Two-piece mast?

[tomodda]

@GL: I've never been able to stay upright on a Windsurfer long enough to appreciate the finer points of sailing it! Even starting out dead downwin, I'd be in the water in seconds. Besides, how do you hold your beer? But thanks for the pointers.

@JonnyCat: The only Uffa Fox <-> George O'Day design dispute that i'm aware of is the cuddy. Uffa designed the DS with a flush deck and maybe a breakwater, George wanted a cuddy to make the boat family-friendly. That all happened on the drawing board only, pre-production, "Gen0" so to speak. The difference between "Gen1" DS1's and "Gen2" DS1's is the seats, they were wood planks early on (until 1960 or '61) then they were molded fiberglass. This was purely a George O'Day decision, for more flotation and easier manufacture. For the truly detail oriented, there were lots of little variations between the early boats - different keelsons, bulkheads, molded cleat pads, mainsheet bridle attachments, jackstays, etc. Some of it is documented in the "DS1 Design Changes" thread, including a spreadsheet (first entry has a link). Personally, I'm suspicious that the early boats were finished off with whatever spare parts (and sail numbers!) the shop foreman had in the bin that day. But there was a lot of experimentation and making do as well, it's not easy maintaining a 30-year production run!

Tom

[jonnycat]

Thanks Tom, I did come across a picture of an older DS1 the other day with the wooden seats (and nothing underneath them) that you speak of.

The idea of the generation changes was something I came across in an old (2000) post by Kevin Clark in this (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=208) thread, where he mentions:

Editorial comment: Too bad George O'Day changed Uffa Fox's original design and made the gen 2 DS 1 non-self-rescuing. I read in the DS Quarterly that Uffa was furious when he learned about this because there's no reason a boat of this size should not be able to self-rescue.

[tomodda]

Dunno what this guy is writing about. My own boat is one of the wood-seat ones - built 1958, sail number 37. Look at my thread "#37" for photos. Absolutely non self-rescuing, I'm still working on shoving more flotation into her.

As I wrote, the only design controversy was the cuddy. If Uffa's original flush-deck design sealed off the forward under-deck space then I can see where it would have been self-rescuing. The later DS-2 has a bulkhead and hatch for exactly that reason.

[jonnycat]

I found another reference from Kevin Clark at the following location (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=501)

The boat will be swamped of course, but it can easily be towed in now, or bailed if you have a 1st gen DS1 ('57-61) or have modified your 2nd gen ('61-72) w/ extra floatation.