In the secret world of sailing, we readily use terms like “One Ton Cup” and its offshoots in a way that assumes total awareness by the listener of its multiple meanings, thereby further excluding those who find the language of boats even more bewildering than some foreign tongue.
It is something that can leave specialist enthusiasts open to mockery, an attitude neatly encapsulated by the great Bob Newhart:
“I don’t wish to denigrate Country & Western Music Fans at all.” he said mildly. “And by the way, maybe I should explain to Country & Western fans that “denigrate” means “do down”.”
Be that as it may, all interesting sports involving equipment or vehicles or both inevitably develop their own languages which their devotees speak fluently. But it is annoying that, every year as the international golf season builds up to pace, those of us outside the world of the Great 18-hole Idiocy have to jot down yet again what is meant by a birdy or an eagle or a bogey.
HEROIC INVENTORS
Don’t get me wrong. My greatest heroes in history are the Scotsmen who began to codify golf in the 15th Century. The contemporary result is a great social good. For what on earth would all those simple souls who live for their frequent games of golf be doing if they didn’t have this passion to distract and occupy their time?
They’d be making mischief, that’s what. And way back in 1457 King James II of Scotland was so alarmed by golf’s expansion that he banned it because it was distracting his subjects from honing their skills in the militarily-useful sport of archery.
TURNING THE TIDES OF PENTAND FIRTH?
But in the long run, he might as well have tried to reverse the mighty tides of his boisterous Pentland Firth. And equally, with the rapid development of recreational sailing from the mid 1900s onwards, the growing sport took on the jargon of commercial and fishing and military sailing, then added a whole new terminology and usage of its own to build up a large living vocabulary with changing emphases and meanings.
The One Ton Cup was first presented by the Earl of Granard (Commodore of the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire from 1931-1942) to the Cercle de la Voile de Paris in 1899 for competition among sailing boat weighing One Ton. After several re-purposings, it achieved its greatest significance in 1965 as the trophy for an international annual competition for offshore racers of all types, but all rating at 22.0ft under the RORC Rule.
This has been such that a central international sailing trophy like the One Ton Cup is not itself one ton, and it is very many years indeed since it was raced for exclusively by boats of one ton weight. Equally, its offshoots resulting in references to Half Tonners, Quarter Tonners and Three Quarter Tonners have meaning only for dedicated sailing aficionados, but are meaningless in themselves in any other context.
INTERNATIONAL 6 METRE SIMILARITIES
Time was when inshore racing boats built to International Rating Measurement Rules, such as the various Metre classes, looked to be broadly the same. The cognoscenti may have flattered themselves that they could tell at a glance whether one of the International 6 Metre Class (they were all around 36-37ft in overall length) had the extra almost indefinable elegance that signalled a Fife, or showed the race-winning sense of purpose of a Charles E Nicholson creation, but nevertheless they all looked near enough like identical twins.
So if you were seeking a 6 Metre which was no longer a front-line performer in order to convert her to a fast cruiser, then apart from one or two eccentric exceptions you knew what you were getting, and the priority became getting the best-built and properly-maintained boat for this new role in her life.
Although created by several different designers, the rule for the International 6 Metre Class for inshore racing had such close limits that most of the boats looked to be virtually identical. Photo: 6 Metre Assoc.
This broad similarity came about because the rule came first, formulated by ultra-clever bean counters who had a fairly clear idea of the boat type and size they planned to encourage. But offshore racers, with a specific handicap figure under a certain rating rule in mind, came about in completely the opposite way.
Fleets of already existing and very varied performance cruisers – or at least they were “performance cruisers” in their owners’ fond eyes – made up the early offshore racing fleets, and rules had to be devised – based on an inshore system from 1912 - to give them handicaps that provided equitable racing.
It was assumed that the sort of chaps who favoured offshore sailing, and happily endured mildly competitive nights at sea, would be much too sporting in a gentlemanly way in their interpretation of the new system to try to exploit a rule which tried its best to make comparable performance meaning of some extraordinarily varied boats.
SIMPLE RULE
Thus the new Ocean Racing Club rule that emerged under the aegis of the Ocean Racing Club, which was formed in Plymouth immediately after the first Fastnet Race in 1925, was a simple one, made up of broad strokes, with one of them being the stipulation that no boat would be larger than 70ft LOA and 50ft LWL.
The first exploitation of the new Ocean Racing Club Rule of 1925? The maximum size Hallowe’en, line honours winner of the 1926 Fastnet, set a primitive bermudan rig which – after a couple of years – was re-styled as gaff.
The idea that anyone would be so indecently keen as to build a boat of maximum size for the next race in 1926 (for until 1931, the Fastnet was annual) was beyond contemplation in the small and friendy offshore racing community. Yet by Christmas the ground-breaking 70ft Fife Bermudan cutter Hallowe’en - of 50ft waterline too - was well under construction in the Fife yard in Fairlie for a Colonel Norman Baxendale.
