Sail Number 8 Built in 1898
heir latest project, started in October 2003, has been reinstating the original Ulva to her past glory. At present the team are working round the clock to ensure that the boat is ready to be displayed at this coming weekend's RYA Dinghy Sailing Show at Alexandra Palace.
The rebuild of Ulva has been extensive and Ossie Stewart reckons only about 15% of the original boat remains. "The trouble is when you rebuild these things most of the planks have got damage - rot, plus 100 years worth of wear and tear. This is the third one we’ve done and experience tells us that it is better just to take a whole plank off and put a new one on it."
With the hull stripped out, the original Ulva was used as a plug. Into this MDF bulkheads were fitted to record the shape. The unsalvagable parts of the hull were then replaced (most of it), the makeshift MDF bulkheads removed and the structural stringers and frames added. Effectively the restoration process was similar to how a boat like this would be built if starting from scratch - only in reverse.
The hardest part to build was the V-shaped spray rail at the front of the cockpit. Jamie Stewart takes over: "You are bending it but with the angle on it it wants to roll inwards so you are putting twist on it as well. We didn’t steam it because we had to glue it, so we glued it in and then twist it round - we just forced it." The spray rail is two laminates of ply, but you wouldn't know if you looked at it.
In the construction around 4,000 nails were used. "It is a real nightmare - you drill the hole for the nail all the way through. Then you countersink it and then you hit the nail through, then you trim the nail off to length and then you have a guy on one side with a dolly and then the guy on the inside turns them over by hand. Every nail is turned over by hand and there are 4,000 of them and it is probably 30 seconds per nail. You get in a rhythm. Two taps is move on, one tap is stay. So it becomes musical."
In the Thames A-Rater class there are two schools of thought when it comes to hull design. All the hulls tend to be low freeboard skimming dishes, some particularly low freeboard, but essentially there is the long and skinny school while others are shorter with more beam. While Vagabond (see photo below) is typical of the former persuasion, Ulva is of the latter. Both have proved equally competitive.
One of the reasons that the glass boats dominated the class from the 1970s onwards was that they had aerofoil section centreboards instead of the traditional phosphor bronze lifting plates. More modern foils have now been added to the refitted wooden boats which are now (thankfully) back in winning form. Obviously being a river boat the foils are shallow - down they draw about 5ft - in order to hug the bank to get out of the current.
Ulva has a tear drop-shaped rudder. Other A-Raters have a cassette system allowing the rudder to be raised. However most impressive is her traditional Y-shaped tiller, made from around 13 pieces of solid mahogany (see photo on page 3). This tiller shape dates back to before the advent of the tiller extension when the helmsman could steer with his knee, presumably while retrimming his monocle/cravat.
With the advent of carbon fibre, so the class has slowly moved across to the new wonder fibre for their masts. This is not so much for any sailing performance benefit, but more for the practicality of stepping them. At around 34lbs they are substantially lighter than the old alloy masts that weighed in at 100+lbs.
While the new Ulva will have a carbon fibre spar, neither of the Stewarts are fully sold on the idea. "It is interesting that when they started using carbon fibre masts, the characteristics of the boat changed completely - they make the boat too stable," says Ossie Stewart. "When you sail on the river you want to be able to roll tack the boat like you do any other boat and you need a much heavier crew with a lighter mast."
Thus the Thames A-Rater is one of the few classes in the world were less stability is considered a bonus. Jamie Stewart completed a yacht design at Southampton University two years ago and investigated the Thames A-Rater for his thesis. Part of this included putting an A-Rater through tank testing and a wind tunnel (how many traditional keelboats have had that scrutiny applied to them?) "When I was doing the course I had to explain to four qualified naval architects that I wanted the centre of gravity of the boat as high as possible and they all looked at me and said ‘haven’t you learned anything in your four years here?’ But that’s Raters..."
As a result this season they will be fitting an alloy mast to Caprice IV - one of the beamiest and longest boats in the class. "Even if you have the weight penalty it is better for the boat in terms of feel and sailing it, because it feels so much better with less stability," says Ossie.
They are also considering, semi-seriously, a system whereby you could hoist lead up the inside of a carbon mast on a halyard in light conditions. The class rules don't specify where you have to put your lead correctors! "It is one of the only classes where they don’t weigh the rigs," says Jamie. "If they don’t measure the rig then the centre of gravity of the rig can change."
A-Raters are known for their unbeatable performance in less than six knots of breeze. In these conditions they have cleaned up at Queen Mary Sailing Club's January highlight, the Bloody Mary, on two occasions. "It needs to be no more than six knots of breeze because these things are incredibly fast in light winds, because it was what they were designed for - planing on the river - but as soon as the trapeze boats start to use their trapezes and start planing upwind, they're gone," says Ossie.
However Thames A-Raters are allowed to be 'turboed' if they are not racing on the Thames. On the river they sail with main and jib and a maximum of 350sqft of sail. Off the river they can effectively double their sail area, are unlimited in the size of kite they can fly and are allowed to use trapezes.
"I did Salcombe Week in our other boat last year with two trapezes and an Etchells spinnaker and it went like shit off a shovel," says Ossie, adding that they normally sail in this configuration with two of three crew out on the wire. They tried it once with three, but broke the mast...
The first event for Ulva is likely to be one of the Tuesday night or Sunday races out of Thames Sailing Club. Aside from these and the annual end of May Bank Holiday fest at Bourne End Week there are a number of other events for the class along the Thames such as the Braganca Bowl, sailed for at Tamesis Sailing Club in Teddington.
