Interview and wording by Editorial Staff Le Chasse-Maree. Translation by Christine deMerchant
The quest for performance is not a matter of materials, it’s a state of mind
Michael Storer
There are those who make aircraft carriers, liners or tankers, those who design super-yachts or flying racing trimarans … And then there are naval architects who design small dinghies to be made in garages – whose plans they sell for a few tens of euros to multiple builders.
The Australian Michael Storer is one of these originals, still relatively unknown to the public, in our latitudes.
An eccentric – a visionary, for some – whose simple and inexpensive boats testify to a very thorough optimization. They also show that the art of making small, stripped-down racers goes against the recipes of the nautical industry. if it supposes a radical simplicity, it does not exclude a certain elegance, in the pencil stroke as in the discussion!
On Lake Taal, in the Philippines, where Michael Storer has settled, the flotilla of OzGoose, minimalist but definitely sporty, dinghies designed by the Australian architect, built in batches by members of the very active Philippine Homebuilt Yacht Club (PHBYC), In the foreground, the committee boat, a banca reflecting traditional architecture similar to those of local fishermen.
Some of your boats are now well known in France, but not necessarily their creator. Could you tell us about your background?
I grew up in Avalon, about thirty kilometers north of Sydney. It is a fabulous site, a small peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and a large sheltered, beautiful harbour. Yet, as a child, I was not interested in the sea, I was of the cerebral kind, passionate about technology and science, and my parents were anything but sailors.
This changed on a beautiful summer Sunday morning when I got tired of car racing on TV, and I went out for a walk. I distractedly walked past one of the two sailing clubs in front of our rented house on the water of Pittwater. It was Jay Booth, a bus driver, who grabbed me and took me on his Stingray, an 18-foot B2 class catamaran. There was a breeze of about fifteen knots, we sped to the ocean in just a few minutes. In my head, that day, there really was a click, From then on, I started sailing in earnest, first, catamaran joyrides from pestering the local sailors and then on my neighbour’s small plywood scow, an old dinghy that I later bought for 70 dollars. It was the real start of freedom. Soon my parents left me to my own devices on this old boat with its sail laced to the mast, and its rubber downhaul … Already the joys of ‘low tech’ navigation!
A more recent Northbridge Junior – mine was number 14
So here you are on the water but not yet an architect or boat builder …
Between the ages of 12 and 14 drawing became a near vocation. My role models were racing boat architects, such as the American Doug Peterson or the New Zealander Ron Holland. Guys who started from nothing but became famous. I read voraciously all the books in the library on the subject of boats. By the age of 15 my frantic search for knowledge had given me a certain level of scientific and technological knowledge of boats. This, was the typical approach of a slightly nerdy young man.
But there was still a long way to go; I had not understood that Peterson, Holland and others had started in the offices of other architects, and there was nothing similar in Australia because of a lack of a sufficient market. So I followed a very different path, and, in the end, I owe much less to these childhood heroes than to the American architect Phil Bolger [1929-2007, author of more than six hundred plans and known for his boats with the construction simplified to the extreme, Editor’s note].
I worked at many technical and marine industry oriented jobs, meanwhile obsessing about boats.
My reading hadn’t allowed me to really tackle the fascinating questions of boat structure but I started working, at 27, at Duck Flat Wooden Boats, a company that marketed self-build kits designed by big names designers. I was able to compare their work, see how Bolger used carefully selected solid wood beams – wood is cheap in America! – or how the Australian Iain Oughtred perpetually sought lightness … learning much interpreting plans to make kits for customers
Finally, after a decade of scribbling, I finally came to a resolution: finished drawing imaginary boats; I will build my next boat! This is how in 1989, the Beth was born.
Can you tell us about the birth of this first canoe with a rather classic silhouette, and amazing performance?
We find a bit of Phil Bolger’s ‘Instant boats’ in the construction of the Beth … while the style of building, is all my own.. The boat had to be very easy to build, but I wanted it to be beautiful, and to have all the finer points of a regatta boat in terms of adjustments, optimization of the hull foils and rigging. One day I grabbed a few sheets of graph paper, drew this boat and traced everything on cheap plywood. A few hours later the hull was there …All this using simple and affordable materials.
The Beth is therefore a ‘box boat’ like Phil Bolger’s, but I gave it an elegant silhouette, with an attractive sheer and a yawl rig partly inspired by American canoes of the 1870’s. The flat sole is no less nicely designed.
