Vintage Class

Rules A brief history of the Rating Rules used by Model Yachtsmen in the UK by Russell
Potts. This is very much 'work in progress' and comments from readers would be most
welcome.

1881, The Tonnage Rules 10-Tonners etc.

1887, The Length and Sail Area Rule 10-Rater etc.

1896, The Linear Rating Rules 42LR etc.

1906, The First International Rule 8-Meter etc.

Also, there is the Second International Rule of 1920, the A-Class, the 36inch Restricted
and the 50-800 or Marblehead. As it says above, this section is work in progress.

Current Class
and Racing The current class rules and racing rules are available from the Model Yachting
Rules Association and will not be reproduced here.

The Racing Rules for Free Sailing can be found here (pdf file)

VMYG members can obtain information on obselete classes from the Chairman

A Brief History of the Rating Rules used by Model Yachtsmen in the UK

Introduction

Any competition between sailing craft needs to take account of the fact that big boats are faster than
small ones. Some way of measuring the size of a boat is needed, either to place boats in roughly
comparable groups (level rating), or to determine handicaps that would, theoretically, even out the size
differences. While full size yachting has tended to favour handicaps, modellers, with few exceptions,
have preferred the concept of level rating.

The competitive sailing of model yachts has existed in Britain since at least the mid 1820s. At that time
races were run for trifling wagers by the London artisans who sailed their models on the Chelsea
Water Companys reservoir that stood at the high point of Green Park, just behind where the tube
station is now. We dont know what Rule they used to determine the size of their boats, but we can be
sure that they had some system designed to ensure that racing did not become a procession.

Local Rules

For most of the 19th century, Rule making was a matter for individual clubs or informal groups of
modellers who sailed together and there was no serious attempt to co-ordinate Rating Rule practice. A
wide range of Rules are known to have been used at particular times and places, including length,
measured in a variety of ways, weight, as at Dundee, and various formulae which sought to take
account of all three dimensions of the hull. None of these systems made any attempt to measure the
sail area of the boat, any more than did the Rules then used by full size yachtsmen. So far as we know,
none of these earlier model Rules directly followed full size Rating Rule practice until the early 1880s,
when there is some evidence that members of the Liverpool club were using the 94 Tonnage Rule. As
this club was dominated by a group of well heeled Liverpool merchants, some of whom may well have
had full size yachts, a direct link to full size practice is possible. We have so few designs and boats
from this period of model yachting that it is not possible to say anything useful about the effect of the
Rules on design practices, Even when boats from this period turn up, it is often impossible to determine
what Rule they were built to, or whether they were to a specific Rule at all.

As there was no organisation above club level and very little interclub competition, clubs were able to
persist with their own local Rules for long periods, and evidence of this can be found as late as the turn
of the 20th century. Even where clubs began to adopt Rules of wider acceptance, many continued to
use their local Rules in parallel, or added local riders to more widely adopted Rules.

The 1730 Tonnage Rule

The first Rule to have more than a local acceptance among modellers was the so-called 1730 Rule.
This was a Tonnage calculation introduced for full size yachts in 1881, by the relatively new Yacht
Racing Association (YRA) founded in 1875. It was an attempt to deal with the dissatisfaction felt with
the existing Tonnage Rules, which were not uniform between clubs and were thought to lead to the
development of an unsatisfactory form of yacht, deep and narrow in hull form and unsuitable for use in
later life as a cruiser. The concepts of a proper yacht and a wholesome form of hull begin to be
bandied about at this time among full size sailors and to have a baneful effect on the development of
racing craft. This influence spread, despite its irrelevance and illogicality, to the discussion of model
Rules, with equally unfortunate results that persisted until well into the 20th century.

The YRA formula was

(L+B)2 x B
1730

where L was the waterline length, B was the greatest breadth, wherever found.

Dimensions were taken in feet and the resultant of the top line divided by the 1730 constant to give a
measurement in Tons. There was no necessary relationship between the boats tonnage measured in
this way and her tonnage for customs purposes, let alone her actual displacement. Full size yachts
were given handicaps based on their tonnage, though level rating races were also offered for the
smaller classes at 5, 10 and 20 tons.

