.

An example is one of L Frances Herreshoff's best known racing sloops. She was a double ended square meter rule boat and looked fast just sitting there on a mooring. He elected to increase the fineness of the entry on the lofting floor, in an effort to get to windward a touch better. He drew it out too much and she piled up a bigger midship wave and never reached her true potential. She was still fast, but could have been better and he knew why as soon as she reached hull speed.

Now, here comes the part that will just piss off the Canucks. The Bluenose and other fishing schooners of her era, weren't especially fast. Calm down, take a breath, open a window and let the cool (okay very cool) air fill your lungs again. Better . . . Okay, they were fast, considering what they were, but got their transoms handed to them when someone got the bright idea of matching them against real racing yachts. Someone decided that their really fast fishing schooner could beat a America's Cup contender and win the cup. Well, the best of the best was adorned on a few of these halibut hauling aquariums and race day proved they where really good at carrying many tons of fish, briskly back to port, but really bad against a real racing yacht. If you read some of the notables of the day, like Chapelle and others, they speak quite poorly of these boats, though recognize their speed as freight hauling sailing vessels.

This said, the Indian head bow profile used on many of these boats is one of my favorites and I employ it when I have enough overhang available. I usually lower the "chin" a bit to improve the entry and extend the LWL underway faster, which is another common lofting floor change for yachts of this era.

Back to the original premise, I suspect the boat was drawn as designed and not "adjusted" on the loft floor, because there weren't any old timers around to suggest such. I'm an old timer now, but don't have enough experience with this scale of lofting to make changes to a project like that, but the folks that I learned my skills from, were very familiar with projects of this scale, having decades of experience adjusting the lines on hundreds of yachts.

So, I suspect she's built as designed, but not adjusted to the collective intelligence and experience of her fore fathers.

Now, let the bottle throwing and name calling begin . . .

No name calling from me, Paul is correct.  The Bluenose was the fastest working sailing schooner of that period and that area.  Proved it many times, but she was a real working boat. Getting to the best fishing grounds and back fast was important, the racing was just for fun and money.

The Bluenose II is slower in my opinion because it was fitted out below decks like a yacht carrying more systems and more weight, and I suspect like Paul says, it lacked the knowledge on the floor to make changes as needed at that stage.

Another tidbit about the Bluenoses is that the same sailmaker family has made all the sails for both boats.  The Mainsail is the largest in the world at 4000 square feet!  The original was so large that there was no floor big enough to lay it on on to make it, so they waited until the pond froze smooth and flat and laid it out on the ice.  The sails for our weekender, Sans Souci are from the same shop and were made by the grand daughter, Michele Stevens.

I don't think the raised panels and 4" foam cushions used to "yacht 'er up" weigh anything near what the holds full of fish did, so I'm reasonably sure they missed something on the loft floor.

They weren't racing her full of fish

Her lines give our 10 cent piece a lot of class too.

Greg