Another week, another boat. This week, I spent my spare time re-creating a very famous J Class racing sailboat, Ranger, which successfully defended the America’s Cup against the British challenger in four straight victories in 1937.
Started Sunday morning and completed Friday evening with time out for several chores and a trip to Poulsbo.
The difficulty in a project like this is that there is very little documentation to go by and I was forced to guess dimensions and configurations, since the vessel was broken up 4 years after her successful defense, in order to supply the steel from the hull and lead from the keel in suport of the war effort.
Looks pretty darn close to the original. For some years I had access to color 16mm film taken by my stepfather of the New York Yacht Club cruise of 1937 which ended in Newport. RI for the defense of the America’s Cup. Most impressive was the finish of one of the four races with Ranger crossing the finish line with no other yacht in sight! She was also something of a tech marvel for her day: the first A Cup yacht with coffee grinder winches on deck.
It’s truly good to see this recreation. Best, Rob
I’ve seen some scale models for sale on the web with a coffee grinder pedestal on deck. I resisted the temptation to include this feature, fearing it was just someone’s artistic license.
There are still a few features left, including the “bulwark” at the bow, but i needed to move on.
Id appreciate any references you might be willing to share.
Shame she’s reduced to a Marie Celeste - love to see a full crew labouring on deck. And maybe some heel as the sails are sheeted in and drawing?
For atmospheric photographs of yachts of the period (including Endeavour II, the 1937 challenger to Ranger) there is a coffee table book entitled “Legendary Sailboats Beken of Cowes”.
God, please leave that bow bulward off of your lovely model. That was the most unbecoming feature I think I have ever seen on a yacht and I have seen it in person.
This looks really nice. I design frame sets for these boats in 1:16 scale, in “another CAD solution” and I bought Rhino in order to make the hull shapes. The “other solution” is a very powerful software for manufactured parts, but is quite poor for making organic shapes like hull surfaces.
And your rendering is so much better, as well.
I am looking forward to learning Rhino in order to be able to make the complete product from the 3D hull shape to all the internal structures.
Thx, Rick. I spent the last 20 years of my 40 year career doing computer lofting of boats of all types and sizes.
Early on (before Rhino) i did them in AutoCAD, with hull shapes defined in my own software, BaseLine, and all structural components defined in Acad.
As soon as i became proficient in Rhino and its drafting capabilities matured sufficiently, i dropped AutoCAD, altogether and used Rhino. If my client required AutoCAD output, it was a simple “save as” in order to comply.
Thanks for writing back. I have been a Solidworks guy since 2012 and had been making hulls using SW since that time. I had no idea what a pain it had been until I decided that really wanted to render some hulls, kind of like what you have in that picture. Well, it is quite impossible to get a nice shape in SW so I bought Rhino and have a supplier do the hulls for me. I sure wish I could find the time to learn Rhino to do the hulls myself. Hopefully, I will get there soon enough.
Thanks! I will take you up on that, but in a couple of weeks. I am completely backed up with SW stuff right now and I have given out the next three hulls to my subcontractor.
He charges me about $300 per hull so the cost is pretty reasonable (especially considering the effort I used to put into them with SW).