In France, architects like François Vivier also designed simple canoes for amateur construction, most often taking inspiration from traditional fishing units. What are the roots of your boats?
In Australia, the recreational boating market is small and we continued to manufacture plywood sports dinghies until the 1990s, while in Europe or the United States, composites had long been in use. This is all the more true in restricted classes, which have been the subject of fierce experiments at home, the builders are the designers. This results in very light boats – commonly a dozen kilograms per meter of length (8 to 10lbs per foot).
We optimized the use of plywood, which among other things, retains its stiffness better than fiberglass-polyester composites, after ten or fifteen years … The mechanical qualities of composites have only really established themselves in racing, using sandwich construction, which the restricted classes have authorized with limits on the thickness of the core that mistakenly allowed composites to exceed the stiffness of plywood.
What was the genesis of the Goat Island Skiff following soon after Beth?
I must tell you though, that I did not multiply the creations. I’m not trying to design a model to fit into a market already occupied by good boats: no need to design a new Drascombe Lugger or a new Ilur, I prefer to imagine a boat for a new use!
For each project, I gather what I know, I look for inspiration elsewhere, I look at photos … there is a sorting that gradually goes on in my mind, and finally, the boat takes shape little by little from the catalog of forms that I have in mind, from my vision of hydrodynamics, and from the behavior expected at sea … and what would be fun.
This is how I thought of the Goat Island Skiff, to a variant of which you have devoted an article (Chasse Maree Issue #308): a ‘minimum’ boat designed to be made with six sheets of plywood. I also integrated what was learned from the experiments done on the Northbridge Senior 14 (NS14), a very competitive restricted class in Australia.
The astonishing characteristics of the Goat Island Skiff are the result of extensive work on the shape of the sole (central underwater shape), which allows it to plane so easily … Long before contemporary scows became fashionable, the NS14 showed that the current approach of adopting V-shaped bottoms flaring out at the rear to produce “planing surface”, is in fact completely stupid … It is by starting from the front at the level of the hull in fromt of and through the daggerboard case, that this upward thrust must be exerted, as opposed to a hull that has a fine entrance and a V-shaped bottom which only lifts at very high speed when the bow goes skyward, while, with a load-bearing bottom starting at the front, with a good round sole which carries the boat well in the middle, the boat is very quickly lifted, accelerates continuously, and planes gently.
British racer Mike McNamara described the sensation when trying out the Goat Island Skiff: ‘Downwind providing a great feeling of speed, but without any type of planing wake. It just keeps going faster and faster.’
Fuzzy video, but the Goats go faster and faster.
Video image can take a moment to load.
Innovations in restricted classes such as the Northbridge Senior 14 are put to a ruthless test, and Michael Storer does not fail to be inspired by it … As evidenced by his reflection on the sole of his Goat Island Skiff (on the right, Mojilito under construction by the Uruguayan amateur builder Daniel Caselli)
Joost Engelen’s Goat Island Skiff, in the Netherlands. After careful construction, Giswerk gives complete satisfaction in navigation. Joost’s correspondence with the architect will lead to the creation of two other models, the Viola and the Kombi, of which the Dutch amateur builder will also make the prototypes. On the right: Under certain conditons, we can do without trailers … Easy launch of Kringla, Marius Olsen’s Goat Island Skiff, on a frozen lake in Norway.
In a sense, lively, easy to build, chine boats, like the Goat Island Skiff, don’t really lend themselves to these experiments, as they have quite a bit of wet surface, but I gave it a shot to see if we could. transpose this hydrodynamic approach to them. As you will have understood, it is one of the joys of this profession to be able to put the theory into practice and test the application of new principles, whether from the point of view of forms or navigation, even with apparently rustic means, this is a pleasure similar to what I was able to enjoy by tweaking the settings of the small boats of my youth, and which one cannot savour by applying the ready-made recipes of large production boats, delivered complete including user manuals.
Going back to the sources of my work, in my eyes, restricted classes are the proving ground of architectural innovation in sailing. That said, like Phil Bolger, in my search for simplicity I also draw inspiration from old boats and working sailboats … They favoured large easily reduced sails instead of a wardrobe of three or more headsails … Simplicity, the use of accessible materials, the opportunity of doing things yourself are also part of my principles.
How can we avoid the quest for performance ending in a race for sophistication, always more expensive?
