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From www.starclass.org Human Interest
His alma mater recognised his achievements in naval architecture with an award. His importance to the Star Class is that he passed information of the research findings of tank testing of different Star hulls on to Skip Etchells and Bill Kelley when they were building their break-through Stars in Seattle in 1942. Phil, who had set up a naval architect business in Seattle, became acquainted with Skip during the early war years and passed on to him the lines from the most efficient hull in their experiment. As Phil Spaulding noted in an interview in 2001, this hull was marked by a wider bow and a flatter contour than was normally built into the Stars of the time. It should be remembered that the Star Class specifications of the time allowed for tolerances of inches rather than millimeters to make it possible for home-built boats to be produced. A careful builder such as Skip Etchells could and did take advantage of these rather large tolerances to build the most efficient hull. Harry Hofmann was a fellow student of Spaulding's while he was at University of Michigan. A paper written by Hofmann, which was the result of their research with tank-testing of maximum, standard and minimum Star hull shapes, appeared in Yachting in January, 1941. It is interesting to note that this article is among the collection of Star Class material which Lowell North passed onto Ed Sprague. Thomas Skahill, one of Lowell's crews, also has a copy of it, so it must have been something which Lowell felt very highly of and must have influenced his revelutionary hull designs, beginning with the construction of Star 2920 with which he would have won the 1949 World's had he not been disqualified from the second race. © Copyright 2007 by starclass.org |
