Sailing Magazine
By Richard Crockett
I was more intrigued by the description of the winds on Table Bay than the actual design of this concept 25-foot racing dayboat by Kees Bruynzeel.
I personally don’t recall ever seeing one, so cannot be sure whether the concept had any traction or not? In 1959 when the concept was floated under the headline “In Pursuit of Speed” the cost was estimated to be £700.
The feature opened like this: “In Table Bay as autumn comes – and other yacht clubs have their closing cruises – the Royal Cape Yacht Club starts its season and races in the northerlies and westerlies of winter.
“The reason is that in summer the famous Southeaster, or Cape Doctor, tears down off Table Mountain and too often makes the Bay obnoxious for sailing yachts. There is a steep, hollow sea calculated to stop in their tracks all craft beating back to harbour; and the williwaws, striking from above, rather than horizontally like ordinary squalls, pin down boats and bewilder them and their punch-drunk skippers.
There is no doubt about it, one way and another, Table Bay is the place for keel boat sailing – and good, tough keel boats at that.”
After his success in Cape waters Kees Bruynzeel believed that the hardchine boat, very light and cheaply and easily made out of waterproof plywood sheets, provided the best answer.
“When his ideas had crystallised, he commissioned the editor of Yachting News to hammer out a design. Southeaster was the result, a conscientious and hard-headed exercise on the multum in parvo theme. (ED. multum in parvo translates to “a lot in a little”).
“The approach was quite cold and objective, strictly to treat the specific problem on its merits.
“The project was straightforward – exciting speed, coupled with simplicity, cheapness, lightness and strength. And the ship had to be as seaworthy and as comfortable as a boat without a cabin could be. All this had to be done in thin plywood, which means that every surface of the hull must be part of a cylinder or a cone. This means that the ply wraps on meekly, without forcing.
“A fascinating designing chess problem.”
READ MORE HERE: 1959 05-06 – SA Yachting – southeaster dayboat – OCR