The effect was not what the Rule makers had expected or wanted. Far from curbing the undesirable
effects of the previous Tonnage Rule, this exacerbated them. Including beam three times over in the
calculation put a very heavy tax on it, while leaving depth unmeasured encouraged designers to go
steadily deeper to regain stability lost by narrowing the hull. That this Rule more or less coincided with
the general adoption of outside ballast in full size yachts only made things worse. The result was
characterised as a plank on edge, or lead mine. The French referred to them as couloirs lestes,
ballasted corridors.

Model yachtsmen had been using outside lead ballast since at least the 1830s when Cooper the
gunsmith produced the first recorded example. Their adoption of the 1730 Rule came a few years
behind that of the full size fllet and more or less coincided with the appearance of the first magazine to
devote regular coverage to the sport. The Model Yachtsman and Canoeist was edited from Hull and
was keen to promote interclub racing and the development of regional and, hopefully, national
organisation of model yachting. Interclub racing required a common Rule and the 1730 Rule had the
advantage of being the full size Rule also, thus catering to the preferences of those modellers who
wished their competitions to be as much like the full size sport as possible. It enabled designers to
believe that they, like the full size designers of the day, were contributing to the development of naval
architecture.

Modellers used the same formula as full size yachtsmen, but measured in inches rather than in feet.
Their boats, freed from considerations of safety or comfort, tended to be even more extreme than their
full size counterparts and some clubs, such as Liverpool and South Shields, introduced additional
elements to limit the draft of boats and, in the case of Liverpool, to enforce a minimum freeboard, to
require the use of bulwarks and of rigs comparable to those used on full size yachts. These local riders
to the 1730 Rule may have been more widespread than these two clubs, but no evidence has so far
come to light.

The effect of the Rule on model yachting was twofold.

First, it produced models that closely paralleled the style produced in full size designs; long, narrow,
deep and heavily ballasted. Many designs were published without sail plans, leaving it to the builder to
decide how much his boat could carry. Sail area was unmeasured and top suits were very big. Sail
reduction was possible by substituting a jib headed topsail for the jackyard style carried with the top
suit, and by dousing the flying jib. The next stage was to remove the topsail and jib and sail under main
and staysail alone, Even so, all serious competitors had a number of different smaller rigs to suit
different wind strengths. Generally, these were complete with a separate mast and spars.The
illustration below shows the sail plan for a typical 10 Tonner. Even the smallest option from this suit is
over 800 square inches, on a hull less than 40 inches on the waterline and a displacement of about 20
pounds

Second, the general acceptance of the Rule and the existence of the magazine meant that for the first
time a reasonable sequence of designs to a common Rule is available, enabling some conclusions to
be drawn about the development of design ideas.
The 1730 Rule lasted only five years in full size yachting and was replaced by the Length and Sail
Area Rule in 1887. Modellers had only just started to use it when it was replaced, and, having tasted
the benefits of a common Rule, were slow to give it up. It continued in vigorous life among modellers
for many years. Model designers, or at least some of them, were well aware of the results of William
Froudes tank tests that showed the importance of skin friction as a component of resistance. Like full
size designers, they started to cut away the forefoot and deadwood of their hulls so as to reduce the
wetted area, though sophisticated thinkers like Stansfield-Hicks maintained that this process could not
be carried as far in models as in full size craft which had an on board helmsman. He believed that
models needed a fair amount of deadwood to ensure that they ran straight and were not too much
affected by variation in wind strength. In those parts of the country where the 1730 Rule lasted
longest, the Northeast and on the Clyde, the late form of boat to the Rule was rather different. The hull,
while remaining very narrow, or even becoming narrower, became shallower, so that it closely
resembled that of a rowing wherry. The lead ballast remained at its original depth and was connected to
the hull by a deep fin.

