I am thinking about whiling away the dark winter hours building a scale model of a wooden Merlin. Does anyone have any ideas about where I may get a set of plans for a full size boat at modest cost? The link below has the sort of detail I would like. Ideally I would like to build a Canterbury Tales.

http://www.bluelightning.co.uk/Merlins/H140%20layout01.pdf

And lots of pictures here too for additional stuff

Anyone know if Hazardous 170 ever got to the water? Any 'photos? How did she go? Where is she now?

John Keeling did post some photos of the boat sailing.  Not really possible to assess how the design performed against modern Merlins as he is in the NE of the USA somewhere and no other Merlin within 500 miles at a minimum.  If anyone wants to take a punt on one of Keith's designs and race against the Winder boats there will be a lot of interest, but has anyone the money to burn?

I have or at least I think I do have full scale plans of one of the more radical designs of merlins - The Shaft design, only two ever built, incredibly quick upwind with awesome pointing ability but downwind in anything more than a force 3 forget it - submarine springs to mind but loved every minute sailing her and certainly an interesting design with concave bows from shrouds forwards??  Interested - Guy Wood 07946-070335

Would the new long poles and (large) kite have helped I wonder ....

Prob except was sailing her 20 yrs ago but even with weight well aft she still had a bad habit of dredging with her nose!!

I wonder what it would cost to build?
The plans are not that exspensive, I looked at the link to the pre-cut boat page but the Merlin was not listed.

Guy,

Although Dave Robinson's boat was the once very much in the news, it is well wort remembering that there were two Shafts built in the shed at 'Big Gs' (graham Edwards). As you say, the boat had an inbred wish to nose dive. Having sailed it out of the river at Hamble, if it was wind over tide on the way back in, then life could be very interesting indeed! In an amazing coincidence, I was chatting just recently with David Childs, who once had the pleasure of sailing  the original Shaft. He liked it and found it fast, that said, he was one of the few who you could find that did have nice things to say about the boat.

Last heard of, one out of the Shaft/Space Oddity pair was still up on the thames somewhere, though the report spoke of it having been left to disintergrate to the 'only good for firewoood' stage - let's hope that the report was in error as they were certainly eye catching, if a dead end along the path of development.
Does anyone else have any knowledge of where the boat went?

D

Can anyone remember the sail numbers, and I will hunt my picture archive.

Shaft was 2950

As David, says I did indeed sail Shaft - once only in an evening race at Hamble in 1974, David Robinson and I had lunched well, and he was banging on about what a "dog" "Shaft" was, and asked if I would like to sail it with him that evening. I had not sailed a Merlin since 1970 and frankly after sailing heavy boats any Merlin would have seemed good. We had I recall a fairly good breeze -enough to plane- and beat Graham Pike and Patrick King in what ever their boat of that year was. I do not recall any nose diving but I was at the back and not the lightest ever MR sailor and David was very light, so that would have helped.
That it was my last ever sail in a Merlin Rocket is no reflection on "Shaft" as I found her.
I think there is a picture of "Shaft" in the Merlin Rocket Book?

Ah fond memories also of sailing the old bateau!! I bloody well loved sailing her and think she almost planed upwind?? She was certainly a talking point wherever you sailed her particularly at "Salcombe" where I believe Robbie Burns crewed by Glen Purchase (remember him??) actually managed to stick her nose in the mud at low tide in the bag!! Her no was 2959 but think first one who had same name as design was almost certainly firewood and think my one "Space Oddity" also ended up in Bateau heaven!! Loads of yotting memories but do have one of getting my crew at the time - Alexis Varnava (who ended up as a race engineer in F1??)to ask his artistic sister to write the name on the side of the boat in foot high letters - took a while so Alex and I buggered off to the pub for about three hours and that was two decades ago so nothing changes really??

I can't find any photos, sorry.

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Some of you do wander off the subject....
I have many sets of lines of Merlin Rockets, but I guess that copyright laws prohibit me selling any except my own. Full size frame drawings of any of my 1970s designs are available. As for the Hazardous, John keeling did indeed complete his boat, and got her sailing. He had a family website, which had photos of the boat (USA-01) sailing, albeit in a flat calm. Unfortunately, that website has evapourated into Cyberspace, and John appears to be uncontactable.
For further news about a new Hazardous 170 to be built and sailed in the UK, see http://www.bluelightning.co.uk/Merlins/hazardous.htm. Oh, and incidentally, if anyone wants to build one themselves, you can get a kit of pre-cut plywood parts from Jordan Boats for about 700 quid.

The original plans of Canterbury Tales are in my parent's house in Bedford, probably under a stack of Readers Digest magazines.  I would be happy to send you a copy of these full size drawings but you'll have to wait until I am next back in the UK - and I have no idea when that will be!