Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Flying Fifteen up for grabs on Ebay











all photos above courtesy ebay







Uffa Fox and Prince Phillip sailing Coweslip
these two courtesy BIFFA,



For sale on ebay, only a few hours left, located CA, is this beautiful if somewhat radical little speedster. Designed by Uffa Fox in1947. Check it out on ebay. Here's some history of the boat from the UK Class Association:

The Flying 15 was designed by Uffa Fox in 1947 and the first hulls built at his Cowes based boatyard. Uffa recounts in his 1959 book, "Sailing Boats" that Jimmy Damant, a Commodore of the Island SC and one of the earliest owners of the International 14, had often encouraged him to; "Design a boat like the 14-footer, but at least 18ft long, that will not capsize. Then you would have a sensible, safe boat, that was fun to sail as well, for the rough and tumble of tidal waters like the Solent."

Uffa eventually drew-up a hull twenty foot overall, fifteen foot on the waterline and drawing nine inches without the keel. The steeply raked keel adds 2ft 6inches to the draft, the rake helping to remove any weed. The original construction was for a 1/8" thick diagonal inner skin and 3/16" fore and aft, honduras mahogany outer skin over 3/8" x 1/4" ribs at 2" centres. The deck was 3/16" marine plywood. The original design weight was 285lb for the hull with a 400 lb keel. Driving this was a sail plan and mast height exactly as for the International 14 of that period.

2 comments:

Jonathon S. said...

Looks like a great functional, yet classically simple boat.

Anonymous said...

My Grandfather used to race Flying Fifteens on the Dambos in northern Zambia - this set of pictures took me back about 45 years! Beautiful thing!