1907 boat designed by A Long, a shipyard draughtsman and

member of the Gateshead club. This is not a particularly extreme
example
 1908 West Hartlepool boat

The illustration above of a 1908 boat from West Hartlepool shows the style of boat that persisted in the
North East until at least the late 1920s. Some examples in Scotland, and possibly elsewhere, used twin
fins to help the tracking of the attenuated hull. This development is discussed more fully in the context
of the LSA Rule below.

The Length and Sail Area Rule

In 1887 the YRA decided that Tonnage Rules of any sort were no longer acceptable and introduced the
Length and Sail Area Rule. This was the brain child of its Secretary, Dixon Kemp, who wanted to
introduce a Rule that paid more attention to the factors that actually contributed to the speed of a boat:
the length and (for the first time) the sail area.

The formula was :

LxS
A
600
0
where L was the waterline length in feet and SA was the sail area of the largest rig in square feet.
The introduction of the Rule for the first time required the limited sail area to be used in the most
efficient way and the hull resistance to be reduced as far as possible by more efficient design. This
coincided with the general acceptance of Froude's work on resistance and resulted in hulls becoming
much shallower, with the profile cut away as far as possible. Because beam was not taxed, stability
was sought by increasing the beam and carrying the lead ballast on the end of an attenuated fin. The
shallow hull form and large beam facilitated the design of boats whose actual sailing length increased
substantially as they heeled and designs were developed that exploited this by using long overhangs
both fore and aft.

These trends were carried furthest in the smallest classes, the Half, One and 2.5 raters that made up
the extremely competitive 'Solent small classes'. These were all open keelboats and centre board craft,
used exclusively for racing

In the larger classes many owners found the Rule unsatisfactory because the shallow hulls it produced
meant that only in the very largest yachts was it possible to provide the standard of accommodation
that the late Victorian yachtsman demanded. The designers and builders of the larger class of yacht
soon found that orders were drying up because boats built as racers had no resale value or later use
as cruisers. They lobbied the YRA in 1892 and again in 1894 to suggest that elements should be
introduced into the Rule that would enforce a fuller hull able to give 'proper' accommodation and to
preserve the link between racing and cruising yachts. The YRA were initially unreceptive to this idea,
partly because they knew that the Prince of Wales was planning to have a large yacht built to the Rule.
This was the famous Britannia. Despite the Prince's interest, by 1896, they had had enough and went
over to the first of a series of Rules that did indeed seek to enforce 'wholesome' hull forms capable of
providing accommodation (even in classes so small that they were not fully decked).

When modellers began to look at the LSA Rule, they did so very tentatively. No club wanted to be the
first to break away from the '1730' Rule, on which nearly all interclub competition was based. There
was also uncertainly over whether a 15 rater or a 10 rater was the most appropriate replacement for
the 10 Tonner, and even doubts whether the requirement to measure the sail area could be accurately
met in all clubs. The result was that, despite a widespread desire to sail to the same Rule as their full
size counterparts and the efforts of Model Yachtsman and Canoeist, which ran design competitions for
both 15 and 10 rater classes, there was little enthusiasm for the new Rule, until about the time that it
was being abandoned by full size sailors. When it was adopted by a majority of clubs, the 10 rater
emerged as the most popular class, though there were also clubs, such as the London, that sailed 15-
raters and examples were also seen of 5, 20, 30 and even 40 rater models. It is noteworthy that, while
the 10-rater became the most popular model class for the next fifty years or more and the locus of
much important development in model yachting, all this design development took place after it had
become obsolete as a full size Rule.

The Rule essentially invites the designer to trade the two main speed factors of a boat, length against
sail area to produce the most effective combination. Initially however the main problem that modellers
faced was how to produce a hull that was cut away to reduce frictional resistance, while at the same
time capable of being sailed without minute by minute helm corrections. A model that is fast but
wayward does not win many races. Early designs to the Rule were little different in style from the
preceding Tonnage Rule boats except in being more beamy. As the need to reduce wetted area
pressed harder, attempts to overcome steering tendencies relied on a solution of brute force and
ignorance, the twin or even the triple fin.

