What's new in the International 14

During the prolonged break in the racing Andy Rice took a look about the dinghy park

Halfway through the legendary Prince of Wales Week, and all manner of International 14s have been displaying good bursts of speed. The excitement of the T-foil rudder has attracted many new faces to the class, and a few old ones besides. Various teams have displayed race-winning ability during the 2004 season and very little in the way of a pattern is emerging, other than the fact that it is good sailing rather than a particular gear combination that is determining victory.

That said, long-time competitor and former POW winner Andy Fitzgerald with crew Simon Marks have thrown down the gauntlet with scores of 2, 2, 1 in the opening three heats. He is using a one-year-old Bieker 4 hull built by Ovington, but with a recently stepped CST 14 mast and Aussie sails made by Alexander. He is capable of good height upwind without sacrificing speed, and unlike many top teams, is using the same set of sails throughout the wind range.

Other crews are opting for a ‘fat head’ mainsail for light to medium airs, and the ‘pin head’ for medium to heavy. Fitzgerald has shown blistering pace in the light to moderate breezes in North Berwick on the Scottish east coast, but was equally at home in the rough waters and strong winds of the Hayling Hull trophy on the English south coast recently. A clear victory in the Itchenor Gallon race around Chichester Harbour in light to moderate breezes confirmed him as one of the pre-POW favourites.

Mike Lennon (left) has shown frightening bursts of speed in his new RMW-built Morrison 12 hull. Lennon is one of the old guard making a welcome return to the fleet after 10 years away racing one-designs like the RS800. Known as The Bimbler, Lennon is often to be found early in the boat park making further tweaks and perfections to his boat, and is often one of the last to leave. Lennon campaigned a Flying Dutchman in the early 1990s and the legacy of his experience is obvious in the complex but thoughtful layout he has applied to the 14. Lennon has bucked the current 14 trend of a simple, set-and-forget layout in favour of adjustable systems that allow him to change the rig while racing. Lennon hangs his own Hyde sails on a two-piece Proctor mast, a rare choice in a fleet that tends to favour either the Bieker carbon mast or the thinner-sectioned CST rig from Australia. He has also opted for a Bieker T-foil arrangement on the back of his Morrison hull, so Lennon has really gone out on a limb with his gear selection.

But at times he looks significantly the fastest boat on the water. Newly joined by tall Irishman John McKenna after the boat’s co-owner Alex Southon had to retire from the campaign for work commitments, Lennon also displays a lethal combination of height and pace in most conditions. In the second race of day 1 at POW, Lennon and McKenna tacked on to port soon after the start and won the race out to the right hand side near the shore. By the finish they had lapped almost half the fleet and held a commanding lead over Fitzgerald and Marks in second.

In strong contrast to Lennon, the Morrison 12 owned by resident Aussie in the fleet, Grant Rollerson, boasts the simplest and cleanest layout in the boat park. He has also shown great pace this year, particularly at the Riva Cup at a windy Lake Garda in May when he finished in second place, crewed by 49er and 18-foot skiff crew Pete Greenhalgh. Lack of a regular crew has held him back, but he has proven that there is plenty of merit in keeping it simple.

The Morrison 12 is an evolution of the Morrison 11 that Rob Greenhalgh and Dan Johnson used to dominate last year’s POW and World Championships in Japan. The 12 is narrower, and a noticeably wetter ride than the broader Bieker 4. But both major UK boatbuilders, Dave Ovington and Richard Woof, share the view that thinner is faster, although there is no real pattern in the results to suggest that the thin theory works in practice. The Bieker 4 seems no slower but does seem more forgiving to sail in the wind and the waves.

However, American designer Paul Bieker has designed a narrow hull with his fifth incarnation of the 14, and Dorset boatbuilder Chris Turner rushed to complete construction of his brand new Bieker 5 before POW. Although he and crew Pete Bagwell have not featured highly in the results, Turner professes himself impressed with the hull’s speed so far. “The boat feels good, but it’s more the rig that’s letting us down. We’ve trying the new Bieker mast with a flexi-tip but we’re a heavy team and it’s not helping us this week. I think when we put back the stiffer Bieker rig we’ll be going fast in this boat.” Called the Fat Bottomed Girl for her flat run aft, the Bieker 5 is nevertheless a skinny boat by comparison with previous designs, very much in line with the Morrison 12.

But the general feeling in the fleet is that hulls have reached a point of stability. Both Woof and Ovington would like to see a relaxation in the ‘rise of floor’ rule which is keeping the boats relatively beamy. The Bieker 5 has pronounced winglets to meet the measurement point, but the boatbuilders would like to see the rise of floor rule shrunk by a few centimetres. The downside for many of the current sailors, some of whom are competitive at a combined weight of 27 stone, would be that the skinnier boat would tend to favour lighter crew weights. So while the hulls have become as narrow as the rules will sensibly bear, the big gains are to be made in foils and rigs. Dave Ovington looks around the boat park and says: “Most of the rigs look too stiff to me. You want something that is more 49er-shaped, stiff low down but flexible in the top section.” This is the thinking behind the flexi-rig that Turner is using this week. The idea is to give more gust response, to work like a big windsurfer rig. Ovington acknowledges that crew weight would have to come down to accommodate this style of rig, but feels that ultimately this would be the fastest way to sail the boat.

Having just visited the Moth Europeans in Weymouth, Richard Woof is full of admiration for the high-flying antics of the hydrofoiling pioneers, but believes a similar course of action would be death for the 14. “The best thing the class could do right now is maintain this period of relative stability that we have. Lots of people are buying new boats and we should work with what we’ve got. Many of the Moth sailors are really worried that that the hydrofoiling could be a step too far. I’ve spent a lot of time in a RIB watching what Rohan Veal is doing to keep his boat moving and it’s very impressive what he’s doing, but it’s very hard work. It’s a very complex set-up that he’s developed to enable his Moth to get hydrofoiling, and that’s just with one sail. Add two people, and three sails and the point of balance would be changing all the time. Also, people have got to be able to go back to work on Monday morning in one piece. We see people get cuts and bruises in the 14 fleet, but nothing they can’t cope with. If you start getting people hydrofoiling it could all get a lot more serious.”

The added factor that class chairman Victor Brellisford has pointed out is the class’s reliance on Chichester Harbour, the home of the two strongest UK fleets at Itchenor and Hayling Island. The 14 is already the fastest sizeable fleet in a congested harbour, and to add hydrofoils would probably result in the harbour master banning 14 racing there. One UK team, Dave Spragg and Andy Loukes, have a set of hydrofoils and self-levelling wand on order from John Ilett, the Aussie behind the hydrofoiling revolution in the International Moth. They are doing it just for fun, but other Fourteeners will look on in envy if they get their boat flying. It will be a sight to behold. Let’s hope it’s one the Chichester Harbour Master doesn’t see.

Since this article was written a Morrison boat has won POW

Below: Bieker 5 winglet helps the new design meet the measurement rules of the 14 class 040