Francis Sweisguth's Star

[Ged]

This is really just a curiosity question. Is it possible to acquire the original wood plans and build a Star class boat? If not, what other excellent and active one-design classes can be homebuilt? I understand that anyone who endeavors to build just about any one-design class to race would have to build it to strict measurements. Again, I'm just curious.

Star books, videos, & plans (http://www.starclass.org/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/online-store/scstore/cc-books.htm?+vlrc9057ffcc95cc+1064362891)

I already know about Optimists, El Toros, OK dinghies, Windmills, Snipes, Lightnings, and Y-Flyers.

[B.Marks]

The plans for Stars, Lightnings, and other one designs are available from the class associations. Some class are still competative in wood, the typically are dry sailed. Our host did an article on some fellows who built a Lighting a while back. An other class which may be of interest is the International 14. Hopefully, someone who is more involved in these classes will chime in. Life and work have taken me away from these activites for the moment. Good Luck!

[Nicholas Carey]

With Stars at least, I bet the rigging tensions currently in use would destroy a conventionally-built wood Star in pretty short order, so I suspect a new wood Star wouldn't be a terribly competitive boat.

And the Class Rules explicitly prohibit double planking or plywood hulls (ply decks are OK).

[Todd Bradshaw]

The original Star wasn't a Star, it was called "the Bug" and was a bit shorter and not quite as sleek in profile. My 1960 Lippincott wooden Star was rod-rigged and plenty stiff enough. The main reason wooden Stars aren't competitive is that the modern glass boats are all self-bailers and drain fast. Wooden Stars are required by class rules to have positive flotation in the form of flotation bags (you have to offset the weight of the 960 lb. cast iron keel and fin). The bags are very hard to find and a pain in the butt to deal with. Even with upgraded bailers, water is free to run end to end and has to dodge the bags and the frames to get out of the boat. Modern Starboats are also MUCH more comfortable to hike out in. The deck edge on woodies is really hard on your legs if you're trying to really go fast.

Construction on mine was very simple - 3/4" cedar planking with glued plank seams and some sort of tongue-and-groove or shiplap edges. Frames were mostly about 1"x3" and also cedar. Mahogany was used for the keel and keelson. If you want a Star there are still a lot of old ones floating around, many of which could be restored, and any hardware you could salvage would probably save you big bucks. Don't build or buy one unless you have a lift or dock crane to put it in the water as they are quite difficult to launch from a trailer.

The Star will probably teach you more about sailshape and sail trimming than any other design ever built, but I wouldn't call it leisurely sailing in anything but light air. It's a demanding boat to sail well with upper and lower running backstays that are basically the boat's "transmission" and which need fairly constant monitoring and attention and that big main doesn't have any reef points.

[Ged]

Thanks for the input, fellas.

It was Sakari A.'s statement in the "Performance Daysailors" thread that most of the one-designs that he knew of didn't have plans for building in wood that made me want to snoop around a bit to see what I could see. While I'm sure that the great majority of newer plastic boats don't have plans for wood, I was curious to find out what was available to the person interested in building his/her own. I was kind of wowed to think that someone who really wanted to could build something like an Olympic Star in their backyard. Very cool, I thought.

In my own area, I have both a Lightning fleet and a Y-Flyer fleet located about a half hour from where I live. Something to think about for the future, perhaps.

(FYI) One boat that I came across while picking through the one-designs was Mr. Sweisguth's 18 ft. Interlake. I liked it a lot.

[MarkC]

Howbout restoring or building a wooden (cold molded) Fin? This wouldnt break the bank, they are actively raced (at least in Europe and Australia), and the wood ones look cool (good club cred points), also they are a handful to sail, so that the learning period is long so it will keep you interested and practicing for ages.

[MarkC]

Stars can't be built in ply... bummer.

There goes my hot idea for a race boat. The hull lends itself to that construction, but I guess the problem was boats built too thin, requiring a minimum weight rule.

It doesn't seem to me that the officaly recognised class boat builders and suppliers (for all olympic classes) pass on any savings from their 'mass' production. Perhaps they don't build so many after all. I thought a ply Star would be much cheaper.

[ahp]

We belonged to Sandy Bay Yacht Club in Rockport Massachusetts. There was a resident fleet of Stars there which were raced dry.

Stars have an arc bottom. I can see how you could build the sides out of plywood sheets, but not the bottom.

You might be interested to know that a Star is faster than a Hobie 16 in very light winds.

[MarkC]

I thought the bottom would be cold-moulded with thin plys - would need frames (also to hold the keel) - question, in your club, is everyone using aluminium masts - have you seen a wood mast?

[ahp]

I am sorry Mark. It has been at least ten years since I have been a member of that yacht club and I cannot remember if they had aluminum or wood masts.

I read a book once that discussed the Star. It stated that Swieisguth made a tactical error when he designed the Star. He made the dimension tolerances loose, =/- 1.0 inch! If the chins were high by an inch and the keel low by an inch one had a lot of arc curvature in the bottom. If the reverse was true the bottom was quite flat. One boat would have the advantage in heavy winds and the other the advantage in light winds.

I don't know if this is still true or if the class association has tighted the tolerances.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Star sailors moved away from wooden masts as soon as aluminum became available. The mast is very skinny (mine wasn't much more than an inch in diameter at the top and the rest was about half the size in cross-section as you would find on a typical cruiser of the same LOA. The rig evolved to include an under-deck mast ram and an extremely powerful radial boom vang. The wooden masts couldn't take the strain and were prone to breaking. You still see a fair number of broken aluminum masts, but far fewer than in the old wood mast days, or so I was told by the class when I first started rebuilding my boat.

One nice thing about building in plywood would be that it's somewhat less prone to checking than solid cedar. My cedar hull checked faster than you could fill them and repaint over them, which is why I wound-up veneering the hull.

I got the more-or-less official approval from the class association's measurement guy, even though it was a non-standard repair, but it was delivered in a "Kid, you can do just about anything you want to your old wooden hull, because it still isn't going to be competitive and we won't have to worry about you beating us" kind of way. I have no doubt that you could build a modern, high-tech plywood or cold-molded self bailer that would give the glass boats a run for their money, but it's a very hotly-contested class with a lot of rock stars in it and as soon as you looked like a threat, they would toss you out.

One thing worth looking for is an article in an old issue of "Sailing" magazine (if memory doesn't fail - it had to be close to 20 years ago) called something like "The Classic Star". It was about a guy in France who rebuilt a Star, but rigged it with a gaff main and topsails! Obviously, it wouldn't be class legal, but it was really cool. Most other attempts at recreationalizing the rig, simplifying the controls and raising the boom above waist height to make a better day sailing boat have been rather crude looking, but this one was pretty neat.

[ 09-29-2003, 07:02 PM: Message edited by: Todd Bradshaw ]

[Wayne Williams]

Originally posted by Todd Bradshaw:
One thing worth looking for is an article in an old issue of "Sailing" magazine (if memory doesn't fail - it had to be close to 20 years ago) called something like "The Classic Star". It was about a guy in France who rebuilt a Star, but rigged it with a gaff main and topsails! Obviously, it wouldn't be class legal, but it was really cool.Sometime in the last two years there was a photo editorial in WB on the big classic boat show in France. There's a shot of a gaff-rigged star with a square topsail. Might be the same boat. Also, I read somewhere that the original stars were all gaff-rigged but changed to bermuda fairly soon.

WW

[ahp]

Originally it had a sliding gunter rig, not gaff, but close. It may have been called the "Bug" class then too.