Boats must be kept simple if they are to be accessible to everyone, unlike today’s sport sailing, which has become far too expensive for most people. This does not mean that there is no progress to be made: the idea, from the conception of the Beth in 1989, was to experiment with modern rope halyards like Kevlar (later Spectra or Dyneema). With the availability of modern materials for lines, which do not deform as much as the old ones, used along with less stretch using one of the advantages of modern tech to retain consistent sail shape.
stiffer lines and with the qualities of other modern materials, it seemed to me that we could significantly increase the sail area … This, along with the incredible progress that has been made in a little over a century, in our way of sailing … The quest for performance is not a question of materials, it is a state of mind.
This first boat also served as a test bed for me to design better foils than are normally fitted to self build boats. It is not a difficult building technology and one that builders seem to truly enjoy. “It is so beautiful”. It is a part that I reworked from my very first drawing, by enlarging the centreboard and the rudder, but using carefully designed aeronautical profiles. It is the type of “good technology” which allows improvements in control, in acceleration in after a manoeuvre, and in speed maintained in rough conditions.
Can you tell us what made you settle in the Philippines and how it changed the way you do business?
In 2004, I had a serious accident after which I could no longer work for the ship chandler that employed me at the time. After a year of convalescence, I left for a long trip to India and Taiwan, and I discovered a fascinating approach to naval architecture. Finally, I fell in love in the Philippines and I settled in these islands where Asian traditions are found associated with the influences of the different colonizers.
When we came to settle here, not far from Manila, my companion Edna and I, the devastation of Typhoon Yolanda was very recent. In particular, it had led to the destruction of millions of small bancas, the traditional pirogue made up of a hollowed-out trunk with raised sides. With traditional know-how fast disappearing… various “modern” projects have been set up, including one with the help of the United Nations, based on the production of boats in series. But these standard units were often heavy and unsuitable for local sailing conditions.
In contrast, the Bigalang Banca program run by the Philippine Home Boatbuilder’s Yacht Club, ‘instantaneous banca’, which combined users and the carpenters’ union, was based on the measurements of different traditional local boats in the villages concerned, which differ greatly between neighbors depending on their use and their history.
Biglang Banca was not a Michael Storer project, but illustrates something that manufactured, centralised solutions cannot.
Video image can take a moment to load.
On this basis, plywood construction kits – a material produced on site – were prepared in Manila, by non-nautical teams, while groups of a few fishermen were trained and supported to construct together.their new units. As a result, such a project enabled seventy-two fishermen to build, forty-three boats in two days, perfectly suited to their use, and which they can easily customize. These examples illustrate well, I think, how we can build suitable boats today and keep artisanal navigation alive.Image caption Bancas, motorized outrigger fishing canoes, in the port of Navotas, in the Philippines. View of a worksite run by a group of fishermen and carpenters as part of the Bigalang Banca program, “instant bancas ”, to replace the fleets destroyed by Typhoon Yolanda in 2013
The twenty OzGoose built in Butuan (previous page) form the first flotilla of the Balangay Marina Sailing and Yacht Club (BMSYC), established within the maritime academy in 2019.
Serial construction of OzGoose by students of the maritime academy of St. Joseph Institute in Butuan, on the island of Mindanao
If the look of the OzGoose is surprising, high speed and thrills are also part of the mix.
These work boats are a long way from what inspired you to design the OzGoose, right?
More or less … In fact, the OzGoose is a perfect example modest technology, accessible to all, including in a country where resources are limited and where yachting is almost non-existent – see the list of fittings supplies : a metal ring, a plastic horn cleat, three simple pulleys and rudder fittings, that’s it.
That said, the story of this boat started off as a joke. I had designed the OzRacer, a rectangular boat well in the spirit of Phil Bolger, to race in the class of PuddleDucks, minimalist boats, very popular in the United States in particular … but whose performance was not always there.
The OzRacer won the ‘World Championship’ of this unusual class several times … It was a glimpse of what these shapes and the principles of rigid and lightweight construction could look like on this type of perfectly rectangular, but fully rigged hull – to complete the joke – with a stupidly large ‘Australian-style’ sail: 7.6 square meters (82sqf) for a 2.40 meters (8ft) long hull … We were surprised to see that all this worked pretty well, while still keeping the full sail, up to 20 or 25 knots of wind, with no problem. The second surprise is that as soon as we tried to modify this rectangular boat to make it more ‘pretty’ – pointed, elegant, even with a round scow bow … – it didn’t work anymore.
