How the ONE POINT FIVE  evolved

By Graham Veal 

 

Paynesville, November 1999. When Bob Starkey was going on holidays, he offered Kaye & I a loan of his RA. It wasn’t long before we were hooked and looking for our own boats. Within a few months we had a Phoenix 10R followed by another 10R Witchcraft.

Now with three boats, Starkers and I were thinking of ‘something’ between RA & 10R. Big boat ability with 10Raterish performance. One suite of sails. Low tech, low cost. Numbers started falling into place, 1.5 m. waterline, 1.0 sq.m. sailplan, 0.5m. draft, these became the basics to design a ‘1515” boat. Using ‘PLYBOATS’ software we designed then built our first ISIS boat. Despite the old RA sails we could see enough sparkle to be happy. Happy enough to put our 10R’s on the market to get on with the next boat.

When the 10Raters were sold to Bob Moore and Jim Robinson we had the nucleus of  the informal Paynesville Model Sailing Group formed to meet regularly for BBQ lunch and fun/comp. Sailing wherever the conditions seemed OK.

By Christmas 2003 a Mk.2 ISIS was designed and built in two hull types, A multi chine plyboat that I built, and a more shapely round bilge built by Bob Moore. By now we had Ken Dobbie building top quality sails. A year later we did a Mk.3 design, probably the last of the plywood boats, this turned out OK but not much better overall.

By now the the class name was abbreviated to simply 1.5 , adding more rules mostly on the basis of  ‘keep it simple’, prohibit the expensive stuff. It was time to think production boats and the benefits of one design. One last design combining all the better features and avoiding the not so good features of previous boats. The Mk.4 was designed only in round bilge.  A strip plank plug was built perfectly to design by Bob Moore, followed by an equally perfect mould built by Martin Hinchliffe.  Without the tireless effort of these two guys there would be no 1.5 class one design, and not much of  a club.

 

                 Our Many thanks to Bob and Martin

                  For a very professional job

                                 Kaye and Graham Veal

 

 

Basic ONE POINT FIVE CLASS Yacht specifications

 

GRP one design hull

Length overall 1.65m

Waterline length 1.50m

Draft .500.

Beam .300m

Minimum weight 8.5kg

Keels removable for transport

1 square metre sail area,  by Ken Dobbie Sails

No exotic materials eg carbon, fibre, titanium,

16mm round aluminium mast

Plywood deck Minimum 1.5 mm thick

Two channel radio