A first for Earwigoagin; I put a keelboat up on the header photo. This is a 30 square meter, a type also commonly referred to as a Skerry Cruiser, and to my eye, the various square meter sizes are the prettiest of yachts with long, long, overhangs, low freeboard, and efficient rigs. (I have always found large overlapping jibs to be photogenic.)
Alden Smith put a comment up about this photo and. in reply I realized I didnt know the history of the square meter rule. So a quick tour around the Internet turned up a couple of factoids.
- The rule originated in Sweden in 1907 as a reaction to the perceived rigidity of the International Meter rule. The current rule, administered by the Swedish Classification Board, traces back to 1925 with some tweaks along the way.
- It is based on a sail area rule, the square meter is the sail measurement of the class though this is somewhat deceiving as only 85% of the jib foretriangle is measured, hence the extreme overlapping jibs to get free sail area.
- There were a bunch of classes from 15 sq. m. up to 150 sq. m. but the two that survive in some numbers today are the 22 sq. m. and the 30 sq. m..
- If you want to dig in deeper, as usual, the best place to start is the Wikipedia page.
Sea State Marine, out of Missouri, of all places, (their blog is part of my blog list) is in the process of restoring a 1929 sq. m. Kippis, a Skerry Cruiser that was sitting in a barn in Missouri. Some, but not all, of Sea State Marines blog posts on the 22 sq. m. rebuild can be found here.
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