From there was born the OzGoose, with a longer hull (3.66 meters long) and a bunch of structural and other improvements, Here the results were really confusing. This powerful boat is made to glide fairly quickly, and in fact easily reaches a speed of ten to twelve knots.
One day with a strong breeze, with nice waves to surf, we even clocked it at 18 knots.
The OzGoose also serves as a teaching aid for an original approach to dinghy sailing … We have set up here, on the shores of Lake Taal, with an association of amateur builders and boaters, an informal “sailing school” which is, in fact, the most active in the archipelago. Children and adults from all backgrounds meet there and learn to navigate on OzGoose that we build in batches of ten, in groups, for less money than a single production Laser. We introduce newcomers to methods brought to light by New Zealand architect and racer Frank Bethwaite’s studies of the performance of Olympic champions. The most convincing example is the way in which they react in gusts, without luffing, but by gently releasing the sail. This has a much more efficient, immediate, and perfectly controlled recovery, edging out of the gusts. It is in fact a perfectly logical and easy to integrate ‘natural’ way of sailing for beginners, which allows you to go upwind much faster – even if it is not so easy to ‘unlearn’ for others.
Our students learn to recognize the acceleration, the responses of the boat, they remain attentive and active all the time. All this is much easier to learn, since everything is done hands-on by paying attention, without requiring complicated coordination.
You know, there are people who seem to bewitch the body of water, who always go faster than the others, as if their boat was magical … but that’s the thing: they learned on light boats and have learned to recognize that “kick” that you can feel just before the sail starts luffing. There is nothing magical about it! It can be learned easily on reactive boats.
These astonishing dinghies carry lug sails, which often pass for archaic, and are hardly associated with the idea of optimization …
We have made incredible progress since the generalization of Bermudan rigging, on their operation, their twist, the settings, the pre-stretched materials … without applying all these discoveries to lug sails. Here again the Beth, which I wanted to equip with an original rig, was my first test bench in this matter, and I was quite happy to see that I could teach (I wouldn’t say this, but it is true of race committee handicappers – MIK) Lasers a thing or two with my lug sails. …
Edna, who had previously worked in the clothing industry in the area, set up a sailmaking business here. In this workshop, the science of modern sailing is applied to the ancestral lug sails, and by dint of refining them, we produce very economical but extremely satisfying sails [Really Simple Sails produces standardized sails for Michael Storer’s boats and many other homebuilt boats from other designers Editor’s note] The shape of boomed lug sails can very simply be adjusted, and they are well suited to small boats, on which they increase stability including downwind and in jibes. In addition, these sails and the corresponding spars can be produced and fitted out much more cheaply. This is important here, and in any self-build project in general.
Image caption View of the original floor of the Real Simple Sails sailmaker established in 2014 to mass produce standardized sails for Michael Storer boats. And now makes sails for many types of homebuilt boats exporting worldwide.
The followers of your boats now form an online community. How do you support them?
The job of the architect who designs small boats is to bring people out of a dream, and to make it come true. In the case of amateur construction, it goes far beyond the design: where to find the materials, what tools to use, how to set up the workshop …Beginner builders quickly get stuck by practical questions and don’t dare start. The architect must anticipate, train builders, support them.
I have to offer them a clear, complete construction manual – we quickly reach a hundred pages – and the plans must be extremely detailed. Today, this is extended by social networks where my advice is shared and complemented by the experiences of all, and where builders discuss with each other. What extraordinary tools!
The builders of my boats must be supported in their questions, their hesitations and sometimes in their wishes to adapt the boat to their taste. A lot of the discussion is about ideas for “improvements” … Good things can come out of this; but our boats are like our little ones, they are born from a very precise vision and form a whole, which can quickly be denatured. This or that addition – an interior strut “to make it more solid”, additional benches or boxes – seem to represent only an addition of minor weight … but as one thing leads to another,we end up with a boat that has lost the advantage of lightness. It works less well, and becomes difficult to carry without the help of passers-by …
Jim Waldie Boatworks, in Merrickville, Ontario, at work on a Taal, a stand up paddle board designed by Michael Storer … A model that stands out for its lightness as well as its entry and its V shaped hull, which allow you to go through choppy water and move forward without dragging.
