Howdy from Bob Duff,
This memorable view of an International One Design wooden bottom brings back a swarm of fond memories for those of us who started our sailing lives in the "good old days" when men were men and racing yachts were just wood - beautiful wood! We can tell a lot of tales. Here I am trying to tell some of them on my fancy MacBook Pro computer which never was made of wood.
These recent pictures may be the last glimps of what things were like in the beginning for many of us who started in those primitive days - this is Ted Hood's once dominant 1939 Marblehead International One Design - IOD - #47 - PRINCESS. She waits patiently for miraculous restoration magic to be performed by Marblehead's Bruce Dyson. She will look "just like she came off of the freighter from Norway years ago". That was the oft heard comment late this summer when Sara and Ken Drewry's #33 SMALL HOTEL came back racing after new owner Lori Bate had her restored by Bruce's genius!
Below is PRINCESS again from her port side. Click on this picture (or any of them) for an enlarged view. Notice especially the horizontal length of the 10 hole chain plate showing above the covering board. I will present other pictures and comparisons to the stainless steel chain plates we salvaged from 1936 TANGO #16 when she sank and we converted her on a new glass hull. I will some "fascinating" details of IOD chain plates in future issues of this blog. Come back again to DUFFSTUFF! Meanwhile, I have asked past World Commodore Thornton Clark for more remembrances to share with you about this whole era .
NOTE AS OF OCTOBER 8, 2008---My good friend Jim Ayer just called to correct my original text saying "starboard" where the pictures are of PRINCESS's "port" side. I just fixed it. It is always pleasant to find that anybody reads my DUFFSTUFF. This little bloop reminds me of my ex-wife when I was rowing her in a dinghy some years ago. She faced forward and I faced aft rowing. She said "Row to Port!". I did! Then she said typically, "NO STUPID! ---MY PORT!". Believe me despite that little story, she is an excellent sailboat racer!
Long before I got here, oft told tales say that Ted & PRINCESS dominated races even without the use of HOOD's narrow panel sails. Brad Marvin (Commodore of PLEON YACHT CLUB in the late thirties) reports that Ted was so feared by the other IOD skippers that they refused to allow the customary annual purchase of sails to ever be granted to Hood's Sail Loft. Brad says they went to a place he calls "OMAR THE TENT MAKER" for mainsails to prevent Ted from "cheating" if he made sails for the whole fleet.
Historically since 1936/1939 one sail each year is bought for each boat in the entire fleet from the same sailmaker in an attempt to maintain near perfect one-design racing conditions. It has worked rather well, but many aggressive sail makers have avoided IODs since they must usually sail with a competitor's product. There have been some exceptions - not very many. IOD is an interesting sail market! Hood's loft did make a lot of sails for us some years back. I just retrieved a HOOD JIB from my attic and gave it to a friend for a storm sail on his Bristol 35.5. The sail felt like new despite its age.
Going on with the tales, rumors are that Ted was pressured to sell PRINCESS away from Marblehead because she was thought to be "a super boat". She went away to the Great Lakes. Years later, she has ended up back here in the condition shown by these pictures. Ted's nephew Chris Hood owns her now and is behind the restoration move. No stranger to the IOD, Chris owned and raced IOD MISTRESS(?) #3 which was later sold into the racing fleet in Northeast Harbor Maine. I also have heard that Chris built all 13 of the identical glass IODs which seeded the new racing fleet on Nantucket Island Massachusetts. As to the "super boat" label for PRINCESS, most of us think we know that it was something other than the boat! It will be most interesting to see how she performs on the racing circuit in the twenty-first century.
Meanwhile, Bruce Dyson ( former sailmaker as is his winning IOD crew Norm Cressy) reports that Ted Hood is baffled as to why anyone would want to restore his old boat! See you next week.
