Birth of the Buc by Dick Gibbs The opportunity to design the Buc and other boats for Chrysler came about when the Marketing Director of Chrysler Marine, an old friend, called to ask why Chrysler’s sailboat production was dwindling during a major surge in sailboat production. I said, “I considered it unconscionable for Chrysler to foist off on an unsuspecting public such terrible boats – they should get all tooling in one place, torch them, and then consider if they really wanted to be in the sailboat business”. A month later he suggested “I should put my money where my mouth is” and meet with their Product Planning Committee to create the criteria for a family day sailor that would hold four people. Given this criteria, you may already suspect that the result of this meeting produced a design criteria for a stable, (like a concrete highway), lead sled. Since Rod Macalpine-Downie and I produced designs and prototypes free of charge, being paid on a unit production basis, it was not in our, or Chrysler’s, best interest to produce a design that even the most recent graduate of a junior sailing program would wish to own. Since the level of discrimination, parenthetically speaking, of this committee would not reveal the difference between an F-16 fighter jet and a 1929 Ford Trimotor, we decided to design and prototype what we thought would find a niche in the marketplace. The basic criteria for “our” Buc was: 1. A “sit in” rather than a “sit on” boat. 2. Sloop to include a spinnaker with launcher. 3. The ability to be righted and sailed away without assistance in the event of a capsize. 4. As near symmetrical heeled waterline as possible, eliminating to the extent possible, weather helm due to heeling. 5. A waterline plane of adequate beam to preclude a trapeze as a necessary piece of gear. 6. Potential performance exceeding that of any non-trapeze designs so that it would be capable of handsomely rewarding any skills a helmsman and crew might offer. Rod and I were always strongly influenced by three and a half boats; the 10 Square Meter Racing Canoe, the 505, and the International 14. The half being the Thistle, strongly influenced by the International 14, designed by Sandy Douglas, perennial competitor with Uffa Fox in the Prince of Wales International14 competition. All three are clearly superior designs; the Canoe the fastest of all monohulls, the Thistle and the 14 maximum waterline hull (fastest at maximum displacement speed), and the 505 the best of immersed shape when measured in terms of wave making resistance and hydrodynamic lift to plane in a modest breeze (at the all up weight). All of these designs exhibited characteristics that Rod and I felt were undesirable in a boat to be mass marketed by a major builder to wit: 1. The Canoe’s hairline stability. She will capsize, unattended, with sails up. Yet she is absolutely safe since the hull is a sealed cylinder. (Uffa Fox was the first person to sail an unballasted boat across the English Channel. He chose the Canoe since at worst one could sit on her screaming for help). My first time resulted in six capsizes in 15 minutes (it’s sort of like indulging in America’s favorite pastime, standing up in a hammock). 2. The INT’L 14 and the Thistle whose prismatic coefficient is marginally low. (The ratio of immersed volume to the enclosing cube, a cube’s prismatic being one). The result is hollow waterlines forward. Visual evidence is watching a Buc “grease” on a plane while the Thistles are in a gut wrenching hike until they burst over the relatively large bow wave generated by their hollow waterlines. Its shape at maximum displacement speed is nearly as silly as the beach ball bow of a Flying Scot. Incidentally, I own a Scot, not because I like it, but because it is the only class likely to have one design start in Florida Regattas. I am quite happy racing a Scot because careful class management assures one’s finish position is a matter of skill, since all boats are alike. 3. Of designs I most admire, except our own of course, the Canoe and the Thistle are evolutionary in that creeping changes defined their final shape. Yet they all retain undesirable characteristics. The 505 began with a chosen weight, length, and sail area. Given the 505 criteria, I cannot imagine anyone being able to better the 505 as design. However, this is a boat at something like 300 pounds “all up’, with two ‘standard weight people” defining a design displacement of something like 600 pounds with a waterline plane requiring a trapeze to keep her on her feet. Put three people in a overweight 505 and you have a real pig. This has been a rather long discourse to arrive at the rather simple criteria for the Buc design. The most significant being what will she weigh “all up” and what is the design displacement (boat and crew). Recognizing that we did not want, as in the Canoe 505, and the Int’l 14/Thistle, a design with, marginal stability, requiring a trapeze/hiking board, dynamic stability through a full bow/hollow waterlines, or a too light construction by use of non standard lay up or composites (spelled expensive). We did want: 1. A boat capable of being built by standard production procedures by a major builder. 2. A boat that would suffer little if raced with three people, i.e. 165 pounds over the design displacement. 3. Self-rescue by crew after capsize. 4. A long waterline. The bow would have been like a Thistle, except most people think a Thistle looks funny. 5. A modest aspect ratio sail plan to reduce heeling moment. 