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ePaper created 2014-06-11, 13:05:34 | version 1.30.01
49 set the record straight. In the 1960’s, no one doubted the speed of Princess sailed by the legendary Jim Davern. The seventies still produced nothing close to the 34-foot mark that could catch the Stewarts. In February of 1975, Bill Miller skippered Pimpernel to a first place finish in the Squadron’s annual night race to Kawau. The conditions on the 29.37 mile course wereidealwithfreshsouthwesterlies. Theawardcertificateshowsanelapsedtime of 2 hours,49 minutes. If you do the math,this works out an average speed on the course line of nearly 9.6 knots. Not bad considering the theoretical hull speed of a Stewart is just slightly over 6.1 knots and none of the Stewarts carried a spinnaker much past“A” buoy, which is only a fraction of the distance to Kawau. The wind angle was too shy to carry on with spinnakers, so they all sailed the rest of the race on a two-sail reach. Had the winds been just 10-15 degrees further to the South, allowing a spinnaker to be carried all the way,Pimpernel’s elapsed time would most likely have been cut to two and a half hours. Some other Squadron race results, found amongst the haphazardly kept records of the Stewart 34 Association,follow. In a Squadron Olympic race held on 18 November of 1978, Princess, skippered by Ray Haslar, was the first Stewart to finish. In fact, the first five Stewarts to finish came in before 16 of the 17 considerably larger “B Division” boats, including the very fast Jim Young designed NZ 37 Namu, which was beautifully restored in the late 1990’s and is still racing competitively on the Waitemata Harbour. Three weeks later on 9th December 1978 Panacea, sailed by Ray Thompson was the fastest of Stewart 34’s around the course and managed to come in ahead of the 48’Charlemagne and the 50’Northerner,both of which are also Bob Stewart designs. It is interesting to note how the Stewarts would have compared with the Squadron 2nd division in the 1980/81 season, had they been racing amongst the“faster” boats instead of in their own division. In fact, in the 13-race series, the top Stewart in each race would have gotten the gun five times, had six second place finishes, two thirds, and would have never missed out on at least a podium finish. Similar results were recorded in years 1988 and 1989. It was around about that time that the promoters of the well designed racer cruiser called the Farr 1020 were advertising that their class was not only the best one design class around,but the boats were also the fastest for their size.When the StewartAssociation publicised some of the above facts and figures,the Farr 1020 promoters quietly altered their somewhat misleading advertisements. As a point of interest,the Farr 1020 measures 33 feet 6 inches overall,which is just 8 inches shorter than the Stewart 34,while the Farr’s waterline is a mere 7 inches shorter. She has, however, a tremendous weight advantage. The Stewart, considered an“ultra light”boat when she was launched, weighs in at 10,350 pounds, rather portly by today’s standards, which is roughly 2000 pounds more than the similarly proportioned Farr 1020. The 1020 was designed 23 years after the Stewart by the world class yacht designer Bruce Farr. Since the early 1990’s much of the Stewart championship racing has been in the form of competition within the class, so direct comparisons with similar sized boats have therefore not been as readily available.Nevertheless when sailing in mixed company the Stewart’s performances still remain excellent. Inthe2005CoastalClassictoRussell,RoyDickson’sPlaybuoyfinishedwithanelapsedtimeof 14hours9minutesand15seconds. The first Farr 1020 to finish was Hard Labour, which recorded an elapsed time of 14 hours 44 minutes 34 seconds. While other factors besides pure boat speed may have contributed to the result, based on average speed alone, the Farr boat fell behind by a distance of approximately 4 miles. Roy was approximately 75 years of age at the time, and his elapsed time is probably the fastest Auckland to Russell for a Stewart 34. Prism rides a wave in the Coastal Classic Charles Winstone