It was a dark stormy night, with the cold wind swirling all around the Merlin reporter… Creeping silently up to the old wooden out-house located in ‘Sleepy Teddington’, a glimmer of light just allowed him to see in…. Peeking further in, he could just see the hunched back of what looked like a … no, not another Harry Potter villain, but Steve Neil hard at work on his new-fangled Merlin! 

Once again the Merlin’s are going to make the headlines with another beautifully constructed boat, containing yet more ‘techno-head-scratching’. MORE we hear you cry .. we’ve not yet recovered from the last techno-overload provided by The Easy Roller Jenkins/Driver team - never mind new tweaks coming from Winder’s yard, and we understand Pat Blake is at it as well … scratching away in his garage like a good’un!! When will this awful and disgusting habit end…

Steve invited us into his boatshed at Tamesis SC to give us all the juicy gossip.. 

The design and hull was bought from Laurie Smart. It is close to Laurie’s proven ‘Make It So’ design, acquired around 4 months ago. The only wood in the boat is the transom, centreboard case and planking – the rest is all carbon. 

Steve described that he needed a boat to prove a patent on. Liking the fleet, and being a development class – he chose the Merlin. The forward section of the boat is developed purely from his new theory. Steve has never tried this before on any boats, but came up with the idea when thinking about the laminate schedule for Hywel Porkins carbon A-Rater. He thought that he had hit upon something big and so submitted his patent application… Steve hopes that if this works, then he will work at establishing it in standard yacht architecture (and planes, racing cars… ). In brief, the patent describes how Steve is using individual toes of carbon instead of a woven or stitched matt form, laying each individual fibre in the orientation to applied loads and dispersing them into the hull. Snazzy or wott!

You may firstly note from the piccies that the boat lacks the toilet seat or spinacker shute. It’s going to have side bags. This was Richard Estaugh’s idea – to cut the weight out of the bow – allowing all the weight to be positioned in the middle of the boat. ( Ed – Sounds like Richard is trying to convert the merlins into a JooyPooy14 – don’t do it – they even burn slowly!). At present they estimate this boat will need 30 kgs of lead. Also without the shute hole, you can then have 3 positions for the jib, letting you adjust the shape of the jib, having say, a longer slot, shorter foot and having a longer aspect ratio, in theory producing lift and thus higher pointing.

The boat doesn’t have a gunnel running forward, allowing the deck to be raised. The reasons are aero-dynamics, increased buoyancy, and because Steve thinks it will simply look very sexy. The deck will be painted but you can see that the carbon layout allows for pressure points: 3 points for the mast step, 3 points for the strut and 3 points for the jibs variable positions. Also inside the boat, inline with the mast are points for the lowers. This allows the crew more room to work the spinacker. 

The pictures should illustrate the same techniques used below deck level. Control lines will lead from the thwart. The thwart seems quite large, offering a lot of stiffness but not much weight. 

The stern of the boat has been made slightly wider. The deck plan at the back has a 2 layers biaxel carbon running through. The gunnels will have uni-directional fibres running through, allowing loads to be transmitted from the shroud points, through to the transom – hense the reason that the transom is so large. To top this lot off – a layer of biaxel has been used to coat the whole back end. The stern decks tank are wide and angled. The slopped rear decks allow the helm not to me locked in, allowing easy movement. 

Every part of the carbon structure in the boat has Ibeams (2 pieces of foam with a section of carbon through the middle). For example the piece running across the top of the transom contains 5 Ibeams running though it, wrapped with Biaxel carbon, once it was positioned on the boat, proving to be very strong and light. Throughout the boat the carbon is layered and carefully orientated to handle the loads being applied allowing stiffness and power to be transmitted. This is obvious from some of the photo’s. 

Steve was interviewed again, about the rig, in January 2003.