The French connection
Bruno Troublé had been sailing his own boat in Maine when he
moored alongside Falcon II, then called Hayday. “I loved her,” Bruno
says. The boat was raced successfully in the 2007 Eggemoggin Reach
Race and then sold to Tom Hill, who raced her in Newport. Finally
Bruno managed to convince his close friend Pascal Oddo, a French
businessman, to buy her. Pascal had owned a motorboat until Bruno
had introduced him to racing sailing boats.
What does a former motorboater make of classic sailing? Pascal
Oddo is no ordinary motorboater and his “Minister of Sea Affairs”,
Bruno Troublé is no ordinary sailor, but Pascal’s comments still ring
true. He had turned first to a modern 86ft (26.2m) Philip Briand-
designed superyacht and he enjoyed racing on various boats at St
Tropez. “But at a certain level, if you race with a modern boat, you
have only employees on board,” Pascal notes. “I realised that classic
boats are a fantastic area for racing and sailing: competitive but not
as specialised, it’s something you can do with your friends and your
family. The boats are so beautiful and it’s very nice to sail on an
historic boat that has a story. It’s another kind of ambience.”
“When we got her, we adjusted the rig and the sailplan for racing,”
Bruno says. “In the Med, the CIM rules don’t measure the foot of the
jib, and these boats never sailed with the big genoa overlaps like the
8-Ms did. So we put in a big overlap and this helped make her faster,
particularly in light winds.” Bruno used other workings of the rules to
his advantage: “CIM doesn’t measure the sail area, it measures the
distance, for example the exact length of the boom and the distance
from the lowest part of the mast to the block at the top. Therefore the
sail has now been cut to end right at the end of the boom. There is no
point having the mainsail end 30cm short!”
The boat has more than repaid everyone’s hopes. There’s no sign
of weather helm, for a start. “I’ve been sailing all my life on the best
boats and these Q boats are a dream to sail,” says Bruno. “They
are true racing boats, you ease an inch on the main and it changes the
boat completely. Adjusting the runners makes a difference. They’re
extremely sensitive and subtle.”“I’ve been sailing all my life on
the best boats and these Q boats
are a dream to sail”
Bruno TroubléEMILY HARRISJOUR DE FETE
races. By 1928 the larger Q-Class began to re-emerge
and many of these were designed by Paine in his office
established in 1921, Burgess & Paine. They also hired a
young draftsman by the name of L Francis Herreshoff.
Starling Burgess designed the Q boats Hawk, Hayseed
VIII and Falcon I before the office was dissolved in
1926, and Paine designed Hornet, his first Q-Class.
This beat the reigning Q-Class champion of the time,
Johan Anker’s 1925 Sally XIII. All three designers went
on to design further Q boats, interpreting the rule in
their different ways. L Francis Herreshoff’s 1928
Nor’easter V was very successful in light airs once her
rig was tuned, as was Paine’s Robin of that year. She is
still in existence, awaiting restoration. A year later
Paine designed Cara Mia, the third of his four Q boats,
the last being Falcon II in 1930, now Jour de Fête.
Frank C Paine was the son of General Charles J
Paine, who in the late 1800s had asked Starling
Burgess’ father Edward to design Puritan, Mayflower
and Volunteer as America’s Cup defenders. Frank had
an introduction into the top echelon of the
Massachusetts racing world and he quickly showed
talent and an ability to innovate. His designs ranged
from the J boat Yankee, the Bermuda Race winner
Highland Light, the fishing schooner Gertrude Thebaud
as well as racing yachts designed to both the Universal
Rule and the International, Metre Rule.
The Hart Nautical Library at MIT has 21 of Paine’s
half models and about 2,300 of his plans. Just launched
this June in the Netherlands at Holland Jachtbouw is
his J-Class boat Topaz, sail number J8, designed in
1935 but never built. Topaz is 88ft on the waterline,
the longest J-Class ever built, and with the lowest
wetted surface and highest keel aspect ratio.
Many of Paine’s designs were built at the renowned
Lawley & Son yard, where he was company president
for many years. George Lawley & Son, who built Jour
de Fête, was the major boatbuilding yard in New
England other than the Herreshoff Manufacturing
Company, which did not build boats by other designers.
Lawleys built about 6,000 boats between the 1860s and
the 1940s, with three generations of the family
involved, Fred Lawley attending MIT to study naval
architecture in the late 1890s and designing boats such
as Seminole, which still races today.
By the time Falcon II/Jour de Fête was built, the
International Rule was superseding the Universal Rule
as the favourite for interclub racing in America,
particularly in Long Island Sound. In 1929 there were
14 Q boats racing in Marblehead, the peak year for
the class. Shortly after that the Qs were competing
with the similar-sized 8-Ms, and eventually
shared starts and courses.
The Eights began to take over and most of
the Q boats, except for Robin, moved west, bought
by owners racing in the Great Lakes. Questa is
still sailing on Flathead Lake, Montana, along
with Herreshoff’s Nor’easter V. The history of
Falcon II goes quiet at this point, until she was
discovered in poor shape near Milwaukee and was
bought in 2003 by Konrad Ulbrich, moving her east
to his farm in Camden, Maine.