Moore-phing Into Another Decade, The Moore 24: Still The Classic

Thanks to Josh Greene for pointing out this history of the Moore 24 that first appeared on the web site Pressure Drop here.

Article by Jeremy Leonard of Surf City Racing

It’s a bright, sunny afternoon in early October 2010 and a fleet of 30 Moore 24s are sailing their North Americans out of Santa Cruz Yacht Club. I’m in the hills above Santa Cruz and I’m standing in a redwood grove on the spot where the plug for a boat named Grendel, the predecessor to the Moore 24, was almost destroyed. Grendel was designed and built by the legendary yacht designer George Olson with his friend Wayne Kocher in an effort to capitalize even further on the success they had had with a previous boat named Sopwith Camel.

According to John Moore, one of the partners in Moore Sailboats at the time, “George got his inspiration for Grendel from a drawing that he saw in a Herreshoff book. You know how it is looking at the line drawings in a book? It’s to scale. They just eyeballed the drawings I think.” Grendel was designed by taking the mathematical data from the lines they drew from the book and plugging them into a computer that was the size of a house located at Cabrillo College, making Grendel one of the first sailboats to use a computer in the design. John’s brother Ron adds, “George was in love with this model boat that he had, it had these apple-cheek bows, and that’s what he put onto Grendel.”

=================
To read the rest of the story of the Moore 24, the 2010 Nationals, Ron Moore, George Olson, and the early days in Santa Cruz, birthplace of the West Coast sled, click here.