Zebra Triple Fin

Though the twin fin was extremely popular, it was not a real answer and was clearly a brake on boat
speed. This was demonstrated when a full size 1-rater was built with this configuration, but quickly
altered when she was found to be uncompetitive.

Other attempts at a solution included the development of the fin and skeg configurations, designed to
give a cutaway hull sufficient deadwood to preserve its tracking ability. This was originally developed by
William Paxton, a professional model builder and keen model yachtsman, and was briefly known as
'the Paxton keel'. The illustration Illustration 8 Deerhound. is taken from Bassett-Lowke's 1912
catalogue, but the style dates from a good deal earlier. The boat, designed by Paxton, probably dates
from the very early years of the century. Though it has a very pronounced skeg, it still uses a weighted
tiller to give a form of automatic steering, despite the introduction of Braine gear in 1904. In an auction
of items from Paxton's workshop in 1999, though there were many different types of model yacht
fittings, there was nothing that looked like a Braine gear.
 The final solution to the problem was Bill Daniels' XPDNC of 1906. This 10-rater, which Bill claimed
had had five keel configurations and fifteen rigs before he realised that he had to produce a hull that
was volumetrically balanced, marks the effective start of modern model yachting. Employing calculated
hull balance and effective automatic steering from the Braine gear, it swept all before it in very keen
competition in London and was followed by the even more successful Onward of 1911.
 XPDNC lines XPDNC sails

Initially the sail area had been measured by assessing the total area of cloth, but in the early 1920s the
MYA adopted the IYRU method of measurement in which the main sail was measured as a simple
triangle, or quadrilateral in the case of gaff sail, and the roach controlled by limits on the size and
positioning of battens. The foresails were measured by taking 85% of the fore triangle measurement.
This system continued until the Rule revision of 1969, discussed below.

So successful was this concept that 10-rater design stagnated for twenty years, with typical boats
having waterlines of 36 to 39 inches and top suits of up to 1600 square inches, before Jim Steinberger
produced Phoenix in 1930. This boat introduced a very high Bermuda rig, which was both more
efficient and, because of the way the sail area was measured, gave additional unmeasured area in the
roach of the sails. More efficient use of the sail area allowed the boat to be longer (43 inches lwl, 1395
sq. inches SA) and this trend continued for free sailing boats through the remainder of the life of the
Rule as changes in sail materials and better rig design permitted longer water lines and the re-
introduction of the bulb keel allowed hulls to be refined

Phoenix
. A rule change in 1969 to cope with the use of wing masts reverted to measuring the actual area of
cloth and added the side area of the mast but, by also changing the constant to 7500, allowed existing
boats to continue to be competitive and did not disturb the trend of designs to get longer, up to 65
inches on the waterline, and sail area to get smaller. This was not reversed until the introduction of
radio into the class, where the lack of a spinnaker for down wind work and the difficulty of accurately
trimming high aspect rigs by radio prompted a return to shorter boats with more sail.

The Linear Rating Rules of 1896 and 1901

Though many modellers persisted with the 10-rater when full size sailors abandoned the Length and
Sail Area Rule, there was a minority who attached greater importance to keeping in step with full size
practice and followed the change to the LRR. The aim of the Rule in the full size sport was to produce
boats that would have a form suitable for the provision of accommodation and thus a continuing life as
cruisers after they became outdated as racing craft. The method was to introduce a complex formula,

1st Linear rating Rule 1896-1900

Rating in L + B + 0.75G + 0.5

feet = sqrt S

L is lwl,
B is extreme beam
G is a skin girth, waterline to waterline, taken at 60% of lwl
S is sail area

The aim of the girth measurement was to penalise skimming dish and fin and bulb forms, but it was not
very successful. Many designers persisted with the forms they had produced under the LSA Rule and
accepted the penalties. They were able to do this because the Sail area element in the formula was
taxed much less severely than under the LSA Rule. Despite intending to introduce scantling regulations
the YRA failed to get a system agreed in time and the Rule produced boats that were very lightly built,
over-canvassed and in many respects unsatisfactory. So much so, that the YRA had a second go after
only five years experience.