IRON FOUNDRIES OF MANCHESTER
He aspired to be a classic Scottish laird owning thousands of acres of highlands and moor. But it seems the money came from the family’s iron foundries in Manchester, which is no business for sissies. Yet to his dying day, Baxendale insisted that the matter of his lovely new yacht having the maximum Ocean Racing Club figures was pure coincidence, while it was also claimed that the Fastnet Race 1926 was not even an initial target, with Hallowe’en’s involvement being a last-minute decision in the summer of 1926.
Quite. But in the yard at Fairlie, they knew otherwise, as three of the leading shipwrights working on the new boat, men equally renowned for their sailing ability, had been told in the Autumn of 1925 that they would be on Hallowe’en’s crew in the 1926 Fastnet Race. It was an extremely shrewd way of ensuring that her construction was of the highest quality, right down to the last invisible component.
Hallowe’en as she is in 2026, the Centenary of her Fastnet Race Line Honours victory. For many years she was owned by a Royal Irish YC syndicate.
Either way, Hallowe’en took line honours by many miles in the 1926 race, but was third on handicap. She didn’t figure in the offshore scene thereafter until, as Cotton Blossom IV under the American ownership of Walter Wheeler, she was a handsome Bermudan yawl that successfully adorned many a New England distance race.
MEDITERRANEAN CLASSICS SCENE
Subsequently restored as a Fife Bermudan cutter, she spent some time on the Classic scene in the Mediterranean scene in the ownership of a Royal Irish YC syndicate, and is now in the ownership of their skipper, Inigo Strez.
But after all the razzmatazz of the Centenary of the Fastnet Race last year, it remains to be seen whether – in what is now a non-Fastnet year - there is much appetite to celebrate the Centenary in 2026 of what may well be the first offshore racing boat to be built with the exploitation of a Rating Rule in mind, for all that Hallowe’en happens to be one of the best-looking boats afloat.
TAMING THE RULES
Yet equally, we’d be celebrating the very fact that enthusiasts have continued trying to tame the rating rules, both for existing boats of many different types, and with boats built to sail right through known loopholes in the system.
Nevertheless it seems extraordinary that it wasn’t until 1965, when there simply wasn’t an International 6 Metre Class in existence to compete for the Earl of Granard’s 1899-presented One Ton Cup staged at Le Havre by the CVP (Cercle de la Voile de Paris), that somebody suggested they utilize the large and growing offshore fleets to have all offshore boats rating at a certain rating size – 22.0ft in this case – considered eligible to race boat-for-boat for the One Ton Cup.
The size selected was nothing to do with weight – it was just the healthy mid-size boat of an average RORC/UNCL fleet. By this time, the figure given by the RORC rule was meant to distantly reflect the boat’s waterline length. But as the lower size limit for RORC events was a 24ft waterline length, the 22ft rating was an acknowledgement that most boats around 36ft LOA – the size aspired to – had managed to achieve a rating significantly lower than their actual waterline length.
The 36ft S&S Design Sarnia, built for the Sisk family, was a direct design development of the 1965 One Ton Cup winner Diana III, but with a fin and skeg keel.
Despite fin-and-skeg offshore racers having been around for years in the shape of van de Stadt hard chine specialist craft, John Illingworth’s Mouse of Malham and JOG boats, and successful designs by the amateur Guy Thompson, the closed-profile keel and rudder configuration still prevailed in the underwater shapes of the leading boats in the revived One Ton Cup of 1965, the winner being the Danish Sparkman & Stephens-designed 36ft Diana III.
The Game Changer. Although find and skeg configuration had been around in various forms for some time, it was the total success of Dick Carter’s own-designed Rabbit in the 1965 Fastnet Race that changed attitudes almost totally
But 1965 saw the Fastnet Race won by Dick Carter’s delightful little fin and skeg boat Rabbit, and back at the drawing board it proved relatively easy to change the established Diana III profile to fin and skeg. So the One Ton Cup took off as a design development contest as much as a sailing competition, which of course made it murderously expensive and by 1967 the first Half Ton Cup was being staged in La Rochelle, the same port seeing the inauguration of the Quarter Ton Cup in 1968 for boats rating way down at 18.0ft in the continuing quest for economy.
KIWIS BRING CHANGE
In all cases, it was something of an arms race, but in 1973 when the Quarter Ton Cup was being staged at Poole in England, much interest was aroused by an economically-challenged New Zealand designer called Ron Holland, who turned up with his Eygthene, which was meant to reflect the way Kiwis pronounce “eighteen”.
A real step forward – and all for the better. Ron Holland’s Eygthene 24 won the Quarter Ton Cup in 1973. She provided good accommodation, and with her dished hull, crew weight on the weather rail was optimized for sail carrying power.
