Morrison 14

We take a look at the latest International 14

Back in March 2007 we spoke to legendary designer, Phil Morrison about projects he had underway at the time. Back then, he told us he had just designed a new version of his hugely successful International 14 design for Chris Turner at Ovington Boats.

Although Turner took the new Morrison 14 to the Dinghy Show at the start of this year and sailed the first example at the International 14 World Championship this summer, there is still some time left before the boat will be fully ready for production. “The hull mould is completed at the moment, but there is still the tooling needed for the deck mould. My boat has a custom, one off deck mould which we could obviously not be able to do for a lot of customers as it would cost far too much,” explains Turner. The hope is this tooling will be finished in the coming weeks and the boat itself will be ready for production soon.

Turner has not been actively involved in the International 14 class for a number of years and says taking the new boat the Worlds this year was something of a baptism of fire. Specifically, he feels he turned up to the event with a few too many unknown entities on his boat. His Selden mast was relatively untested and his Pinnell and Bax sails, despite being used by a number of top sailors in the fleet, where not class standard. In addition, a number of other smaller things on the boat such as his vang and mainsheet system did not work as he had hoped and needed changing through the week. “Having seen Archie [Massey] sail so well with pretty much standard kit from a year ago, I now wish I had of just turned up with the new hull and everything else as standard on the boat,” Turner comments.

Despite lacking in time on the water and with an unfamiliar set-up Turner was happy with the performance of the boat overall at the Championships, despite finishing a disappointing 21st with crew, Adam Ovington. Particularly, Turner comments on how easy the boat is to sail, with himself and Ovington only capsizing twice during the entire, relatively windy event, with these two swims being upwind on tacks, due to a lack of practise rather than any inherent instability in the hull. In fact, Turner notes the new hull is incredibly stable particularly downwind.

When the boat is ready for the market there are already a number of interested parties. When we spoke to latest International 14 World Champion, Archie Massey (here) he commented that he understood there was a syndicate who were planning on buying the boat to sail and train together for the Worlds next year. Currently Turner says he has one deposit down on a boat and has a number more of interested parties. He is not keen to comment on who those parties may be, though he does add, “I lent my boat to the Hayling fleet for August and Fed Week. I have lots of guys that want the boat, but most of them need to sell their current boats if they are to buy one and the second hand market is a bit slow at the moment.” When we spoke to him Turner was just about to set off to the Tide Ride in Hayling last weekend and was hoping to speak to a few International 14 sailors there who might be ready to buy.

Those buying the Ovington International 14 will essentially have two options for purchase. “We will do a bare package for those that like to fit the boats out themselves and add their own little modifications,” explains Turner. “We are also going to do a boat that people can just step into and go sailing,” What will not be available through Ovington, however, is a rig to go with the boat. Currently many of the fleet are getting new high modulus masts in from various manufacturers across the globe. However, this makes it difficult for a single manufacturer to select a single combination of rig and sails to supply which is why Ovington will not be selling their boats with a specific rig.

Deciding where to go for a new boat currently in the International 14 class is actually a fairly big difficulty in and of itself Turner believes. He says there are a number of specialist one-off builders, but very few builders who are doing big numbers of boats. Interestingly before Turner moved to Ovington Boats, he ran Specialized Marine and supplied one-off boats. Since his move to Ovington, Turner has set up his own little annex near the Ovington factory where he works on his projects such as the International 14. Despite his managerial role taking up a great deal of time, this annex means he is able to carry on doing much of the personal work that he was doing at Specialized only with the resources of Ovington behind him. Turner hopes, for the most part to sell to people who do not want the hassle of dealing with getting a one-off.

Below: Morrison 12 design, with measurement bumps visable.


As mentioned the new hull was penned by legendary 14 designer, Phil Morrison and is a Morrison 13 design. However, the history of the Morrison designs is somewhat confused. Essentially, the previous Morrison 12 design was actually just a redesign of the Morrison 11 which itself was only different from the 10 in its rig. What all this means is this new boat will represent the first full redesign of a Morrison hull in several years.

Significantly, since the previous versions of the Morrison hull were designed there has been a change to the International 14 measurement rules. Essentially the new rule changes the way rise of floor is measured for the boats. This does not have much significant impact on the way the boat is designed and it is actually fairly similar to a Morrison 10 in shape, though slightly fuller in the forward section and with a straighter run off aft, hopefully improving on downwind speed over previous incarnations of the Morrison design. The rule change was the class’ attempt to limit the use of so called ‘speed bumps’ where designers add small bumps at the measurement points of their boats. Now the rise in floor measurement is measured through a straightline as opposed to specific points. Although this does not make a great deal of difference to the Morrison design, Turner is keen to point out this is the only boat that has been specifically designed to conform to this rule without any tricks.

Very little on the new boat is particularly radical with a more or less class standard, fixed wind T-foil rudder. The boat will also be supplied with a standard high aspect non-gybing daggerboard. Massy noted his dislike of gybing daggerboards when we spoke to him recently and Turner, it would seem, is not a great fan either, stating that he thinks; “very few people have gybing daggerboards and I am not sure they give any real advantage.”

Turner is planning on sailing his boat at the Inland Championships in November and will be there with a new suit of sails, though the maker of these is something he is currently unwilling to discuss. It will certainly be interesting to watch his performance at the event. However, realistically with Turner not spending much time sailing the boat at the moment it will be hard to get a real sense of just how quick the design is until the first boats are sold to known sailors in the fleet. Turner hopes he will have several boats at the next World Championship in Australia and it is there we will see the boat having its first real test.