2nd Linear Rating Rule 1901-1906

Rating in L + B + 0.75G + 4d +
feet = 0.5 sqrt S

2.1

lwl,
B is extreme beam
G is a chain girth, waterline to waterline, taken at 60% of lwl
d is the difference between skin girth and chain girth at 60% of the lwl
S is sail area
The new formula was essentially the same, but introduced a new element, 'little d', which was the
difference between skin girth and a chain girth at the 60% station. As this measurement was multiplied
by 4, its effect on rating was severe. 'Big G' was retained, but was now a chain girth measurement,
intended to place restrictions on hull depth without requiring a direct measurement of draft. There were
still no scantling Rules and the boats were extremely lightly built and short lived. The Yachtsman was
scathing.

They were predicted to be more compact, more seaworthy, more comfortable and less expensive than
the old boats. In practice they have proved to be over canvassed, wet, hard to steer, expensive to build
and maintain, tender and thus poor turning to windward. They are lightly built and their hulls are easily
strained. Their rigs are big and vulnerable, but owners would rather see racing postponed or
abandoned than reef.

The effect was still clearly not what the Rule makers said they wanted. One anguished correspondent
complained that 'There is no Rule that will dry bedding soaked through gaping seams'. In the season of
its introduction there were almost no 'First Class' yachts in commission and in 1904 there were none.
More importantly four wealthy owners built yachts as fast cruisers, not to YRA rule and following Lloyds
Register Yacht scantlings.

(An extended treatment of the development of full size Rules in the late 19th century can be found in
Russell Potts The Social Construction of a Sporting Technology 1880-1920, available from the Curved
Air Press.)

Modellers seem to have been slow in adopting the first LRR and the only evidence we have is of some
speculative designs for full size design competitions drawn by men who we know to have been active
as modellers.

Illustration 1:
Odgers 42LR Fast
Cruiser 1898.
There is no
evidence of any
models designed
or built to the 1st
LRR

.
By the time of the 2nd LRR, those clubs with an attachment keeping is step with to full size Rules,
notably the London, with a large element of owners of full size craft, and the Wirral, with a substantial
membership drawn from the design office of the Cammell Laird shipyard, had adopted the 2nd LRR
and built 42 foot LR boats at one inch to the foot. The 36LR design by H Wilson Theobald is apparently
an aberration and it is not known that any races were ever offered for this size of model.

The designs had a clear family likeness to the full size boats designed under the Rule, though in
acknowledgement of the 'square-cube' law, they tended to have more of their rating in the hull and less
in the sail area. Even so, and allowing for the compensating effect of sailing on inland waters and for
the effect of the wind gradient in tempering the force of the wind to models, like many LSA Rule
models, they were over-canvassed and must have done a lot of their sailing in rigs smaller than their
top suit. The effect of the '4d' element in the formula can be seen in the very full body forms and
relatively small fin element in the body sections, as can the requirement that the draft should not
decrease aft of the girth measurement point, which produced a characteristic 'hook' in the profile,. The
rigs seem all to have been closely modelled on full size cutter practice. No models built to this Rule and
very few designs are known to have survived

Illustration 3, Foster 42LR

Illustration 4, Theobald 36LR

 Illustrations 5 and 6, Kinchingman 42LR.

Addendum - June 2011, since the above was written, the model pictured below has come to
light, it could be a surviving 42LR. Having a guess at the waterline and sail area etc, it works
out very close to 42LR, more research is necessary.
 The First International Rule 1906-19
The YRA was still dissatisfied with the Second Linear rating Rule and its Secretary, Brooke Heckstall-
Smith, noting that the French and some other nations were looking to revise their Rules, suggested an
international conference that would seek to produce a Rule acceptable to a wide range of nations,
facilitating international competition. The conference met in two sessions in London and one in Berlin in
1906 and the result was the First International Rule, finally promulgated in October 1906, to come into
effect in the UK in January 1907 for classes at 23, 19, 12, 10, 9, 8, and 6 metres. January 1908 was
specified for the introduction of the Rule for classes at 15, 7, and 5 metres, because these would
correspond to the existing LRR classes at 52, 24 and 18 feet LRR. Races for LRR classes would
continue until the end of the 1908 season and combined fleets of metre boats and LRR boats would
race at the three latter sizes.