Does this community・on several continents nourish your more recent or future projects?
The Viola, a sailing canoe designed through fruitful discussions with Joost Engelen, and built by the latter in 2019
I don’t design to order, as I prefer to let a cohesive project take shape in my mind, and then see if it meets a real need or expectation. But these exchanges can inspire new designs as was the case for the Viola, a canoe that I developed with Joost Engelen, a Goat Island Skiff builder from the Netherlands. We wanted to design a dinghy as exciting as an RS Aero or a Laser, but as easy to transport as a kayak and much cheaper. After much discussion, the Viola was born: very light, built in 4 millimeter plywood, with an extremely simplified structure – an “empty” boat.
A lot of people seem to fear that it will fill up, for lack of decking in the front, like a large spoon … here again, it is a question of hydrodynamics, it does not fill up. In rough weather events with larger boats heading shorewards, Viola has been able to continue. Given its great success, I designed a thinner variant, easier to propel with a paddle, the Kombi Sailing Canoe.
I have thought about an extended version of the Viola, to sail with two people: an 18-foot model instead of 14 for the “solo” version. Conversely, as I realize that the builders of Goat Island Skiff often sail alone, I am working on an even lighter model, the Son of Goat … giving me the opportunity to draw in 3D directly, which is new for me. I want to go down to 47 kilograms of light displacement … but for the moment, I’m tearing my hair out!
Which areas of nautical innovation inspire you the most now?
I am closely following the America’s Cup. There is a deep divide between people – sometimes great connoisseurs – who display their loathing of what is going on there and those who are interested in it, at least from a technical point of view.
We cannot pretend to study naval architecture or maritime history and neglect these fascinating aerodynamic and hydrodynamic experiments … These crazy boats, at the highest level, explore the frontiers of the possible. All innovations deserve our attention, from the Vestas wing to flying prototypes or experimental velic propulsions from freight to modern sailing. It is about remaining open to all research, basing ourselves on precise performance data to draw on the new ideas that emerge. Because we are there in the pure expression of the common language of air and water.
A eureka, la Savonnière, a sail-rowing canoe built by Daniel Caselli in Uruguay, here equipped with its two outriggers and its lateen sail rig.
At the school of professor Storer
In his exchanges with correspondents from all over the world, Michael Storer willingly exposes his views on dinghy sailing, the shapes or equipment of dinghies, as well as the way of handling them. If you too, can’t wait to try all of this, welcome to the Dinghy Hacker School!
See his Storerboats group on facebook
To put an end to the good old way to (badly) steer in the gusts
‘For decades, we have been taught that at the arrival of a guest, you have to luff. Experienced sailors have made an art of this method. An art full of flaws. Thinking that it would allow us to gain in the wind, we integrated this complex maneuver, demanding in terms of coordination, and we instilled it in the sailing students, who ended up mastering it after a few years even if, in difficult conditions, with a strong wind with violent gusts, it tends to frighten them.’
‘For some time now, after running across the book by Australian researcher Frank Bethwaite on navigation techniques (Fast handling technique, Thomas Reed Publications, 2013), I started teaching my students a different method: when a gust arrives, they just have to gently release the sail to keep the boat level and continue on the same course.
With a simulator of his own making, reproducing the movements of a dinghy under the effect of the wind, the speed and the actions of the crew, Frank Bethwaite showed the effectiveness of this way of doing things by analyzing the speed obtained by an international sailing champion who put it into practice, then by two sailors of the average level, but who luffed in the gusts. When the former was moving forward at an average of 5 knots or more, the latter trailed between 2 and 4 knots. In addition to performance, the “old-fashioned” method poses a problem because, when the helmsman luffs to lose power in a gust, on the one hand the boat reacts quite slowly, but above all it heel much more, the slightest error can then cause a the boat to turn into the wind suddenly, or even cause capsizing.’
‘On the contrary, when one releases the sail gently in the gust, without pushing the tiller, the boat responds almost instantly.’
‘For those who have learned, like me, to manage gusts with the “old” method, it was not easy to come back to these gestures: the impression was strange, I resisted the temptation to luff, and I felt the boat was going slower. But in fact, I was picking up speed compared to the other OzGoose, which at each gust deviated under “my” wind. I felt I was in control of my boat a lot more – Gusts, I’m waiting for you!’
