Peter Wilson, who wrote the 1977 cold-moulded rule, reviews the background to the Dragon construction rules and argues for opening up the permitted building methods, noting that only five builders had supplied the British fleet since 1970 against 59 in all. He compares conventional planking, strip planking and cold moulding, and estimates that a cold-moulded Dragon takes about 1,200 hours but can be built about 20% more cheaply than a planked boat. He then proposes a three-skin hull of two 3 mm veneers over 14 mm strip plank (20 mm, about 12 kg per square metre), saving at least 200 hours and about £1,750 per boat. […]
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International Measurer David Chivers welcomes the restoration of old wooden Dragons but warns that restored boats must stay within the Class rules, which cover the rig, sails and construction, with measurements for every part down to the lifting eyes. A boat outside the rules cannot hold a measurement certificate and may be refused regatta entry. He advises restorers and their builders to work from an up-to-date set of rules, check ideas before committing to irreversible work, and have major projects checked by a measurer during the work and on completion. […]
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A short boxed note for owners rebuilding old Dragons (rule numbers as of 1997). A restored boat may be measured under the rules that applied when it was first measured, not when it was built, or under the latest rules. Major repairs such as re-decking, replacing ribs or moving the keel also require a swing test, under rule 10.20, which applies to yachts first measured after 1 March 1989 or after a major repair or alteration. […]
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Simon Holt describes the shroud system fitted to the classic Dragon Lis (GBR 403), based on a design by rigger Phil Evans and widely used in the Windermere class. Instead of loading the old chain plates, the shrouds pass through slots in the deck to a stainless steel tube under the deck, held by compression struts (anything from stainless steel to 4×4 timber), and then down to bottle screws on stainless wings on an enlarged mast step. On Lis the tubes were increased from about two to five inches in diameter and filled with wood. The result lets the rig be tensioned much harder, allows the mast to move fore and aft for ram and pre-bend, and makes stepping and tuning easier. […]
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David Harris tells how four ex-rugby friends at Medway Yacht Club bought GBR 591 Tia, a past Edinburgh Cup winner built in ‘Sweretex’, in 2014 – and how she sank on her mooring when relaunched with the drain plug left out. After salvage she was refurbished at Trevor Cox’s yard in Sittingbourne: some 13 layers of antifouling removed, the hull stripped back to the gel coat and re-surfaced, new cuddy-steps, Barney Post, fittings, sheets and paint, a new mast fitted with the good parts from three older masts, and all-new rigging. Renamed Flos (‘Fat Lads Out Sailing’), she was relaunched on 30 June 2015 and was soon competitive. […]
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