MERMERUS M16 Sailing Sunday
photo ex Mac Taylor collection
The above photo of the M-class Mermerus planning at speed is proof that you do not need composite construction, carbon fibre & space-age fabrics to go like the stink & most likely have the crew bricking themselves 🙂
Now if you believe Ron Carters 1954 book, ‘The Glory of Sail’, she was built in 1939 by Gainor Jackson of Devonport, Auckland.
I’m sure one of the anoraks will be able to confirm this & enlighten us further.
Update 01-12-2015 The photos below were sent in by harold Kidd ex Robin Elliott’s 1994 book ‘ Emmie – 70 Years of M-Class Yachting’
The first photo below shows Mermerus broaching, at this stage she was heading straight for the photographers boat & everyone (including the photographer) was in trouble. With skill (luck?) she passed inches from where the photographer was standing, prior to dropping flat onto the deck 🙂
The 2nd two photos shows Mermerus safely through the gap – Maui was not so lucky.
02-12-2015 Input from Robin Elliott
OK ….Opening Day 1946 – in a hard westerly.
Maui, in her first race and flying, had already capsized, and Manaia had broken her mast, had tidied up her broken spars and sails and was anchored awaiting a tow. Mermerus, sailed by 16-year old Phillip Jackson, has started about 10 minutes late and was miles behind the fleet. She had blundered into all this this carnage, got hit by a puff and bore away, but too far, because the Sandspit off Devonport was dead ahead – it was low tide and running aground at speed was not a good thing.
Their crew would appear to have been all over the place because the sudden course correction to starboard to avoid the Sandspit made the spinnaker sheet hand slip to leeward, still holding the sheet, where, so I was told, he got his fingers jammed in the spinnaker block. The extra few metres of sheet allowed the spinnaker pole to sky and lift the bow. Control is absent at this point. And …. Phillip’s older brother Gainor, has just spotted a Blue Boat dead ahead !!!
Max Frommherz of Marine Photos, standing on the foredeck of the Blue Boat, takes this one iconic photograph. The only one he took in the entire sequence, but what a photo!
Mermerus is now heading straight for the Blueboat. The crew are at sixes and sevens and all over each other as the sheet hand releases his fingers from the spinnaker block, lets go the sheet and the kite flogs like crazy.
Ian Mason, photographer for the NZ Herald, standing next to Max takes this next photo.
Mermerus now has major problems and very little time to fix them. Both photographers go flat to the deck as Mermerus’ spinnaker pole flies off the mast and arcs around the forestay, zipping over their heads (Ian Mason told me he still remembered the ‘woosh’ 🙂 ) as Mermerus rounds the bow of the Blue boat and head for a very narrow gap between the disabled yachts.
Ian Mason has a snazzy fast German camera and gets the next two shots away as Mermerus threads the needle between Maui and Manaia.
Note the first of these last images: the crew of Maui have ducked for cover as Mermerus slaloms through the gap, the man on the stern just can’t get far enough away from the flailing kite pole, and you can just see the fingers of the crewman amidships flat to the top planking and clinging on to the deck. In the second image, they surface, safe and relieved, after the mad flailing beast has gone through.
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Love this sequence which features my late father Phillip Jackson and uncle Gainor, sailing the boat designed by his older brother Gifford and built under their house at 1 Jubilee Ave. You can still see where they had to remove part of the wall of the house to get the finished craft out. Ian Mason, one of the photographers was later my neighbour 🙂
Claudia Page
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Thought about it, but no one would read it.
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Brilliant – you should write a book 🙂
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OK ….Opening Day 1946 – in a hard westerly.
Maui, in her first race and flying, had already capsized, and Manaia had broken her mast, had tidied up her broken spars and sails and was anchored awaiting a tow. Mermerus, sailed by 16-year old Phillip Jackson, has started about 10 minutes late and was miles behind the fleet. She had blundered into all this this carnage, got hit by a puff and bore away, but too far, because the Sandspit off Devonport was dead ahead – it was low tide and running aground at speed was not a good thing.
Their crew would appear to have been all over the place because the sudden course correction to starboard to avoid the Sandspit made the spinnaker sheet hand slip to leeward, still holding the sheet, where, so I was told, he got his fingers jammed in the spinnaker block. The extra few metres of sheet allowed the spinnaker pole to sky and lift the bow. Control is absent at this point. And …. Phillip’s older brother Gainor, has just spotted a Blue Boat dead ahead !!!
Max Frommherz of Marine Photos, standing on the foredeck of the Blue Boat, takes this one iconic photograph. The only one he took in the entire sequence, but what a photo!
Mermerus is now heading straight for the Blueboat. The crew are at sixes and sevens and all over each other as the sheet hand releases his fingers from the spinnaker block, lets go the sheet and the kite flogs like crazy.
Ian Mason, photographer for the NZ Herald, standing next to Max takes this next photo.
Mermerus now has major problems and very little time to fix them. Both photographers go flat to the deck as Mermerus’ spinnaker pole flies off the mast and arcs around the forestay, zipping over their heads (Ian Mason told me he still remembered the ‘woosh’ 🙂 ) as Mermerus rounds the bow of the Blue boat and head for a very narrow gap between the disabled yachts.
Ian Mason has a snazzy fast German camera and gets the next two shots away as Mermerus threads the needle between Maui and Manaia.
Note the first of these last images: the crew of Maui have ducked for cover as Mermerus slaloms through the gap, the man on the stern just can’t get far enough away from the flailing kite pole, and you can just see the fingers of the crewman amidships flat to the top planking and clinging on to the deck. In the second image, they surface, safe and relieved, after the mad flailing beast has gone through.
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Photos added. AH
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OK I’ll post the sequence tonight. Robin is right, the seamanship ain’t flash.
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Ummmmmm……. errrr …… you have the pictures HDK. 🙂
The full story and another 7 pictures in the sequence is in the book Emmy, 70 years of M-Class Yachting, published 1994B.D. [Before Digital] by Anoraks Anonymous, and available at Boat Books in Auckland.
btw, they are not really going ‘like the stink’, they are just in serious trouble caused by a number of factors, not the least of which has been the sudden course correction to starboard which has thrown an already chaotic situation in to overdrive.
Colin Frankham once told me that, looking beyond the spectacular, is was the one of worst pictures of an M-Class he had ever seen because everything about the seamanship was utterly wrong. Having been in similar situations several times, I see his point.
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Put the pics up and show the punters.
Or, perhaps not, because you too might get branded with the sneer word “anorak” because you wrote the book on the M Class.
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they didn’t capsize
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Robin Elliott’s book “Emmie” shows the entire sequence ending in a capsize.
I have this image on the wall of my office and not just because I’m an anorak.
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Yes but I wonder what a photo a little later would have have shown!
M16 has a skying kite that looks headed for causing great problems shortly!!
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