Rings
‘When designing a lug rig, you usually use a ring to hold the yard against the mast, and a halyard to secure it. In the canoeing chapter of Dixon Kemp’s Yachting and Canoeing Manual, I found a pretty amazing and brilliant way to replace this system, with a single line acting as both a ring and a halyard, also keeping the yard horizontal while the crew sets up or hoists up the sail. (see our lug rig setup pages)
Iain Oughtred seems to be one of the few other architects to have sometimes adopted this arrangement to rig some of his boats. Here is how it is done: the end of the halyard is fixed at the front of the yard then returns to a pulley or a grommet fixed a little behind the third of its length – that is to say at the level where it should be held against the mast once set – passing to the opposite side of the mast. It then climbs to the front before returning to its mooring cleat.’
The OzGoose in a regatta … a ruthless test bed for a helsman’s equipment and strategies.
Why rig expensive when you can do it cheap?
‘This morning, the first sail plan I come across as I start my day is a very nice gunter sail. Nice … but expensive! All of her rigging – standing, running, fittings … – actually costs 1650 dollars (around 1050 euros), being limited to the essentials (guying, halyards, sheets, cunningham, boom vang. ..) and choosing the cheapest suppliers. The tiller extension (80 dollars, 50 euros) could in a pinch be replaced by a simple stick attached to the tiller. Of course, at this price, sails and spars are not included.’
‘I thought about a similar rig, but less expensive, while keeping the same quality of fitting. In this context, a lug rig rig, for example, with unstayed masts offers about 95 percent of the performance of the gunter rigged sloop. The cost of the fittings then falls to 380 dollars (240 euros), because there are fewer lines, ropes, no stays, a single set up that is downhaul and cunningham combined – without counting all the small items and metalwork which can be replaced by spectra loops
Isn’t this the best argument to rethink the contemporary use of certain traditional rigs? Everyone has known it for a long time: that the reason the Moths have made so much progress, it is by using laminated wood foils, rather than stainless steel or carbon. In particular by exchanging information, by comparing the results on the water every weekend. The manufacturers who developed their flying boats progressed much less quickly … I am aware of developments with stabilizer foils, not to “fly”, but to allow light crew to navigate without spending their time hiking out (eg Quant 28 yacht).
If a certain number of rules are shared on the conditions for the (low cost) experiment, and everyone to do their tests and to pool the results then development will happen. (now such developments are in isolation so after the project the results or not become part of history).
My trial was a hull is 8 feet (2.44 meters) long … not fast but with a large sail, and at least the trials will speak volumes. The foils will be sliding, in laminated wood, without carbon, and without exotics. Their underside must be flat and they will protrude a maximum of 4 feet (1.22 meters) on one side or the other …
During the first tests, I had the wrong reflex: to steer into to the wind to flatten the boat. The foil, too close to the surface, was sucking air, and had no effect, the boat ended up listing without moving forward. What we had to do to take the blow, was to stay downwind, let the foil take care of the stability … and it worked. No need to hike. It remains to try in stronger wind, and especially with several boats!
To break the bad reputation of traditional sails
If lug sails have a reputation of being inefficient, it is because the architects (of the past) did not do the necessary research or did not sail enough using them, and that they do not specify how to tension them. By the way, many do not use technological advances in modern fittings and materials for lug sails, sometimes in reaction against modernity, sometimes out of simple ignorance.
For those who think traditional rigs are slow and heavy, here’s a good lesson. Well thought out and installed, a lug rig, in particular, can offer a performance very similar to the more ‘conventional’ Bermudan rig.
Modern sailing enthusiasts or novices alike are horrified by the bulge that a lug sail forms around the mast when it is on the “wrong side”, but regular regatta practice on the OzGoose has shown that this does not change much to the performance or the lifespan of the sail – Goose enthusiasts, and Breton sailors, know how to set up these sails to get the best performance out of them.
While racing in the Philippines, we learned that the conventional belief about the “bad tack” is wrong, as is the theory about the mast fold. Indeed, when the mast is upwind, and there is a fold, it is difficult to steer badly. When the mast is on the windward side, having good speed requires more concentration.
But either side we find no difference in speed in racing even with boats sailing alongside for long distances – sailors being equal.
On line
Michael Storer’s plans and reflections are available on his site – go to the general front page which displays the designs.
There are also links to the pages of social networks where aficionados from all continents meet to discuss or question their master (I definitely would not say that – MIK)
