OK, from the top! Casting my mind back to 2010....

14s are never far from my mind - I have been sailing them off and on since 2005 and when I heard the 'Worlds were to be in Weymouth in 2011, I went out and bought a Morrison 11 to train in with my crew, with a view to upgrading it with a new rig and foils and seeing what ideas we could develop... Then, at the end of last year I bought the 'George the First' Beiker 5 mould and some tooling from Composite Craft on the Isle of Wight - George Nurton had overseen the build of the mould and the the first 3 boats from the tool and all of them were quick - with Archie Massey using his to win the 2008 and 2010 worlds... Such a race proven mould popping up on the market was an opportunity I couldn't let slip.

Inspired by the dreadnought bow of Tom Partington and George Nurton's, 'Ting Tong' design which I had seen built by Douglas Pattison/Mark Tait, and the aero shaped bow of later moths, in particular the Mach 2, plus my own experiences in sailing moths and 14s, I decided the main concept of the boats I would build would be:

1. Leave the underwater sections of this mould well alone!!

2. Reduce windage in the topsides by shaving the bow tube and smoothing off all of the edges, and adopting a dreadnought bow if appropriate.

3. Reduce Bow weight, allowing more wing to be used on the rudder.

4. Spare no expense on material spec to make the boats last as long as possible and be as stiff as possible.

5. Allow a base on which to trial and test a range of Foil Packages and some radical lower drag, higher aspect ratio rig ideas which I had started to sketch for the M11.

So to start off, the mould got it's flair in the bow sections deleted, then the filled section was baked at 100deg C to prove it for the cure cycle, then the topsides were covered with PTFE coated Glassfibre reinforced mould release film, commonly known in the UK as 'Millionaires Tape' (for very good reason!)

The mould was then prepared for laying up, with 2 coats of Frekote B15 Mould Sealer, 2 polishing coats of Honey Wax, and 5 coats of Frekote 700NC semi permanent release agent, which is my favourite combination for medium temperature prepreg moulding...