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Post by kendocherty on Dec 11, 2009 18:21:23 GMT
It seems - at least to me - so difficult to get hold of the history of the minitonners; when they raced, where they raced, which one-offs became production boats, what years and numbers of production, you all know the sort of stuff.
If anyone has information, weblinks, or ideas where we could start to piece together a better background on these remarkable boats, this would be a good place to bring it all together.
Any ideas?
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Post by will mitchell on Dec 11, 2009 20:22:13 GMT
Hi ken. thought id do my bit and start the ball rolling. RE SMOKEY & the CHOIRBOYS smokey was built down south in v late 79/early 80 for Larry marks. a chandler based in netley i believe. she is a stephen jones design which was dominating the 1980 worlds which were held at thr royal forth yacht club. she had to take a penalty under the old IYRU rules for having her model as part of her name and so finished second or third place overall. loosing out to the rivetto's of the protesting italians. to the best of my knowledge they built another 6 in the following few years and called them smokey 25's the hull and coach rof structure are pretty much identical to smokey & the choirboys. ie same mould but i dont know about the layup. smokey has alot of lead ballast in her from her IOR days presumeably to get her to hit her waterline measurements. the interesting feature is that her rudder is a different shape and slightly different in profile to the later smokey 25's. Just a footnote to add. im pretty sure the miniton cup was also held in norway in 1986 but Ive struggled to find any mention of the event after that date. but someone will surely know. hope this helps.
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Post by Fuzzy Rush on Dec 29, 2009 11:08:52 GMT
RE: LIMBO 7.7's
Just before Christmas I received this super email, from the crew of Menace III - (who can be seen pictured in action on the Quarter Tonner's Homepage right now.)
"Hi Matt Well done for getting the Mini tonners going. We used to own a Limbo 6.6 called Menace, she was a great boat, but out there somewhere are 3 Limbo 7.7s Andy designed them for the Mini ton worlds in Scotland, his one was called Limbo Lil she had clear gelcoat so you could see the balsa core (lovely!), they are a stretched 6.6 with a fixed keel and rudder, and very fast. Menace III is a Faroux 1/4 tonner, it will be great to see the mini tonners involved in some of the regattas with the 1/4 tonners tonners. I think the first Menace is moored on the Swale/Medway.
Well done
Derek Morland James Morland Tim Rees
MENACE III"
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Post by willmitchell on Dec 29, 2009 16:12:16 GMT
matt. im pretty sure i know one of these stretched limbo,s. well thats if the fixed keel is the givaway. the boat im talking about is used to be called the wizard of is but is now called wizard. shes lying at windermere and has a v pimped up sail wardrobe. flashy black hull paint and is co owned by a good freind of mine called matt funnily enough. she races every winter at windermere. i should be there in another couple of weeks and will try and get you some photos. will
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Post by Martin on Jan 6, 2010 23:08:48 GMT
Will - I may be wrong but if you look on the link to the Limbo site in related links - In videos there is one of a sexy black hulled LImbo with a nice set of sails tramping around Windemere. It is hard to pick out the name but it has a "Z" in the middle "WiZard"?
Have a look - maybe you will recognize.
From a distance appears to be a standard 6.6. I understand there were some 6.6's with fixed keels.
On the subject of histories i am the owner of Limbo No.1 "Limbo Dancer"- still going and going well. In the photo section there are some old documents and photos for Limbo Dancer including original brochure.
Look forward to seeing some photos of the mystery Limbo.
Martin "Limbo Dancer"
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Post by willmitchell on Jan 8, 2010 18:09:52 GMT
yeah that'll be the one martin. I'm pretty sure she has a fixed keel though. When the lads bought her she had a hole in her side where she fell off her trailer in transit. Hence cheap. But at that point she was still in standard limbo blue complete with stripes. We've been frozen out for the last few weeks but rest assured. As soon as I'm there I'll snap some pics and upload them Will
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Post by Fuzzy Rush on Jan 24, 2010 21:52:12 GMT
More MT history info. from Derek & the Menace Trio...... RE: LIMBO 7.7's Derek Morland James Morland Tim Rees MENACE III" I will try to contact Andy Stewart to see if he has any info on the 7.7s. In the UK the 3 Everett designs, Shallot, Glass onion and Shaved fish were the boats to beat in our day, but the smoky 26 was fast and later Sham did well. There is a minitonner called Riot in HYS which looks fast. I do not know of any where in particular to get info on Minitonners, I think the last Mini ton championship was in Scotland, Andy did it in Limbo Lil a 7.7 but he lost his rig, it was a windy series. All the best ...DerekThanks Derek! Matt
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Post by willmitchell on Jan 25, 2010 19:23:14 GMT
hi fellas. we finally managed to get drifting oops i mean racing again at windermere yesterday.and ive snapped a couple of pics of wizard but dont know how to post them here. ill forward them to matt. It would appear ive been mistaken though as my mates tell me shes a lifting keel limbo. but im sure youll agree she looks mint though. will
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Post by kendocherty on Jan 25, 2010 19:53:25 GMT
Will, best way to post a picture is to put it on a site like flikr or photobucket, then just put the link in your post.
Matt will be able to add the pics to the minitonner site if you send them to him, maybe we should have a place for detailed pics, as I am really interested in how each of these boats is configured and rigged (sad I know....)
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Post by Paul Davis on Mar 13, 2010 17:09:41 GMT
With the Smokey and the Chior Boys she is a pure one off, the mould went to someone in the midlands who didnt really do anything with it. At the end of 1980 start or 81 the IOR rules changed with reference's to the overhangs, not allowing such big over hangs. This resulted in the production Smokey 25's being 24ft long not 25, like Smokey and the Chior Boys, as they have a smaller transom. Apart from that they are pretty much identical hull and deck wish, but the keel and rudders are different on the production boats. Different profile keel and a more basic rudder on the production boats. I gather from Stephen Jones onl 8 production Smokey 25's were built. From what I can find out the Smokey 25's were offered with 2 different rig choices, a cruising rig and a racing rig, and all of the prodution boats that I know of have a cruising spec rig.