6. A standard of performance at least equal to non-trapeze boats like the Thistle. The chosen design displacement was 780 pounds. Sailed lighter she became more tender and only marginally faster, in non-planning conditions, all other things being equal, maybe 3 or 4 boat lengths per mile. I know of several 850 pound Bucs raced seriously with no clear superiority except in marginal planning conditions. The Buc prototype was built in England, taken off Flying Tiger Airlines in Detroit, Michigan on Tuesday, and sailed for the first time to the starting line on Thursday in Yachting Magazine’s One Of A Kind Regatta. We finished seventh in the first races we did not go well up wind. After a night of sail making in my sewing machine equipped van, we had finishes of 1, 2, 2, and 1 in the subsequent races. We finished second by 2 ½ points to the Thistle which was being sailed by the current national champ with two previous champs as crew. A special Thistle that was 165 pounds underweight. My most fond memory is rounding a weather mark 1-2 with the Thistle, greasing on to a plane and driving through his lee before he could get up, and putting 100 yards on him by the next mark. The regatta turned into a two boat race, the Buc and the Thistle. We beat the Thistle in the remaining four races but could not make up the 7th place versus their 1st in the first race. In the last four races we were able to sail a bit higher on the wind (due to the luff pole I think), foot as fast, out reach them handily, and were slightly slower dead down wind. We were very, very lucky to have had those elements of “go fast” fall in reasonably the right places on this overweight, 3/8” thick glass covered tooling plug. Given the time to sort out a down class specification weight Buc, the Thistle would not have been able to read our numbers at the finish. In retrospect, finishing second was a public relations coup because most sailing publications hastened to explain why the Buc didn’t win. Editor’s note: The rest they say is history. Chrysler, TMI, Starwind (Wellcraft), Gloucester, and Cardinal Yachts went on to manufacture 5,000 plus Buccaneers. The Buc Designers by Dick Gibbs J.R. (Rod) Macalpine-Downie 1934-1986 Born, Appin, Argyll, Scotland. Gained his interest in sailing and science from his father, and offshore sailor and specialist in hypervelocity artillery shells and armor to resist his newest weapon. In competition with all United Kingdom boys. Rod won the King’s Scholar Award at Eaton. He majored in biology and seriously considered a career as a concert violinist. One of his professors at Eaton said he remembered him well, because an IQ can be accurately tested to 170, but his :went off “ the scale. While chicken farming in Scotland in 1961, he saw a Shearwater Cat and although he never designed a boat, concluded he could do a better job. The first boat was Thai MK4 which won all six races of the 1962 European, “one of a kind” regatta. He followed that with the winning of the first International Catamaran Challenge in 1963, and had seven more consecutive wins. He was the first with the UNA rig and wing masts. A series of crossbow designs won 5 consecutive competitions. Players Fastest sailboat, Trophies at a top official speed of 41 knots, the last of which sailed in 1984, unofficially at 60+ knots. At the time of his death, a new crossbow was underway, which he believed was capable of 70+ knots. The partnership with Dick Gibbs in 1964 put 80 boats commercial production, resulting in 15,000+ boats. When measured both as a commercial and design success, the Buccaneer was the most significant. In the technical sense, the most successful design was a 15 foot centerboard sloop which after capsizing, would right itself unassisted and yes, with a wooden centerboard full up in the trunk! The design proved the old adage; “beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone”. No one wanted to be saved by the ugly thing. The partnership with Gibbs began with a hand shake, and continued for twenty plus years without a formal agreement and neither ever saw or questioned an accounting for the income/expenditures the their respective half of the business world each administered. Rod was an inspiration to and admired by those who knew him well; he was fiercely loyal to those he considered friends…a most unselfish man, typified by a paragraph he wrote in his last letter to me before his death of bone cancer: “Dying is a funny notion; purely selfish, quite neutral. I feel great distress for my family! It is hard to hurt them, to face being unable to help them when they need me, or worse, not even knowing whether they need me or not; cruelest of all to be forced to be oneself, the instrument of damaging them”. Dick Gibbs 1929 – (I’m still here) Learned the art of boat design in high school (four hours per day) from a mechanical drawing teacher, naval architect, Alvin Youngquist, designer of the Y-Flyer scow. Began a one-man boat business a couple of years out of high school. Built Rhodes Bantams, Phoenix Shark and Dingo Catamarans, Y-Flyers and a number of other strikingly unsuccessful one-designs. Concurrently, we became the third or fourth largest sailmaker in the U.S., in terms of yardage consumed, producing for the trade only. Retired from the commercial sail boat scene on the death of partner, Rod Macalpine-Downie in 1986. Currently sailing a Flying Scot, not because I like it, but because it is the only class reliably showing up for one-design stars in Florida Regattas. At this point, I’m building a hot little airplane in which I hope to buzz the race course at Pymatuming. If not, I’ll be in Florida finishing it for buzz in 1995.