This is part 2 of my interview with sailor / boat designer (and long-time multihuller) Jim Brown. This segment focuses on the Piver Nugget trimaran.
I’ve also posted a very short video clip of Jim (as a young man) sailing his old Nugget, which comes from one chapter of Jim’s video commentary of “Among the Mutihulls”.
Jim was “there” during the emergence of modern multihulls in the 20th century. His own Nugget trimaran was a sailing machine too … his description of it in the longer video is pretty neat.
His audio collection contains lots of fun, as well as insights into all sorts of multihulls.
Here are a couple old photos of Jim’s Piver Nugget …
And here is the short clip of him sailing it …
And here is the audio interview …
Depending upon the PC or mobile device you’re using to view this page, you can listen to part one of my interview with Jim (mp3) either on the audio bar (if you can see it)…
… or by clicking directly on the following download link address:
Click here to download the audio to your PC or mobile device (Right click and choose “Save As” to your device).
Below is volume one of Jim’s memoir “Among the Multihulls” on Amazon…
very cool to hear such a detailed analysis from someone who was not only there but has the expertise to make an informed assessment of the early boats and their issues.
For anyone interested, many if not most of the boats and designers mentioned in this clip are covered in the old AYRS articles linked in this previous post (in some cases they wrote them)-
http://smalltrimaran.co.uk/small-treasure-trove-of-early-ayrs-trimaran-articles/#more-12834
page 15 of this one has the plan views for Tchetchet’s Egg Nogg II that Jim references; sadly you don’t get the entire aft mast sail plan but there’s enough to get a feel for the general layout-
http://www.ayrs.org/repository/AYRS023.pdf
FWIW, while the rudder profile is definitely old school and no doubt not really up to the task, the centerboard does appear to have an aspect ratio in the range Jim describes, at least twice as tall as it is wide- it’s antique-y looking now and doesn’t get the full use of the depth that a non-tapered board would but lots of boats use an identical shape to this day…and at least on its design waterlines the main hull stem and stern posts are both out of the water due to what was pretty extreme rocker for that era in anything that might have had that kind of stem/stern, like a sailing canoe- it’s far more like a modern tri in that respect than anything Piver or anyone else designed in the ensuing couple of decades, at least.
The amas have less rocker than the main hull but they don’t appear nearly as straight as Jim’s comments and those of others might suggest…I can definitely see where the crossbeam dihedral might have been inadequate to prevent the kinds of bad tacking manners and other issues Jim describes.
A look at the same angles on the original Egg Nogg in the cover photo here-
http://www.ayrs.org/repository/AYRS006.pdf
– seems to indicate that Victor was aware of where the problem was and was indeed refining his designs just as Jim describes later people doing.
Jim he was there and I wasn’t and I have nothing but respect for him and his skills and knowledge, but as I said in that previous thread it looks to me based on the plans and photos of Tchetchet’s boats that they really weren’t as inherently flawed as one might assume based on the scant reports about them, and perhaps just needed a series of relatively small design tweaks and better suited materials and construction techniques to be superb boats with lots of forward looking features that took years to catch on elsewhere.
Put another way, when I look at a typical modern state-of-the-art maxi tri or small tri racer at the cutting edge of speed and technology it looks more like Tchetchet’s boats than anything else Piver and Brown and Cross and other big names of the subsequent trimaran boom of the 60’s-70’s designed, but for his old-timey rudder and board profiles.
That isn’t a slam at any of those designers at all; I think a lot of the modern race tri elements are all wrong for the kinds of boats/uses they were going after and their designs were far more adapted to the materials and technology of the day.
Stuff like reverse bows/transoms are often based on beating racing rules so it’s unwise to assume that they are there to better sailing performance on any boat, multi or monohull…and I’m sure lots of maxi tris with dead straight runs and flat bottomed amas are no fun at all to short tack, and yes they can pound themselves apart in a seaway and are still noisy if they don’t, they stuff the amas and try to pitchpole, etc….they certainly aren’t perfect, even for their intended use.
But the fact remains that the Egg Nogg series got remarkably close to modern state-of-the-art designs *and* unlike everyone who came after him Tchetchet managed to do it with virtually no prior trimaran designs to reference and learn from, except his own.
It also bears mentioning that Piver’s early designs had a number of revisions made when things like the square section amas on the original Nugget and his stubby ama fin lateral resistance scheme were found sorely lacking…and the solutions were (imho) more of a move towards Tchetchet’s designs than away from them.