CROSSHAVEN AND KINSALE
Despite living aboard during the series while other craft were - relatively speaking – stripped bare, Eygthene won and the Eygthene 24 – built in the Channel Isles – deservedly became a much-admired and popular marque in Ireland, while Ron Holland steadily worked his way through the ladder of international success, with his design offices based for much of the time in Crosshaven or Kinsale.
Despite her proven Quarter Tonner racing potential, the Eygthene 24 was and is a proper little performance cruiser with optimised accommodation.
It takes an effort to remember that this still-vivid story was taking place all of 53 years ago. But one of the significant differences that was already becoming embedded was the increasing use of fibreglass construction in increasingly sophisticated ways, and good fibreglass seems to live for ever.
HALF TON CLASSICS
Thus a group of Belgian sailors assembled enough restored Half Tonners to hold a classics World Championship, and by 2015 sufficient interest had built up for it to be a major international regatta with Dave Cullen of Howth winning that year with the immaculately restored Rob Humphreys 1985 design Checkmate XV, with which he also won in 2018.
Checkmate XV with Dave Cullen on the helm firming up her place in clear air at the Half Ton Classic Worlds 2015, which she won
The potential of restoration was gloriously illustrated soon after when leading Cowes sailor Peter Morton rescued the famous Bruce Farr-designed 1976 Half Tonner Swuzzlebubble from a landfill in Greece and brought her back to wonderful and successful life which continues in the ownership of James Dwyer of Cork.
Meanwhile Dave Cullen has been many things, including Commodore of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association and currently President of Irish Sailing while campaigning the hefty but successful First 50 Checkmate XX with Nigel Biggs.
THE CREW SEARCH
But the mystique of the level rating classes continues to intrigue him, and this time it is at the Quarter Ton level, where he reckons that the logistical benefit of having to trail the smaller boat between regattas outweighs the fact that for serious racing, they still need a crew of five.
The 2026 season has been slow to spring fully to life, and on the morning of the recent Lambay Race at Howth, a poster displayed by Johnny & Suzy Murphy of the J/109 Outrajeous indicated that Bank Holiday weekends in particular may see regular crew obliged to fulfill family duties elsewhere.
The personnel problem. This late minute appeal by Outrajeous on the morning of the Lambay Race seems to have worked, as she came second in the J/109s, only 12 seconds behind Simon Knowles’ winning Indian. Photo: HYC
LITTLE JEWELS
Nevertheless in an era when an alternative approach has been indicated by the success of two-handed divisions both in themselves as a class and overall against the fleet, the fact is that the little highly individual jewel which is a classic Quarter Tonner is very specifically designed to give of her best with a crew of five on board.
Martin Mahon of Courtown put in many successful seasons with the classic Quarter Tonner Snoopy. Photo: Afloat.ie
And currently they’re on a roll. Martin Mahon of Courtown may have sold Snoopy away after many good years, but there are other Quarter Tonners with equal potential which are being brought to life, an intriguing process in itself.
For instance, for quite some time now there has been a mystery Quarter Tonner in the front garden of a house near the Summit of the Hill of Howth, and it seemed such a fixture that its main purpose was to inform thirsty travellers that they were getting near the Summit Inn.
But now owner Declan Byrne of Howth YC has joined up with Dave Cullen to bring her to life and action, with the new name of this Ceccarelli boat being Chronos, in a Greek reflection of the Irish saying that when God made time, he made a lot of it.
Chronos afloat. The later Quarter Tonners – now classics – continued the dish sections that first became significant with Eygthene.
Meanwhile another Howth sailor, Anton Kurshanov, acquired a 1979 Faroux Bullit Quarter Ton design, and had John Corby and his talented team in Cowes give her the complete makeover, from which she emerged as Symmetry.
Symmetry and Chronos raced round Lambay last weekend with Class 3 IRC, and Symmetry had the best of it to win on CT by 19 seconds from Vincent Gaffney’s form boat, the Laser 28 Alliance II, while Chronos is still very much work in progress.
On another tack, Darren Wright, he of New York YC Invitational regularity, has replaced his Half Tonner Mata with a Melges 32. There was a Melges 32 in Howth many years ago, when the class was fresh out of the box, and she belonged to Nobby Reilly. But she was in Howth before her time, whereas Darren Wright arrives in with a Melges 32 when sailing resources are soaring, so who knows what’s next.
QUARTER TONNERS AT CORK WEEK
Either way, the word is the Quarter Tonners in Ireland and along the south coast of England are gathering themselves for a good turnout at Cork Week next month, getting there being the least of it. For as Dave Cullen has found, trailering a Quarter Tonner is like towing a toy after you’ve experienced the motorways of Europe and the UK in a frantic Sunday race, towing a suddenly-enormous Half Tonner to catch the preferred ferry at Holyhead.
New Chapter — Darren Wright's Melges 32 signals another addition to Howth's growing high-performance fleet. The former Half Ton campaigner is preparing for a busy season as sailing activity continues to expand. Photo: Alan Kinsella
