The early days on Cowan vindicated our ideas about the FD's performance.  But the early boats were less than satisfactory from a construction standpoint.  The hulls were not well glued and were made of veneers especially rot-prone.  The hardware was most inferior.  The bargain price was really not such a bargain after all . While in Connecticut in 1954, 1 saw the first "good" FD, built in Germany by H. Heidtmann, Hamburg.  These hulls were obviously superior to the Dutch boats both in the quality of wood and in their craftsmanship.  The hardware, while too heavy, was at least of substantial bronze.  However, when I joined Mobaco, I was positively assured that the first boats had been built by a tiny obscure yard in Holland and that there were many fine yacht yards there that could and would turn out a fine product when properly organized and supervised.

The Mobaco/Stokvis organization -- Stokvis, Rotterdam, is in Holland, rather like a Sears Roebuck here.  They are into all sorts of industrial products, such as machine tools, and consumer goods like automobiles, motor cycles and radios.  Their Marine Department, with established offices in New York, was already in the shipping business. Mobaco signed a contract with Stokvis to handle the American importation of a line of pleasure craft from the smallest sailboats to large custom motor yachts, which were to be financed and supervised by Stokvis.

Stokvis had the capital to back a large number of small, independent yacht builders throughout Holland, but at the heyday of the Dutch boat craze good builders were a bit scarce.  Accordingly, with the Flying Dutchman enterprise in particular, a number of farmers and furniture manufacturers overnight become boat builders.  Another trouble was that the Class Rules were deliberately open about construction and fitting out, encouraging the builders to experiment for themselves.  Even the "recommended" construction plan was far from complete--although it can be hastily pointed out that a conscientious and experienced builder together with advice from an experienced sailor could have easily built a fine boat--as Heidtmann proved.  However, the Stokvis organization had no experienced small boat racers on its staff, and did not realize that they needed at least a naval architect to protect their investment.  The one good stroke of luck was the discovery of Walter Philippe, an emigrating German who had been an instrument and toolmaker in Germany.  Walter had started for Canada after the war but stopped in Amsterdam, setting up an eye-glass factory and buying a home in Loosdrecht.  His association with the sailing fraternity there got him interested in manufacturing stainless steel fittings, and Stokvis put him in business. (His is the now well-known "Holland" brand heavy-gage highly polished hardware.)

While the 1954-55 Mobaco boats were vastly superior to the first Ohio and Michigan boats -- and they were exquisitely painted and varnished -- they still had very serious structural weaknesses and evidenced the obvious haste and lock of understanding on the part of the builders and lack of supervision by the export firm.  On the other hand, it must be kept in mind constantly that it is the nature of any development class to go through a continuous metamorphosis.  One has only to look at the Star, Snipe, Moth, Comet and others to see this.  Whereas the "strict" one-design is "stuck" with all the designer-builder's original mistakes unless the class rises up in a body and gets the rules changed.

Weight -- another point that must be remembered -- and it is to the credit of the original organizers for their foresight -- the FD's astonishing performance is due largely to extremely light weight, which is however controlled to a sensible minimum.  Unquestionably, few of us early pioneers, certainly I include myself --realize exactly how important this weight really is.  Actually, in the free-for-all days, we might have been a heck of a lot smarter to have lightened our boats to the very ultimate.  As it was, few of us even bothered to take the trouble to verify the existing weight, either dry or wet, ever!  We now know and understand these things better.  The 1955 Stokvis-Mobaco boats were undoubtedly way overweight when new (probably about 40-50 lbs.) and suffered further from soakage as many of them were left in the water or allowed to collect rain water afloat or ashore.  Worse yet, the excess weight was in the wrong places and did not contribute at all to strength.  The boats had a very weak backbone and they even deliberately encouraged this to "work" by fitting a sliding joint between the centerboard case and the mainsheet thwart.  The hull skins had inadequate, if any, bilge stringers to stiffen them.  But the decks were ridiculously heavy with all sorts of dense, unnecessary hardwood bracing beneath.

The first dramatic proof of the folly of excess weight came when Jack Powell brought back his first German boat from his continental campaign in 1957. (it is rumored that this boat was some 45 lbs. underweight when delivered and required over twenty kilos of penalty ballast at Rimini.) We once man-handled this boat at Miami after a regatta and every one was astonished at her lightness --which must have been nearly one hundred pounds under the Dutch boats we were used to. Still, I had never actually weighed my own boats, and I guess it wasn't until 1959 that I, for one, began to count every ounce carefully and to engineer for maximum strength and minimum weight.

Jim Von Voost: June, 1962
(Next issue - Part III: Early Growth)