TALENT NURSERY
The Optimist marks 40 years in NZ By Matt Vance
The original Optimist was designed in 1947 by American Clark Mills at the request of the Optimist International service club, following a proposal by Major Clifford Mckay to offer low-cost sailing for children.
He designed a simple pram that could be built from three sheets of plywood and was as easy as a coffin to knock together. The design was slightly modified and introduced to Europe by the Dane Axel Damgaard and spread outwards across Europe from Scandinavia.
New Zealand sailor Clive Roberts had noticed the Optimist on his travels as an international OK Dinghy sailor and had seen the effects on
young Scandinavians who were being honed into great racing sailors in these humble little boats.
Clive and Alf Locke were considering producing a line of Optimists in fibreglass when Canterbury sailors, Paul Pritchett and Bob Coultas, visited the Roberts family for the 1975 Flying Fifteen National Champs. Clive lent Paul and Bob a copy of the Optimist plans he had obtained in Sweden. “Bob and I took the plans home, shaking our heads in disbelief…we didn’t believe it could sail!” said Paul.
Both Paul and Rob wanted to see one of Clive’s fibreglass models sailing before they attempted to build one. Four months later Clive Roberts was tragically killed in a car crash and with him went the impetus for the early commercial production of the Optimist dinghy in New Zealand.
Paul Pritchett decided to carry on the idea of the Optimist and began building in Christchurch. “I started in August and, not having much faith in the concept of the funny little thing, threw it together in the kids’ rumpus room.”
By mid-september Paul’s daughters had ousted him from the rumpus room. Muffin, as she was to be named, was cut from the frames and finished hurriedly, receiving one coat of varnish. With
the addition of a Landsmeer sail, some aluminium tube for spars, KZ1 Muffin was ready for the water.
She was launched at Charteris Bay Yacht Club during a preseason working bee to paint the clubhouse. “To my amazement the kids sailed around in her quite happily and immediately six parents said there and then that it was just what they wanted,” said Paul.
Not long after this, Charteris Bay Yacht Club was holding a ‘get into sailing’ expo and decided to construct an Optimist in Christchurch’s Barrington Mall. Some low-key promotion in the local suburban newspaper, The Observer, to accompany the mall expo paid big dividends; by week’s end 25 parents had signed up to build Optimists.
There was something about the simplicity and seaworthiness of these little boats that instantly clicked with parents and children alike. In the 1970s the only other alternative children’s dinghy was the P Class which had a reputation for scaring off more children than it attracted; perhaps the Optimist hit a chord with those who wanted to learn to sail without the fright factor.
The growth of the Optimist in New Zealand was exponential. At the end of the first season in 1976 there were 45 building fees paid. By ‘77 there were 345, ‘78 there were 945 and by 1979 there were 1,445 Optimists registered in New Zealand. Very few dinghy classes before, or since, have matched that kind of growth.
Charteris Bay Yacht Club became the hub of the Optimist
revolution. A committee was formed and an ingeniously simple statement of purpose was penned: “Every child should have an opportunity to sail.” Contact was made with the International Optimist Dinghy Association and the administrative ball was set rolling.
The Optimist class grew so quickly that it presented problems. The NZYF initially refused to give it class status due to the requirement that owners of the class must have voting rights in the affairs of the class. I suspect most of the owners could not spell administration and did not care; they just wanted to go sailing!
My father was one of many who purchased a bare hull from a local boat builder in 1976 and after a few weeks putting her together I finished her with fence paint. She was KZ33 and called Tigger, on account of her ‘rough as guts’ orange and brown paint job. My father taught me and every other child at my school to sail an Optimist in the school pool.
As the Optimist started to gain a footing in the New Zealand dinghy scene the talented members of the original NZODA committee implemented some great ideas. Bret De Thier came up with the idea of numbered bulletins, stickers, posters and T-shirts in a unique and catchy style.
Before long it was common to see “I’m an Optimist Operator” on car bumpers all over New Zealand. Journalist Nick Tollerin
wrote a feature article on the Optimist, with imagery adorning the cover of the May 1976 Sea Spray magazine. This alone produced 400 letters of inquiry for plans to the NZODA committee.
In September 1979 the first coaching clinics were held at Charteris Bay Yacht Club and Tauranga Yacht Club. They were named the Mt Cook Line Optimist Dinghy Weeks and attracted up to 50 young sailors at a time. These clinics were live-in camps with the emphasis on boat skills and having fun. As time progressed these camps were separated
into OPECAR for general boat handling, safety and fun and OPQUIC for the more racing minded.
It was at one of these OPECAR events at Charteris Bay Yacht Club in 1977 that one of the young sailors posed the question: “Do Optimists come from the moon?” A fine question that received the quick reply from one of the fathers: “Only the green ones.”
Truth is, they were built in some odd places, like the top of the CML building in Cathedral Square or at a bottle store in Picton. Malcolm Pearson took the cake by building KZ566
in the pump room of the cement ship en route from Auckland to Westport. He juggled the trim tanks of the ship to keep the building stocks level and engaged the stabilizers off Cape Egmont to improve the building conditions!
The initial focus of the Optimist had a large dose of fun and adventure involved. Sailing camps and lots of parental socialising were the order of the day.
By the time the eighties rolled around, competition had taken over as the driving force in Optimist sailing. More parents began to see the advantages of the Optimist over the lively P Class and sail numbers are now well into the 4000s. The flat bottom of the Optimist gave the hull great load carrying capacity, with the ideal weight for skippers in the broad range of 30-60kg.
In 1960 the design of the Optimist was standardized and became a strict one design in 1995. Today it is sailed in 120 different countries and has been used as a stepping-stone by 80 per cent of all current Olympic sailors.
Despite the Optimist being the slowest dinghy in the world, according to the RYA Portsmouth Yardstick, it has continued to enjoy incredible popularity. More than 3,000 new boats are produced per year around the world.
Forty years on from KZ1 Muffin’s first sail, an observant eye at the Optimist National Champs of late will see a few changes. The Optimist is as popular as ever and has displaced the P Class as the preferred children’s class. The Green Fleet has evolved for kids who are just learning and can easily accommodate older plywood boats.
At the other end of the spectrum, the humble “butter box” is now a sophisticated and expensive racing boat; parents now patrol the course in private chase boats and have moved into the role of full-time coach and on the water pit-crew. The racing has all the edge of the America’s Cup with success opening doors to a serious sailing career.
It is a square boat with a square sail and humble beginnings that has quietly introduced thousands of children to the joys of sailing throughout the world. B
“Today the Opti is sailed in 120 different countries…”