The Rule in its full size form had complex scantling requirements and specified levels of
accommodation in the larger sizes of yacht as well. The result was to produce very heavily built and
relatively expensive boats, described by those who preferred the lightly built yachts of the preceding
Rule as 'floating wood yards' and 'perambulators'. The application of the scantlings rules was entrusted
to Lloyds Register, who found themselves supervising the building of small open racing yachts.

The formula was:

Rating in Metres =(L + B .5G + 3d + .33 S1/2 - F)/2

Note: S1/2 is the square root of S. The conventional symbol is not available on the webpage.

L was the waterline length, but measured a short distance above the load waterline, to give a more
realistic representation of the sailing length, and further adjusted by bow and stern taxes based on the
differences between girths and freeboard at the bow and stern measurement points for L. These were
intended to encourage seamanlike V-sectioned ends rather than the U-shaped or flat ends that were
regarded as 'unwholesome'.

The bow and stern taxes. Though intended to control the shape of the ends,
they were not entirely successful in practice.
B was the beam at the widest point.

G was a chain girth, waterline to waterline, at the 55% point on the waterline.

d was a girth difference between the chain girth and a skin girth at the measurement point. It was
multiplied by three, rather than four, as in the preceding LRR.

The concept of girth difference, 'little d'

F was an average of freeboard measurements at the three measurement points of the waterline.

S was the sail area, measured as the whole of the cloth for the mainsail and topsail and as the whole of
the fore triangle representing the headsails. Spinnakers or square sails used for downwind work could
not exceed the area of the fore triangle.

There is some confusion over whether the model version of the Rule incorporated all the provisions of
the full size Rule. Clearly scantlings and accommodation requirements did not apply, but the first
models to the Rule were built by members of the London MYC before the foundation of MYRA (and
before even the formal acceptance of the full size Rule by the IYRU), and, given the interest and
attitudes of the members, would almost certainly have followed the Rule to the letter. After the
foundation of MYRA in 1911, the 12-metre at 1 inch to the foot was adopted as one of the national
classes and a model Rule was promulgated. As this Rule is set out in Hobbs's book of 1923, it makes
provision for bow and stern taxes to be applied to the measurement of L, but not for that measurement
to be taken above the actual waterline. Other statements of the model version of the Rule also make no
mention of adjusting the L measurement in this way and the calculation of the rating, included with the
drawing of Giles's 12-m design Dot, shows that the lwl was used rather than any adjusted
measurement. Similarly, Alfred Turner's discussion of design to the International Rule in Yachting
Monthly during the First World War makes much of the effect of the lack of bow and stern taxes in the
similar Continental 80 centimetre Rule, but accepts measurement of the lwl on the actual waterline.

It is hard to understand why the MYRA chose to depart from full size practice in this respect, as the
measurement above the waterline was no more difficult than the 'little d' and bow and stern taxes,
which they adopted. The London club were noted as being only too pleased to have a really complex
Rule on which to exercise their designing talents. They were the originators of the dry measurement
frame that became an essential part of serious model yacht measurement for the A Class in the 1920s
and later.
The Rule was not dissimilar in intent, and in effect, to the LRR that preceded it, but in models, even
more than in the full size craft, produced heavy, barrel-like hulls and excessive sail areas. A selection of
designs is shown below.

This is Alderman one of the very first model designs to the Rule, by E R
Tatchell of the London MYC. She was sailed by his son Percy, the London
MYC Secretary. Notice the very long gunter yard, with a brace to keep it
more or less straight
This is Sphinx a design by Willmer of the Wirral club that competed in one of the
London's early open races for the class. The rig is a conventional gaff sloop with
topsail.

