Chinook 34 Sailboat – Cinnamon

By LAWRENCE BARBER

It took five men with an idea to produce a new line of 34-foot fiberglass sloops on the Pacific Coast. One was a plate shop foreman, another a purchasing agent, the third was a college professor of physics, the fourth a physician and hospital superintendent, and the fifth was an advertising executive. With them evolved a spare-time partnership, Yacht Constructors, and the Chinook Class sloops.

The whole idea started with members of Rose City Yacht Club, an enthusiastic sailing group in Portland, Oregon.

Eleven club members professed interest at the start but only five remained when it came to cash on the berrel-head and agreement to forgo weekends, holidays and evenings for two or three years to achieve their purpose.

Tom Green’s “Tamara” on a shakedown sail.

The shop forman was Tom Green, the purchasing agent was Wade Cornwell, and the physics professor was Dr. Merle Starr, all of whom were past commodores of R.C.Y.C. and skippers of small sailing craft. The hospital superintendent was Dr.Jarvis Gould and the advertising man was Henry Morton.

This cooperative boatbuilding effort spawned in 1955. The group was not satisfied with the types and quantity of sailing craft available to them for racing and family cruising on the Columbia River. They looked for a safe and practical type of boat for going to sea as well. They wanted the stability given by ballasted keels, but they required draft shallow enough for river cruising. Hence, they needed centerboards. They preferred sloop rig over two – masted types. and they leaned toward fiberglass construction, at that time little used for building sea-going sailing vessels.

Plans of several designers were studied with a view toward adjusting them for fiberglass hull construction. From the number, the men selected Frederick Geiger’s improved version of the 34 foot Vigilant Class sloop as best suited to their needs. Geiger, a Philadelphia naval architect, provided for wooden hulls, so Green and Starr redrew the plan to permit fiberglass construction. A mockup of the Geiger hull was built upside down and over this was built the glass mold from which 20 hulls have since emerged.

The group adopted the class name of Chinook for their boats because it is a common and respected name in the Northwest. It is the name of the largest, fastest, sleekest and choicest species of Columbia River salmon.

Several months were spent in research and learning to work with glass cloth and plastics. Tom Green was the artisun who led as construction foreman, assisted closely by the deft hands of Dr. Starr. Cornwell ordered the supplies and equipment through purchasing channels lie knew well. and the others joined in as willing hands in the shop.

Before they ventured too far, the men made convincing tests of fiberglass hull materials. They adopted a standard topside hull thickness of three-eighths of an inch, composed of six layers of woven roving and two layers of cloth. Tensile tests made of sections of this thickness proved the matter, it would withstand a pull of 27,000 pounds per square inch. about one-third of the tensile strength of steel but far-greater than that of wood. Penetration tests were made by firing bullets at test sections. Twenty-two-caliber long rifle slug fired from a distance of 13 feet penetrated only one eighth of an inch. A 38-caliber police special revolver-was able to penetrate only one-half way through the material. A 30-30 caliber rifle slug went through the material but was spent after penetrating two inches into a block of fir wood back the sample.

These tests convinced the amateur builders that fiberglass was the material they wanted. Even more convineing experiences later cemented this trust.

The men decided to build a one-piece hull, with no seams that might later split apart. They laid their strands of glass cloth from gunwale to gunwale, down the sides and across the bottom, so the hull came out of the mold as one piece They doubled the thickness in the bow, provided for sheer clamps inside and oak rub rails outside bolted through the hull at the sheer line to give strength. Bulkheads were designed to fit snugly in the inside of the hull and were fiber glassed to the inside skin. Chain plates to anchor tile shrouds were bolted through to reinforcing blocks inside. Engine bedlogs were fiberglassed directly to the hull. It all made for very sturdy, rigid construction, and experience has proved it so. There have been no hull failures in two seasons of rugged sailing.

Purchasing Agent Cornwell spared no pains to get the best prices for materials and equipment, which was ordered, for five boats at the same time. The five men advanced $4000 each for cash outlay at the start, and later they added a couple of thousand more for masts, sails, rigging and extras needed for finishing up cabin interiors. They came out of the project with boats that compare with commercially-built craft advertised for $ 16,000 to $ 1 7.000.

The mold was set up in a former livery barn at the edge of town the fall of 1955. They worked cautiously to avoid mistakes. After seven months they, had laid up the hull, installed ballast, floors, engine, cabin sides and top, and a minimum of interior built-ins. They were strictly spare-time operators, putting in Saturdays Sundays, holidays and week-days nights. They were among the missing from many of their yacht club functions and other events.

