Looking ahead

The newest International 14 World Champion talks about hi plans for the coming year

The International 14 class has been slowly developing since its inception in the early 20th century. This remains the case today and at every World Championship there is invariably something new to been seen or discussed.

This year, the World Championship was won by Brit helm, Archie Massey along with his American crew, Matt Noble, in a two year old boat.For those who wonder how such a sailing relationship can form over such a long distance, Massey points out that the pairing was more a matter of convenience. “Matt has come third at the 29er Worlds twice I think, once in San Francisco and once in Hayling,” Massey comments. “I lived in California for a year and a half when my local 14 club was Richmond Yacht Club. Matt is a member there, so we just got together for this event.”



This team was only together for this World Championship, due to Massey relocating once again this year. “I am actually going to live in Sydney. My boat is being shipped over there at the moment and I plan to be out there at least until the next Worlds. I am living in Bondai to start with but then I am moving over Manly where the Worlds are going to be held. Hopefully I will be able to sail three times a week there.” Obviously with his previous partnership over with and a relocation taking place, Massey will be looking for a new crew. Currently nothing is set in stone but the Brit says he has talked to International 14 and 18ft Skiff sailor, Cameron MacDonald about a possible partnership.

With his move to Australia happily coinciding with the build-up to an Australian International 14 World Championships, we wondered how much of this planned move is about defending his World Championship title. “Actually my big plan was to win the next Worlds in Sydney, which is what all the real preparation will be for. This one was much more of a last minute affair where I would just go and see how I do,” Massey comments.
Massey puts a great part of the reason he won in Germany this year down to a boat speed edge. “The start in the fifth race had a lot of starboard bias and we knew we could not afford an OCS. We started at the starboard end but in the third row and literally within 30 seconds we had blasted over someone and under someone else, so it was a bit of a boat speed thing,” he confirms.

One might imagine, due to this statement that to win at the Worlds there is a need to invest in the newest or best kit. However, Massey does not agree that this is the case. “I had a new rudder made especially by Larry Tuttle. I sailed with it twice in San Francisco, four days before the Worlds and then on the second race of the Worlds it broke,” he explains. “Our overnight repair on Tuesday night did not do that well and it broke again. There was a German team who snapped their mast who lent us their T-foil. In fact they offered it the day before, but we thought ours was so special it would be better to fix it. After our repair broke, we borrowed it and we were just as fast without it. I guess that is good for the class as it shows that spending that sort of money on the kit does not matter all that much.”

One of the areas Massey finds most important is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the hull. Interestingly he was not using a brand new hull at the event; in fact it was the same boat he took to the Worlds last year in San Francisco (to read more about this boat click here.) However, development in the class as a whole has not stopped and there was a new hull shape being used in Germany. “Ovington are producing the Morrison 14 - I don’t think it is a 13 just for luck reasons. I am pretty sure it is going into full production. There is a syndicate that I understand are talking about buying en masse so they have a stable platform to develop,” he comments. A syndicate approach to buying boats together and developing is not new to the case – it most recently proved effective in 2007 at the Worlds in San Francisco when Howie Hamlin won the event as a part of a syndicate of three buyers of a modified Bieker 5.

Below: Massey at the 2007 Worlds in the same boat as this season.


So does Massey think the Morrison 14 will be a threat to him next year in Sydney? “I think it was kind of on-the-pace this year, but it never really got going. I am not that keen on the look of it. It looks a bit tubby and the bow is a bit full. It does go nicely though and it is really nicely made, but I don’t think I would swap my boat for one.”

One of the big debates in the class at the moment is whether or not gybing daggerboards are quicker than a conventional daggerboard set-up. “It was interesting that we did not have a gybing daggerboard, but the next three boats did. I don’t really believe in them,” Massey says. “On the last race we suddenly did not have a boat speed edge and we had water jetting up our daggerboard slot as a little bit of fairing had popped out. I had to put the speed down to that, because nothing else had changed setting-wise. I figure with all of the gybing boards currently, you have to cut the slot in the bottom of the boat bigger than the daggerboard so it is never truly fair. There is at least as much advantage in just having a slot that is completely faired in as you get from the gybing board.”

Other than the hull Massey thinks the greatest boat speed factor is down to the rig set-up and how much control you have over it. However, he does not believe that more control necessarily means faster. “On one extreme of the scale you have people like Mike Lennon, who has just got loads of stuff on his boat to adjust and to me it is a bit too much. It just seems too easy to pull a different string and drop back 100 yards in the process of having his head in the boat and then launch off impressively quickly - but he has lost 100 yards doing it. Our boat was conceived with a pin rig with an adjustable forestay. That was fine, but then in LA you would often have races that started in ten knots and built to 18. That is basically the difference between max power and max de-power and we found we just could not live in that range of conditions. So I changed the boat to a fixed forestay and adjustable shrouds situation.” Massey adds that in reality on his boat the only rig controls that are used are kicker, Cunningham and shroud tension.

Below: Lennon's International 14.


With his focus mainly on reducing the amount rig control needed Massey has been looking at ways of making the rig more efficient in terms of bend and reaction. He is not alone here and it seems one of the biggest development areas at the Worlds this year was spreader length and angle. “Martin Jones had in-line spreaders, not swept back, and obviously he works in the carbon industry and is a smart guy. His gurus reckoned that you did not need the swept back top spreader to hold the rig downwind as the mast will do that by itself. It looks kind of alarming downwind as the mast does bends an awful lot, but he assured us all it would not snap and it didn’t. Then Lindsey Irwin had these huge upper spreaders and some really small lower spreaders and then we had the longest lower spreaders out there. I figure, when you are going upwind, because you have got two guys out on the wire the windward shroud almost goes floppy and you do not really want that to happen. With longer lower spreaders, even with fewer loads on the shrouds they are still holding the bend in the mast. That is my theory and I believe you will see some people following that path at the next Worlds as it seemed to get some interest.”



Although Massey is very happy with his boat speed and set-up there are some areas he wants to refine or change before the next Worlds. “I think I will get one of the new high modulus rigs. I don’t want to change any of the bend characteristics, but it will significantly reduce windage. I am also going to have my rudder gantry sliding backwards and forwards. The general consensus is that you want the rudder back as far as possible so that you can get as much lift off it as you possibly can downwind. However upwind, currently the limit that is set for all of us is that you have to stand at the back of the boat. You can’t extend your racks beyond the back of the boat so you can’t load the rudder any more. The only way to load it up more is to bring the rudder under the boat and then turn on a bit more T-foil.”

So in effect Massey will be going to the next Worlds with the same boat again, only slightly modified. How does the new World Champion think he will cope with the pressure of defending his title? “I think winning this time takes the pressure off for next time and gives me confidence as people will not want to start nearby and such. This year during every race we were in the top two at some point,” he concludes. That would be a fairly confident man then.