by Richard Crockett
As I have steadfastly ground away at the task of digitising 60 years worth of sailing magazines some real gems pop off the pages. I have been amazed at how much was written in the ‘60s and ‘70s about trimarans, and the story I share with you is one of those.
The headline read “A day’s run of 306 miles”. So what – it’s been done before was my initial reaction, until I realised that it was achieved by a 20-foot trimaran! (It’s worth noting that 306nm is an average of over 12 knots every hour).
J. S. Taylor, the Australian designer and innovator, tells us about one of the great feats of little-ship sailing in a 20 ft. Trimaran of his own design, with the opening two paragraphs reading as follows:
The log is like a pair of crutches to the unreliable human memory; in turn it is a miserable poor tool to express the subjective impressions of the mind.
The jotted down record just could not tell about the impossibly-clear winter day, so typical in this part of the year south of the Coral Sea. The SE trade, after having grown tired, is in one of its rare gentle moods and helps to make the most perfect sailing day the cruising man could wish for. The redesigned and rebuilt ‘Maui’ knifes to windward in a style she never possessed before.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: 1965 05 – SA Yachting – pgs 22-23-50-51