An Excellent Concept in need of Development?

It is most interesting to see that the debate on the Topper Cruz is now developing, after what seems to me to be an extraordinary lack of attention to this revolutionary little boat. A ketch-rigged 14 foot dinghy, with unstayed masts and a hull design of real pedigree, and yet nobody seems to have heard of it.

I bought my Cruz in 1995. I had seen the boat at its first outing at the Southampton Boat Show in 1994. I thought it a rather naive dayboat with its coolbox housing and the bright red-topped stowage boxes — a DCA boat for the chattering classes. I read Peter Bick’s article [147/24] and was intrigued. I sailed the demonstration boat at the Southampton Boat Show in 1995, beguiled by the exquisite cat ketch rig — like a miniature Freedom 40 — and at the end of the show I hitched the self-same demonstrator to my car and towed my new acquisition home. I had found the boat a delight to sail, extraordinarily roomy for her length, docile, with wonderful visibility and the handiness of the Topper sleeve-luff unstayed rig.

The virtues of this boat are striking. The hull shape is beautiful and sleek; she accelerates wonderfully in a puff of wind. The unstayed masts and sleeve luffs mean that in a heavy squall when running the sails can be let fly forward of the beam, spilling wind safely. But the real joy is the mizzen — sheet it hard in and let everything else go, and she sits head to wind as good as gold, while you reef, or roll away the main and start the outboard, or get the flask out for a cup of tea, or just sit and enjoy the view. She doesn’t bounce about like a traditional dinghy hove-to, but lies very steadily and quietly, and of course being head to wind the raised pram hood provides good shelter.

And at the end of the day it takes no more than a couple of minutes to roll away the mainsail round the mast and unship and stow the boom, leaving the interior of the boat remarkably uncluttered for the evening essentials of food, wine, and perhaps a ruminative pipe of tobacco as the sun sets over the creek.

Reefing is simple and effective, or rather could be given some modifications to the rather crude and ill-thought out Topper design and fittings. The clew outhaul has to be slackened off to allow for the reduced foot of the sail, but the standard Topper fittings mean you have to clamber forward to pull it towards the mast into a jammer. I have modified mine so that the pull is sternwards, making it possible from the steering position, but there is a consequent problem in that this tends to pull the rowlock-style gooseneck off the mast, so further development is needed there. I have found when sailing in strong winds, F5, that to reef the main to the same size as the mizzen, thus turning her into a little schooner, produces quite good balance. The luff sleeves are poorly shaped, and the sail rolls up rather unevenly as a result. Indeed, luff tension is difficult to achieve with the standard fittings and the slightly oversize cut of the sails.

This brings me to my main complaint with Toppers, and also my surprise that such a potentially superb boat should have had almost literally no development put into it. Indeed one could argue that there has been retro-development in that the marketing is mostly directed to selling the Cruz hull rigged as a racing sloop of a very conventional design — suggesting to me a crisis of confidence in what is a superb little dayboat/cruising dinghy — or could be. The tyrannical dominance in the recreational boat market of the highly-tensioned racing sloop rig — so obvious in the Solent — may be a factor here. The cat-rigged version has been almost totally ignored. My boat, like George Saffrey’s, suffers from a leaky stern locker, I think because of a fault in the hatch or its mounting. Toppers told me they can do nothing about this. That is really unacceptable from a major boat builder. There are many small details which one should expect to be modified in subsequent boats but which remain unaltered. And yet some minor developments would improve this boat significantly.

The worst feature by far is the tiller. The standard boat has a huge V tiller — one half each side of the mizzen — which would be laughable if it were not appalling design and potentially dangerous. I modified mine to a conventional tiller which just slips behind the mizzen mast with the extension tucked away for the manoeuvre, which requires practice and is thus difficult for an inexperienced crew to use — a hindrance to safe boat practice. There is of course a big problem for little ketches with mizzens on the centre line, and a solution such as a crank or yoke on the tiller would not work with the Cruz. Also one is forced to sit too far back when helming. I hope to try a radical solution to this problem, and will report on it later.

I have not yet adapted my boat for sleeping, but my plan is on the same principle as George Saffrey’s — that is sleeping space forward at thwart level. I experimented with stretching out on the fore side seats, and was interested to find that the pram hood extends quite reasonably near one’s feet, so a tent zipped on to the aft edge of the pram hood need not necessarily be too big. I have constructed a foredeck which fits over the large space for the coolbox. This is made of varnished 12 mm ply, and has a steering compass fitted to it.

The unstayed masts are excellent — no rigging to set up, and making the boat quick to rig and launch. But the main mast being right in the bow is very difficult to lower for bridges, and again it would be a significant improvement to fit this in a gate or tabernacle so the rig could be lowered away while afloat. The mizzen is easy to unstep while afloat, incidentally.

Other modifications which would substantially improve this boat include good quality rowlocks. The existing plastic ones are cheap and nasty, and most reviews have pointed this out as spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar. Rowing is a very useful means of propulsion, after all. A wider pram hood to give better protection to both helm and crew when anchored would be an advantage. The gunwale with its rolled-edge profile is vulnerable to chipping, and does need protection when left alongside a jetty, as my boat Arion was for a week at Dittisham in the summer of 1997.

The boat is quite heavy, and this does deter one from single-handed launching and retrieving. One problem is that the trolley, being part of a combi, is nose heavy, and even with an outboard on the transom is out of balance. I plan to fit a jockey wheel to the trolley and a small winch to the trailer. The boat on the combi trailer tows beautifully for long journeys. Stowage is reasonable in the red-topped watertight boxes, but not that abundant, and the double-skin hull construction doesn’t lend itself readily to modifications. The stern locker is large, but awkward for access owing to the mizzen and its associated running rigging. And as already mentioned water gets in, so stowage will have to be in watertight bags. The large mooring cleats are very handy, but the cover is cut around them, inviting ingress of rainwater and thieving fingers when the boat is ashore.

Apart from daysailing on the Solent I have sailed my Cruz on two summer holidays — one on the Yealm, one on the Dart, and an arctic Easter week on the Broads in 1998 , sailing in snowstorms more than once. I have yet to meet another ketch-rigged Cruz on the water, though I have been told of the odd one, and the DCA Bulletin increasingly reports them. Now I have moved from the Solent to the north-east I look forward to Arion perhaps meeting one of her sisters at a North-west rally. But I still reckon there are in fact very few of these fascinating little boats, and I do wonder how many Topper have actually sold.