Daphne, an early 12-m design by Bill D.aniels. In this publication in The

Yachtsman, the design is attributed to Richards, an older man with whom Bill
set up in partnership as professional model builders. After Richards' death in
1909, the design was universally attributed to Daniels. A similar joint attribution
was made for the 10-rater XPDNC when she first appeared, but there is little
 doubt that she, like Daphne, was essentially by Daniels.

The first models to the Rule were built and sailed in competition by The London MYC which contained
several designers of full size craft including Tommy Glen-Coats and E R Tatchell. The first open race for
boats to the new Rule was held on the Round Pond in March of 1907, before any full size craft to the
Rule had been completed. Designated as '1-metre' boats to the International Rule, the fleet had three
boats designed by Glen-Coats, three by Tatchell and three by John Odgers, a member of the MYSA
club that shared the water, though not the social pretensions, of the London.

The London took themselves and their contribution to the advance of naval architecture very seriously.
Their young and enthusiastic Secretary, Percy Tatchell suggested that full size designers might have
their designs tested by allowing London members to build and sail models of them. This was not taken
up by any designers outside the London itself. Glen-Coats progressed rapidly from designing '1-metre'
models to designing the first two full size 12-m to be built in Britain, one for himself and one for his
uncle. He won a gold medal in the 1908 Olympic Games with his boat Hera. John Odgers, a building
surveyor and member of the 'working men's club' at Kensington also designed full size boats, winning
design competitions run by The Yachtsman and designing a 7-metre Heroine for Charles Rivett-
Carnac, a retired Indian Civil Servant and member of the London. This boat turned out to be the dog of
the 7-m and 24 foot LRR fleet on the Solent but was entered for the Olympic regatta. The only other
entry, Mignonette, a much better boat, was damaged in the week before and could not be repaired in
time, so Heroine sailed over for the gold medal. This was the first (and last) time that Olympic medals
had been won by model yachtsmen. Rivett-Carnac's wife Clytie, who was part of his amateur crew,
became the first woman to compete in an Olympic event and won a gold medal as well. The boat did
not race after 1908 but was converted for cruising and was still on the Lloyd's Yacht register in 1945.

The Wirral club was another stronghold of the Rule. At a meeting in 1907 they decided by a very
narrow majority of their 60 or so members that LRR boats would be permitted to compete until the end
of the 1907 season, but that by the beginning of 1908 only International Rule boats would be accepted
in the club. There were groups of metre boats on the South coast at Southsea and Poole and another
strong club in London, the Alexandra which sailed on the water in Victoria Park. The club suffered a
disastrous boathouse fire in 1908 and took the opportunity to commit themselves to the International
Rule, buying many of the first generation 12.metre boats from the London club.

The total number of boats built to the Rule is not known because there was no central register and, in
any case, all MYRA and MYA records before 1925 have been lost, but it must have been substantial as
the MYRA made the 12-m one of its national classes and held the first national championship for the
class in 1912. Boats were also built in 10 and 8-m sizes, but it is not clear that there were ever enough
of these to provide regular competition. Interestingly, there were no 6-m models to the International
Rule, possibly because the idea of the 1 inch to the foot scale had too great a hold.

There are a fair number of designs still surviving and a small number of boats. Only one that I know of
is (or was) in sailing condition, the zebra planked example below. She was recovered from the back of
the boathouse in Dundee and restored and radioed as part of the club's centenary celebrations in 1985.
 The only 1906 Rule 12-m known to be in sailing condition. The rig is of
course of later date.

The 12-m came in just about the time that Braine gear was beginning to be used, but some boats
retained weighted rudder or weighted tiller steering. They were big and heavily canvassed boats and
the largest weighted rudder, used for down wind runs in heavy weather, might weigh as much as two
pounds. Weighted tiller gears of some sophistication were used, as seen in the example pictured of an
8-m. You can see why they needed heavy rudders.

8-m Elizabeth steering gear