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Running before Ille wind prior 10 the inuoduction of spinnakers . h was some job
10 lower che squaresails before coming onto the
wind . Herc Bronzewing wins a match race from lxion in 1868 .
In 1837 the first Anniversary Regatta was organised 10 celebrate tbe 49th anniversary of the colony of l " ew South Wales . Nine boats entered the race which was won by James Milson ' sSophia , although the crack bQ . 3t of lhe Oeet was $ oid 10 have been Harry Sawyer ' s sliding gunter open boal Nort / J .
ern Star . Another crack yachc built in Sydney wa .~ the
Haidet , builr by George Thornton , who won fir .; t prize against sevenlccn other boats in the 1839 Anniversary Rega Ila . Bui she wru ; ill-focccl and sank in a southerly buster off Shark Island . Five of her six crew members were lost with her . apparently taken by shari : s . The Sydne ) Mail painred a ghastly accounl of the loss of the men by shari < nuack .
In 1840 Sydney yachtSmen began to impon deep keel , decked-in yachts from England . although the largest in Ille fleet was the locally built 40-ton schooner Pearl , owned by Randolph Want and l . H . Challis . She was a cruiser , not a racing yacht , and is rcponcd as sailing as far south as Wollongong and north LO the Hawkesbury River ! Extensive <. TUising
in those days . Spinnakers seem to have come mto vogue about this ume . A yachting wri1er in a sporting magazine of the period noted that the lovely Oi1 / rot111 was the first yncht to carry such a sail in Pon Jnckson in 1847 . The noted yachting authority . Dixon Kemp . told that the spinnaker acquired its name from a yacht nnmed Spirr ; r which men called · Spinkes '. They cal led the new snil which was firs1 used by Spitr ; r a ' Spinker ', which is now called spinnaker . Oit / 101ia was also one of the fll ' SI yadtts inAusrtalia to cany $ OlllC of her ballast out : side the hull . The advent of yacht clubs and the sum of serious . regular yacht racing gave tremendous advancement to yacht design . Designers and owners began to look about for anything to mal . c ! heir boats go faster .
From the purely artistic . utilitarian or easily driven hulls , U \ V111 .": rs began to ask ror 1nore science nnd cunning in design .
There was movement among designers . which had stemmed from England . to put the ballast outside as a fu < ed keel . still keeping some of the ballast inboard with which to trim the yacht . As usual with innovations . some owners abused the idea of oucside keels , especially as the acmal hull design had nor been altered much to take the outside weight , and a 4-tonner was buil1 with 12 ions displocement and a 9-ton lend keel . TI10 unfonunate cmrt was wl ' ecked !
However . by the 1860s yachts were in the early stJ1ges of improvement towards the fast ' modem · raters of the 1910s . They were shonenu1g their bowspritS and , although the boom still overi1ung the counter by many feet . ii wns not as long and as cumbers-0me as formerly . But gaffs were still very long and heavy . Sail area was not taken into the mting for handicapping of :
Lx B x l / 28 94
This meant the old skippers crammed as much sail as possible on their deep , full-bodied hulls .
They carried huge mainsails . great jackyard topsails . jibs and Slllysails , and also filled all the space possible from the long bowsprit to the mast Off the wind they carried big spinn3kers , sometimes set from the end or their gaffs . to increase the area .
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