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WoodenBoat (ISSN 0095–067X) is published bimonthly in January, March, May, July, September, and November in Brooklin, Maine, by WoodenBoat Publications, Inc. Jonathan A. Wilson, Chairman. Subscription offices are at P.O. Box 54765, Boulder, CO 80322–4765; 1–800–877–5284 U.S. Subscription rate is $29.95 for one year ( 6 issues) in the U.S. and its possessions. Canadian subscription rate is $35.00, U.S. funds. Surface rate overseas is $43.00, U.S. funds per year. Periodical postage paid at Brooklin, ME 04616 and additional mailing offices. In Canada, periodical postage paid at Toronto, Ontario (Canadian periodical Agreement No. 40032149, GST Registration No. R127081008). U.S. POSTMASTER: Please send Change of Address (form 3579) to P.O.Box 54765, Boulder, CO 80322–4765. CANADA POS TMAS TER: P.O.Box 122 Stn Main, Niagara Falls ON L2E 6S8 Copyright 2005 by WoodenBoat Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted without written permission from the publisher. CONTRIBUTIONS: Address all editorial communications to Editor, Wooden Boat, P.O. Box 78, Brooklin, ME 04616–0078. WoodenBoat is a largely reader-written magazine. Care is taken with unsolicited contributions, but we are not responsible for damage or loss. PRINTED IN U.S.A.
Bruce Schwab raced a wooden-hulled boat, OCEAN PLANET, around the world non-stop last year. In 1997, Bruce had just completed the conversion of his German-built, 1930 wooden 30-Square-Meter sloop for ocean racing and sailed it to victory in the singlehanded TransPac Race from California to Hawaii. I met him that year onboard that improbably small and light ocean racer, RUMBLESEAT, dockside at a California boat show. I was immediately struck by how closely aligned his sailing background and philosophy were with those of Blondie Hasler, the English post–World War II bluewater maverick. Hasler, too, had cut a sharp set of offshore teeth aboard a 30-Square.
Col. H.G. (Blondie) Hasler was convinced of the seagoing qualities of the long, narrow, short-boomed 30-Square-Meters after reading testimonials by Uffa Fox, who had sailed a smaller sister—a 22-Square-Meter— 2,000 miles in one summer. That 1930 trip began in Cowes, England, went to Sandham, Sweden, and then returned to Lowestoft, England. The boat, VIGILANT, at one point in the adventure made nine knots in a full gale. The yachting journalists of the day had scoffed at the idea of sailing these boats offshore; Fox scoffed back, saying the writers were “dribbling down their bibs.” The account of his marathon Scandinavian jaunt is given in one of the flamboyant author-sailor’s books, Sailing, Seamanship, and Yacht Construction.
Spurred by Fox’s accounts, Hasler bucked the ocean-racing conventions of his day (heavy boat, deep draft, etc.) and began racing a 30-Square-Meter, TRE SANG, in Royal Ocean Racing Club events. Contrary to what one might expect, it wasn’t the boat’s light-air performance that Hasler praised; it was her behavior in nasty conditions that made TRE SANG a star. When larger, heavily canvased boats were shortening sail or heaving-to, TRE SANG kept going. That, wrote Hasler in 1946, defined seaworthiness. Thus reassured, Hasler would soon sail a small, light-displacement, purpose-designed (by J. Laurent Giles) and -built ocean racer called MYTH OF MALHAM. This man and his 30-Square-Meter are considered in many circles to be the originators of ocean racing in lightweight boats.
There’s a wrongheaded 1866 theory in evolutionary science that says “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” What it means is that the embryonic stages of a higher organism mimic its evolutionary stages. In other words, a gestating human baby is, in its early development, a fish, then later a dog, and still later an ape on its way to becoming a person. While the theory has been long disproven, its lyricism is tempting when one thinks of Bruce Schwab, crouched in the belly of RUMBLESEAT at that show in California, pointing out his modifications like a recapitulated Blondie Hasler. Bruce has, since 1997, taken his passions for sailing and for wooden boats to the extremes of both competitive sailing and wooden-boat construction. His participation in the Vendée Globe Challenge, as author Dennis Caprio notes in his article beginning on page 46, was a high-wire act of finance and endurance. Caprio says that Schwab, owing to his TransPac success, became “the Blondie Hasler of the Pacific.”
Schwab’s latest boat, a foam-cored, wood-skinned Tom Wylie design built by Steve Rander’s Schooner Creek Boat Works, will challenge some conventional definitions of “wooden boat.” But not mine. This sort of free-thinking innovation, this adaptation of wood for new structural situations and boats— this evolution—keeps passion for wood-in-boats lively. There’s not much that can be called “traditional” about OCEAN PLANET, and her appearance on the cover of this magazine will jar some eyes. But in very definite ways, she owes her existence to the broad shoulders of extreme wooden boat sailors of a half century ago.
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