Amazingly the 505 dinghy, still one of the most exciting performance boats in the world, is close to celebrating its 60th birthday. Is it French or British in its origins? Its a long story – but one thats worth telling in the full version.
Certainly the 505 was designed by British naval architect, John Westell, and equally certainly most of the early hulls were built by Fairey Marine at Hamble Point, but the 505 was not, in fact, the boat that John Westell originally set out to design, and it would never have seen the light of day had it not been for a group of enthusiastic French dinghy sailors.
In 1952 the IYRU announced a competition to select a two man dinghy class to be given International, and Olympic, status. The sailing trials held on a lake at Loodsdrecht in Holland were won by the Flying Dutchman, but the national sailing associations of Britain and France were not happy with the choice, arguing that the FD was too heavy and powerful a boat for crews of average size and weight, especially in the open waters around the French and UK coasts.
The objections were heard, and new trials were organised at La Baule, in France, in 1953. Among the new prototypes competing was an attractive 18 footer with a cold moulded hull. This was John Westells Coronet design, and it was the talk of the event, not just because of its revolutionary lines and good looks, but also because of its sparkling performance.
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| John Westells Coronet No. 1 |
The Coronet was an 18 foot boat with almost 200 sq. ft of sail area. It caught the eye of many of the worlds top dinghy sailors at La Baule, partly because of its beautiful cold moulded hull, relatively narrow waterline beam, and built-in buoyancy side tanks, but mostly because of its wide flaring topsides, which gave it a futuristic speedboat-like look, quite unlike any of the other boats present.
It was said afterwards that the trials were weighted in favour of the 20 ft Flying Dutchman. Only the FD had two boats present, while all the other classes were represented by a single example. This meant that the FDs could split at the start, to sail different sides of the course, while the rest of the fleet had to guess which side would pay best. It was quickly apparent that the Dutchman had only one rival. The FDs are said to have had a slight boatspeed advantage on the beat, but the Coronet, with its lighter weight, smaller genoa, and lower wetted surface was quicker to tack and accelerate, so windward honours were divided. The Coronet planed more easily and was faster downwind, however. The two Dutchman crews had the advantage of being able to team race against the rest of the fleet, and, in particular, their only real rival, the Coronet. Whether this was fair or not, the 2 FDs finished the trials with a combined total of more wins and places than any other class, but the Coronet was, by a comfortable margin, the leading individual boat, and, in fact, dominated the series convincingly.
The Flying Dutchman once again got the nod from the IYRU committee. Westell was informed the Coronet could apply for International status once 100 examples had been built, but no further Coronets were ever built and the sole example was sold to an East African sailor.
This could have been the end of the story, but for the enthusiasm of some of Frances top dinghy sailors who recognised a good thing when they saw it.
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| This is said to be 505 No. 1 (probably K1). Notice the flat topped side tanks and transom mainsheet |
The plans were accepted by a Caneton technical committee meeting at the end of 1953, and the Caneton 505 became an official French National class before a single boat had been built!
Within weeks the first 505 was under construction in a workshop at the back of a photographers studio in Paris. The builders, Messieurs Bigoin and Labourdette, both Caneton sailors, managed to scrounge the wood and tools, but the hull turned out to be slightly too wide to go through the workshop door, so the doorframe and some masonry had to be removed before the 505 could emerge! Caneton 505 Number 1 was launched on the Seine at Meulan at Easter in 1954, and tested by several of Frances top sailors. At the end of the holiday weekend Cettier found himself with orders for 10 boats!
The original Coronet had been built by John Chamiers Tormentor yard at Warsash on the Hamble river, but Cettier found that Fairey Marine, across the river at Hamble Point, could produce the hulls cheaper and more quickly, using their hot moulding process in which the hulls were “baked” in a large autoclave oven to cure their advanced aeronautical glues.
These first bare hulls were nested together and delivered to France where they were finished by the Sampson yard at Sartrouville and by Mallard at Les Mureaux, both on the River Seine.
Meanwhile, Fairey were turning out their own finished version of the “Five-O” for sale in Britain, as well as other bare hulls to be finished by customers or by other yards, in particular Tormentor just a few yards away across the Hamble River. By August there were enough 505s sailing to hold a Franco-British challenge regatta at Ouistreham in Normandy.
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| 505 No 8 (France) Note the rolled tanks and cutout transom |
The early French boats did not feature the characteristic rolled side tanks that we associate with the 505, but certainly some of the very earliest boats finished by Fairey had them, and in time they became a trademark feature of the class. These, and the characteristic flared topsides make the Five-O a relatively comfortable boat to sail, as there is no sharp edge to dig into the crews legs, and spray, or at least some of it, is deflected away from the boat and the crew.
The first boats had wooden masts, but the class rules allowed for all kinds of development in the areas of construction materials, interior layout, running rigging, shaping of foils, etc., and the top boats in the class on both sides of the channel were soon sporting Proctor alloy spars, open transoms, centre sheeting, and other innovations. The astonishing performance of the 505 soon brought it to the attention of sailors all over Europe and the World, so the class spread quickly as new racers took up the class, and new builders took on construction.