The Mini Ton class became a yacht designers play ground where they could play when first starting out which resulted in some very special and different one off's. Well thats it for now
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Post by martin on Jul 2, 2010 17:20:42 GMT
Charismas were designed around 1980 by Mike Hobson & Steve Dalziel. I've corresponded with Mike Hobson by e-mail, he now runs a website called MyBoatsGear.com. Originally designed with a lifting keel and cassette rudder ( the first of class Charisma has these features I've been on board). A group of PLymouth yachtmen got hold of the plans and built I believe 8 of them, all except Charisma were fixed keelers and no cassette rudder. The plans and moulds are apparently still around here, which was handy when mine lost its rig in a boatyard accident , a new rig was made using the original plans. All except mine were built by a cooperative of the original owners. Mine was bult by the original owner on his own as he was a boatbuilder, hence it has one or two differences. Like a full width mainsheet track and a hatch in the aft of the cockpit to get into the transom void.
Although the numbers slowly declined , this is the first season that the West Hoe Sailing Club has not offered one design racing for Charismas and latterly Fox Terriers. I know of four other Charismas in the Plymouth area, sadly two are ashore and not in use
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ianw
New Member
Posts: 6
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Post by ianw on Jul 20, 2010 8:20:57 GMT
I'd be interested to know the whereabouts of any of the production Smokey 25s, I see 3 are listed so far, I think Eskymo was on ebay a couple of years back? There used to be a red one called "Smokey & The Bandit" in Poole for a while late'80s/early '90s.
The builder used to put 1/4 page ads in Seahorse & Y&Y for a while, I called requesting more info but they weren't too helpful, in the end we took the sensible option and bought a Sonata, enjoyed 10 years great racing and established a small fleet in Poole.
Was round at folks today & had a rummage in their loft for old Seahorses - found an ad for the Smokey 25, built by David Garrard Boatbuilders of Great Barford, Beds. Price in April 1981 was £5200 +vat complete or £2480 + vat in kit form.
Also found report of Mini Ton Cup in 1980 & 81, lots of interesting boats which have since disappeared:
"Billycan 80" - prototype for the Ministar, designed by Tony Castro & built by Bill Mackay & Partners, Seastar Marine, Renfrew. £4975 complete inc vat ex sails or £2645 inc vat for the mouldings. No idea how many (if any) were built.
The Miniseal - production version of "Honeymoon" Ron Holland design built by John Baker (Seal Boats) at Exeter
Limbo 21 - this was a chined Andrew Stewart design which I guess pre-dated the 6.6. "Limray" which took part in the cup was based in Poole for many years & we used to race against her, no idea how many 21s there were.
"Hissing Sid" - Rob Weguelins first design
"Reflex" - designed by Steve Dalzel
"Fire Spirit" - designed by Gary Mull
Wonder where they are now?
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Post by Gus Read on Sept 5, 2014 19:18:21 GMT
Hi,there, just browsing and reminiscing my sailing days and came across this post !
A mould was taken from 'Billy Can' and one hull was produced by Seastar Marine. Seastar were busy building the Castro1 tonner 'Justine 1V' which clean swept the Ton Cup (1983?) No more hulls were produced, Seastar went out of business and minitonner moulds disapeared. I bought the unfinished Mini Ton hull complete with Yachtspar rig - shipped from NZ at huge cost ! I completed the boat in time for the Tomatin trophy race in 1983?. I was unable to start the race due to work commitments and entrusted the boat to an extremely experienced crew ? I received a phone call sometime after midnight informing me that the boat had not recovered from a violent 'broach' and had sunk. The crew were taken off by another competitor and transferred to the Largs offshore lifeboat and safely returned to shore.
hope this answers your query Cheers Gus
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Post by Secondanita on Sept 8, 2014 18:32:48 GMT
This post has provoked/shamed me into writing. I have a large number of scanned photos and magazine articles, mostly supplied a year ago by Ian Watson (thank you) but added to over the last few years as I found boats for sale etc on internet plus 2 period pics of Glass Onion when my brother owned her. I dream that one day I can help support a database accessible from the class website. Maybe not as ambitious as www.histoiredeshalfs.com but at least somewhere where all the collected wisdom can be seen. I am not working at present and looking forward to retirement in May 2016 so may find some time.... I would need help to get it rolling, updates are not a problem. My contacts with the (then) young designers tell me that the start-of-design-career boats have a special place in designers' hearts. Giovanni Ceccarelli came to see me and my boat on the day I collected her from Ravenna, and contact with Julian Everitt re. a quarter tonner I was thinking about showed a similar level of interest. How can we save all this info to a useable format to include known results etc.? I have spoken a long time ago to Matt about this but we never got any further. Anyone any good ideas? Look at the QT website for the sort of one page per boat idea I have in mind (but without direct contact info). regards from Germany Richard Salter
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Post by Dickie on Dec 4, 2022 21:16:46 GMT
If this thread is still alive, I often see one of the Charisma Builders on my dog walks, he used to own Mint Julip which had a bit of carbon fibre in the hull, left over from a 65 ft racing tri we were both working on in the 1980s. I remember Reflex sailing past the spinner 28 I was on racing on downwind in a blow. I have just bought a Limbo 6.6 Special which has a fixed deep keel and double spreader rig with runners and check stays. Its a bit of a restoration project though.
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