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ePaper created 2014-06-11, 13:05:34 | version 1.30.01
43 fleet and never to fully equalise her for one design racing. When that prospect of doing so became inevitable, he instead took Pendragon to Sydney, where she is still actively racing. She continues her long and illustrious career with numerous divisional wins, as well as first on IRC Handicap in the 384 nautical mile 20th Anniversary Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race. The Pendragon affair only serves to illustrate that when one owner seeks to gain an unfair advantage,the long-term effect usually endsupbeingalose/losesituation. KenAllenmayhavewonafewraces,butultimatelylostthewartokeepracinghisadvantaged boat in Auckland. The Stewart Association’s reputation was undoubtedly marred by allowing this situation to carry on for so long. Within the Association, long term friendships were destroyed over the issue, and in the racing community the reputation of the Stewart 34 as a top one design class was tarnished. Fortunately there were members such as Lloyd Brookbanks, Alan Fletcher and Bill Miller who never gave up fighting for the Rules of Intent to be followed. It was also fortunate to have new leadership in Chairman Wayne Boberg and Secretary Gloria Locke whose efforts resulted in finally reaching a solution to a long-lingering problem. If the Pendragon affair was divisive to the Stewart Class, it did have a silver lining. Although Ken Allen never did build the swing test apparatus,the Association was ready to swing into action when the next under-class-weight boat appeared on the scene. When Passion was launched she weighed in 610 pounds less than permitted by the class rule due to an extremely light interior fit out. As expected,she had a noticeable speed advantage over the other boats in the class. This situation prompted the Stewart Association to invest in the apparatus to facilitate swing testing for all the boats racing in the class. Passion was ultimately swing tested,fitted with equalising weights of the proper amounts in proper locations,and she became more or less equivalent in speed to the rest of the class. Upon discovering this, her owner Mick Cookson promptly sold her. 8 - Swing Testing-Equalising Weight and Weight Distribution Preparations for the first Citizen Watch Match Racing Series in April 1979 were very rushed. The event hinged upon the New Zealand Yachting Federation granting permission to allow sponsorship of the yachts. By the time permission was finally granted, there were only three weeks left before the first race. Accordingly, there was not enough time to fully equalise the fleet of Stewart 34’s to the degree the organizing committee would have liked. Nevertheless, the fleet for the inaugural event appeared to be fairly equal in their overall performance and the event turned out to be a tremendous success. For the next contest in 1980 the Stewart Association decided early on to weigh each of the ten boats selected for the upcoming regatta and then properly equalise them by placing internal ballast into the lighter ones. On the 18th of April 1980 ten boats were lifted out of the water by a crane and weighed with a load cell weighing system. They had all been inspected before hand to insure that they had similar safety gear, ground tackle, sails and other necessary equipment as specified in the Class Rules. Calculations were made indicating how much weight was to be added to the lighter boats to make them equal. This should have made the boats identical,right? Not exactly. Except in perfectly flat calm water, boats of identical weight and dimension do not necessarily perform equally. Concentrating weight closer to a yacht’s center of gravity will generally improve her performance.Conversely,moving weight away from the center of gravity, i.e. towards the ends of the boat, will cause her to pitch more in a seaway, making her less responsive and sluggish, negatively affecting boat speed. When adding weight to the various Stewarts, the measurer’s challenge was not only to equalise the weight,but the weight distribution in order to fully equalize the fleet’s overall performance characteristics. This was aided by a process called swing testing, a procedure developed by the French engineer Bernard Gamboley and recommended to the Stewart Association by maritime consultants Alf Lock and Geoff Smale in 1984. In simple terms, if a boat is totally suspended off the ground at a single point above her center of gravity and allowed to swing freely like a pendulum, the time it takes to make one swing or oscillation compared with the time of another boat’s oscillation will indicate which boat is lighter in her bow and/or stern sections, or in yachting lingo, the ends. Boats that are lighter in the ends tend to sail faster, so ideally in a one design class all the boats should take the same time for one oscillation. If one boat swings faster than another, equalising weights must then be placed towards the ends of the boat until her oscillation time is equal to that of the rest of the fleet.