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| Notice the class burgee? It carries both the Coronet and Caneton insignia |
By 1955 with over 100 boats sailing, the 505 bcame an International class in its own right. The first fibreglass hulls started to appear in the latter part of the 1950s, initially composite boats with wooden decks, transoms and side tanks, later, builders like Lanaverre in France and Parker in Britain would produce hundreds of all-plastic boats.
Since the class rules allow all kinds of materials, provided essential hull dimension and minimum weight limits are adhered to, the 505 has always been in the forefront of construction technology. Nowadays hulls and spars are of carbon fibre, and stiff hydrodynamically profiled foils promote planing even to windward, but even with all their scarily modern equipment, the modern 505 is still recognisably the same boat as the one that Parisian photographers door had to be knocked down for in 1954.
Some bullet points:
- Both the Coronet and 505 were designed from the start for a two man crew with a trapeze.
- John Westell sailed the Coronet in the IYRU La Baule trials and one of the 505s in the first 505 class regatta at Ouistreham.
- The International 505 Association burgee still carries the Coronet and Caneton insignia in recognition of the origins of the class
- More than 9000 boats to the 505 design have now been registered
- The magazine "Cahiers du Yachting" donated the wood for the first boat
- Daniel Mazo was the photographer whose doorway in the Boulevard Saint-Martin had to be “modified”
- The 505 is known in France as the “Cinquo”
- The first 505 originally carried the Caneton sail insignia with the class number 1701
- The topsides flare from 1.24m beam at the waterline to 1.88 at the gunwhale, increasing vastly the power of the trapeze while keeping wetted surface area low at non-planing speeds.
- Fairey Marine built more than 200 hot-moulded wooden 505 hulls.
- The 505, with all its spars, rigging and racing equipment, can be towed by a Citroen 2CV!
Designer: John Westell
Length: 5.05 meters
Beam: 1.88 meters
Weight: 127.4 kilos
Sail Area:
Main 12,30 sq. m.
Jib 4,94 sq. m
Spinnaker 27 sq. m. (originally 20 sq.m)
Philipe Harlés Muscadet is a French legend. In the early 1960s the Muscadet helped “democratise” the sport of sailing, making ownership of a real coastal cruiser affordable for the ordinary working man. There were, of course, other designs, many from the drawing board of J-J Herbulot, that were as affordable and as capable, but it is the Muscadet, with its instantly recognizable profile, its startlingly good offshore performance, its sheer numbers and its longevity that must take the honours as the real French “peoples boat”.
To start at the beginning, Philippe Harlé was working at the Glénans Sailing School where he was in charge of boat maintenance. A new motor supply shuttle was needed for the cash-strapped, island-based school, so Harlé designed it and oversaw its construction himself. Naturally he was then the obvious choice to manage the construction of the schools new offshore training yacht, Glénan, designed by the great John Illingworth.
In spite of this encouragement, Philippe was still working at the Glenans when the prototype of his next design, the Muscadet, was launched at the Aubin yard in Nantes during February 1963. Built in plywood with a single hard edged chine, its reverse sheer and high slabby topsides unrelieved by ports or other features, she must have looked unusual to say the least. Claude Harlé, Philippes wife, thought it ugly, and taking a tin of anchovies from her larder as a template, she traced three oblong porthole openings on the Muscadet plans. With these windows and a broad contrast stripe painted under the sheerline, the Muscadets looks were marginally improved, and the boat sailed, with little further preparation, across the Bay of Biscay from Nantes in heavy weather, to take part in a One-Of-A-Kind Rally organised by a yachting magazine at La Rochelle.
The crews of the competing yachts may have laughed at the little "soap box” as they called the Muscadet, but they stopped laughing when she outsailed bigger and much more expensive boats and left them all with a good view of her most boxy feature – her almost square transom. That year two further Muscadets sailed to the Glénans, where they were trialled by many of the staff and trainees and excellent reviews were published in the Glénans journal. Muscadets performance both on and off the wind, especially in a choppy sea, was judged outstanding, and her fine seakeeping and sailing qualities, together with her low cost, soon led to a very full order book for the builders, Aubin, and to Philippe giving up his job and setting up shop as a Naval Architect in his Paris apartment.
At any time in the 1960s or 70s, a yachtsman visiting France would have noticed the proliferation of the Muscadet class. it was taken up by individuals and clubs all over France, and its amazing ability to make fast passages in rough water, often with 4, or even more, on board (the French love to sail in company) impressed the crews of larger, more traditional British cruising yachts who would find Muscadets turning up in the Channel Isles, the Scillies, the English south coast ports, and even the south-west of Ireland.
Although the Muscadet continued to prove its ability in offshore races throughout the 1980s (there was at least one Muscadet in every Mini-Transat up until 1991), the new generation of Mini 6.50 offshore racers, including designs by Harlé, eventually made it uncompetitive. However, the class remains, to this day, highly popular in French waters as a family cruiser and one-design regatta racer.
", by Claude Harlé and Dominique Lebrun.