As soon as the first hull was lifted out of the mold and hauled away to be launched work was started on the second The men agreed to build five boats, line them all at RCYC and draw straws to determine who would get which boat.

The second, third, fourth and fifth boats were built with less effort and more rapidly than the first, requiring an average of 3 1/2 months each compared with seven months fur the first. In all, the group put in 14,000 man-hours into the five-boat project before the last vessel went into commission.

After the five hulls were afloat without masts and sails, the group set about providing these necessities. They glued up the rough hollow spruce structures, and then smoothed, shaped and fiberglassed the sticks. Each mast is 46 feet long and is stepped upon the cabin top over a section strengthened by bulkheads forming the heads and hanging lockers. Tops of the masts are 50 feet above the water. Stainless steel rigging and Merriman hardware were used.

The sails total 650 square feet in area- 198 square feet in the jibs and 452 feet in the mains.

The engines are 25-hp Gray Sea Scouts. Water tanks were built into the hull with fiberglass but steel fuel tanks were installed. Ice boxes were molded and lined with styrofoam two inches thick for insulation. Each box, Green pointed out, is large enough for 50 pounds of ice, four cases of beer, and the necessities of the galley.

While the overall length of the hulls is 34 feet the waterline length is 23 feet, alloying for an overhang of five feet at the bow and six feet at the stern. Beam is nine feet, draft with the centerboard raised is 4 feet, with the board down, 6 feet 5 inches. The centerboard is steel, about two feet by two feet with rounded ends and weigh 250 pounds

Ballast is 4500 pounds of iron blocks and cement is molded into then keel during the hull construction. The ballast is sealed over with fiberglass above a dusty bilge is gauranteed.

Cabin sides are mahogany and tops plywood, all covered in fiberglass. The two cabins contain fixed berths for four persons, although two boats have hanging bunks for two additional persons. The main cabin has 6′4″ of headroom.

The five boats attracted much attention and calls came in for more hulls. The partners had a perfectly good mold and a lot of newly-acquired know-how, but only limited time to apply those assets.The debated whether to go on or sell the mold and step out. The physician and advertising man were satisfied and dropped out, but Green, Starr and Cornwell bowed to public demand for Chinooks and decided to venture on as a part-time commercial business.They adopted a price schedule for bare hulls, and for complete boats and went to work. Since then, they have never lacked an order on the books. They moved from the original building into a more suitable structure large enough to accommodate three hulls and necessary working space.They set up their mailbox in the frount to accomodate the mail carrier who didn’t like to leave his truck, but they have avoided installing a telephone. They have little time for gossip on the job.

Durring the past two years the partners have turned out 11 more hulls, several of which were in service on the Columbia River last summer. One was trucked to San Diego, California, where the buyer is finishing it. Two others were being finished by buyers in the Portland area and the partners were working on the 17th hull last winter.They are now incorperated and employ two full time men in their shop.

In sailing competitions, the Chinook turned out to be faster than other boats of their size and type on the river.They captured 12 out of 15 possible first, second and third places in club and interclub races, and won three successive first places in the annual Columbia River YA long distance race. One of them, Merle Starr’s Pyxis finished second on corrected time in Class B of the Norpac Ocean Race last June.

The trio knocked off work for a few weeks and, with their expartners, sailed four of the Chinooks up the coast on 1000-mile cruises to Puget Sound and British Columbia. Green and Starr visited Nanaimo and Seattle. Dr. Gould went to Princess Louise Inlet, and Henry Morton to Puget Sound. Everywhere the clean-lined Chinooks attracted attention.

During his return from the cruise, Morton, the advertising man, had an experience that proved the durability of they fiberglass hulls. His boat strayed from the channel in a heavy fog while departing from Gray”s Harbor and grounded upon a submerged rock jetty . The sea picked up the boat and flung it five times on the jagged rocks before Morton was able to back away. He made a quick examination of the inside hull and found no apparent breaks, so he continued to sea and ran 55 miles down the coast to Astoria Ore. There, a more complete survey discloses it minor leak which bled less than a quart of water in a week, and some scratches that would go unnoticed unless they were pointed out. Morton plans to haul out and patch the leak some day but he is in no hurry.

Upon the strength of Morton’s experience, hull No- 10 was sold to another Portland skipper.

Tom Green’s boat was carried broadside into a submerged piling by a six-knot river current. The boat jumped up and over the piling, but suffered only a hardly-noticeable scratch. The piling was loosed, popped to the surface anti floated away.

With that record, the amateur Yacht Constructors feel they are contributing to Northwest yachting as their Chinook Class grows.