Miss Nylex, the First full Wingsail C-Class Catamaran

Nope … that’s not Miss Nylex below, but the technical paper link below is about her.

When I was around 12 I ended up living for six months at Sand Point, near the mouth of Careel Bay on Pittwater (breath) about 40km North of Sydney. I discovered that two sailing clubs operated from the strip of beach in front of the house we were renting temporarily.

The Palm Beach Sailing Club for monos and the Pittwater Catamaran Club for multis.

Got to see a lot of cool things.

The first Tornados, big fleets of B2 cats, lots of Quickcats, the Paper Tiger rudder system I use for my own designs until this day. I ended up being stuck on sailing and the technical side from the age of 12.

There was a hot A-class fleet back when almost all the boats were plywood homebuilds. I started to understand that the A-class with the two little wings out of the sides of one bow on the beach in front of “our” house was owned by Lock Crowther.

One day Lock and John Haines turned up with a part wing masted C-class cat – Helios. They used to test it against an older sloop rigged C called Cheetah.

It was always a crowd drawer when Helios rolled up at Sand Point and they commenced the mast raising process – quite an affair. I think she had a 50/50 wing and softsail at that point from memory.

Before taking it down to Melbourne for the trials (below Nylex afloat, Helios on the beach) to select the challenger for the Little America’s cup I built a model. It was pretty cool and my first boat design technically.

And that was the end of that. Nylex was a much better boat.

A friend of mine, Graham Murray, got to talk to John Haines decades later. John said when it came round time to take the Helios wingmast apart it was a few days of hard work. It was built much too strong. Which is code for heavy.

Gary Baigent NZ designer, historian, artist and boatbuilder posted an image of Helios sailing with this quote attached;

“Perhaps the most complex wing rig ever built. This new rig for Join Haines Helios was created by Lock Crowther with considerable help from Frank Bethwaite. The three sections of the wing were designed to pivot separately, each with their own series of flaps. There are 8 control lines comin out of each side of the base of the wing. The rig was heavy and did not prove successful. Had there been more time to correct some of the faults the result may have been quite different.”

Here is the technical paper on Miss Nylex and her wingmast.

Miss Nylex full wingmast catamaran Paper full