SOLING class yacht
Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 8:44 pm
A Soling is a small class of keelboat designed by Jan Linge of Norway in 1965. In 1968, it was chosen from among many other boats to be the men's triple-handed boat for the 1972 Olympics. The Soling was an Olympic boat until its final appearance in 2000 at the Sydney Games. Since 2008 the Soling has been one of the Vintage Yachting Classes at the Vintage Yachting Games.
The Soling is a strong boat designed for any wind and sea conditions and is fun to sail. Fitness, sailing, and team skills are basic requirements for good racing. The boats are made in fiberglass reinforced polyester and are One Design boats coming from an authorized single plug and mold, making competition as even as possible. Masts are made of aluminum alloy and the best-known brand is Abbott, although Proctor, Borresen and other brands might be available in the market.
The lifetime of a Soling is long. Those produced in the early days still sail beautifully and some are still in competition (more than 30 years after being built), but the average competition life of a Soling boat is considered 15 years making the Soling the perfect cost/benefit boat for racing purposes.
Sails are made of Dacron and the most used brands are Doyle, North Sails, Elvstrøm Sails, and UK-Halsey.Charac
The Soling history actually began in the mind of Jan Linge during the late 50s while he was doing design work and tank testing on a 5.5 meter to be built for a Norwegian friend for sailing in the 1960 Olympics. The friend, Finn Ferner, was a successful businessman and an outstanding helmsman, an Olympic medalist, and winner of many international events. Linge had become convinced that a slightly smaller boat with a detached spade rudder and short keel could be a fast seaworthy boat with the likelihood of great popularity - though such features were not allowed under the 5.5 rules. In the linked article you find pictures of another Linge designed 5.5 Metre in with you can already recognize the future features of the Soling. (5.5 Metre Kirribilli)
After 1960 Linge completed his design sketches to demonstrate his ideas for promoting a Norwegian national class.
By the time of the 1961 IYRU meetings, the forces for change had organized themselves to seek four new classes - a single-hander as companion to the Finn, a two-man keelboat to complement the Star, a three-man keelboat like the 5.5 or Dragon, and finally a catamaran.
The underlying goals for these new boats was not explicit, but hinted: "high performance" and "popularity" were keywords for whatever boat was chosen. The two-man keelboat process started in 1962 under the auspices of the Dutch sailing magazine "De Waterkampioen" with the announcement of the design competition, to culminate at the 1963 IYRU meetings, and Trials perhaps in 1965. This resulted in the Tempest.
It was the public announcement by the Class Policy Committee (CPOC) in mid 1963 that started events leading to the adoption of the Soling's Olympic status four years later. The American magazine "Yachting" undertook to accept design sketches for presentation at the November 1963 meeting. "What IYRU wanted was a nice compromise between maximum speed and maximum seaworthiness, with a good measure of both. Obligatory maximum limits and features were:
• LWL: 22 feet (6.7m)
• Draft 4'6 (1.37m)
• Displacement 3799 pounds (1723 kg)
• Sail area 310 sq. ft. (28.8m2)
• Non-sinkable
• Built-in buoyancy
• Capable of racing in open sea conditions
• Open cabin
Linge was determined to develop his version of a three-man keelboat. His next-door neighbor, Sverre Olsen (See S.O. + LING) became interested in backing the effort. A wooden prototype was built, for experimenting with sizes and placement of rudders, keels, and rig. Finn Ferner, the champion skipper and Linge's 5.5 client of 1960, became an important skilled partner in this activity. By mid-1965, Linge and Ferner were satisfied enough with their work to manufacture the mold needed for producing complete fiberglass boats. In November 1965, the IYRU scheduled trials to be held off Kiel during September 1966.
The high-performance revolution was underway: The Tempest was given recognition, Catamaran trials were set for 1967, and a 1966 re-run of the single-hander event which had had no wind in 1965 was held. During the Winter of '65/'66, five fiberglass Solings were built which were extensively sailed against one another during the following Summer. This competition was destined to be helpful in the heavy weather ahead at Kiel - chosen as a windy challenge for what the IYRU desired.
The Norwegians arrived in Kiel with two boats - one to be raced, the other to remain on its trailer ashore available for inspection. Ferner was the helmsman, Linge and Rudolph Ugelstad the crew. There were eight boats, all prototype one-offs except for the Soling. The first race was in moderate air, but thereafter for ten of the eleven races, Kiel lived up to its breezy reputation.
The final race may have been worth all the rest for the Soling: a meeting of helmsmen gathered in view of the forty knot wind. Not surprisingly, the Committee's desire to race was persuasive. On the way to the starting area, breakdowns and one sinking left but two to compete. By the windward mark only the Soling was left to sail the course, and so was able to demonstrate her outstanding ability to handle heavy air. The Selection Committee, consisting of Frank Murdoch (Chairman, GBR), Beppe Croce (ITA), Bob Bavier (USA), Costas Stavridis (GRE), Sir Gordon Smith (GBR) and Hans Lubinus (GER)) was impressed.
Two boats were recommended: Shillalah, designed and sailed by US Starboat Champion, Skip Etchells, and Soling, the boat referred to as "the undersized entry". Shillalah won eight of the ten races she entered - her speed was outstanding; although the Soling was about a foot and a half less on the water line, three feet less overall, 7% less sail area, she averaged a little over two minutes behind first place - was never outclassed, was good in rough weather, and was very fast on the reaches. Three months later in London, the CPOC decided to delay "until additional trials could clarify the matter" - wrote "Yachting" in January 1967.
More trials were scheduled - this time in Travemunde at the end of the 1967 summer. A Committee now called "Observation" rather than "Selection" was this time chaired by Jonathan Janson (GBR) with Beppe Croce (ITA), Ding Schoonmaker (USA), Eddie Stutterheim (NED), and Hamstorf (GER).
While the IYRU proceeded with deliberate speed, the '66 Trials generated action in Norway. The three promoters, Linge, Ferner, and Olsen, formed Soling Yachts A/S to build and sell the boats and to license builders. Paul Elvstrom obtained a boat for testing and sailing in the '66/'67 winter; he became an enthusiastic supporter. Even before the second (1967) set of trials, some sixty boats were sailing in Scandinavia - a "local" class, even without international status.
Several new boats, a fiberglass Shillalah, also a 5.5, and a Dragon to compare speeds, assembled in Travemunde for the second Trials - this time in what became a moderate air series. Again Shillalah was the big winner, but again Soling finished respectably. This time she was sailed by Per Spilling with Sven Olsen and Linge again as crew. Without comment, the Observation Committee recommended Soling alone; this result passed unanimously through the IYRU meetings. The Soling had become an international class.
The 1968 Games in Mexico were held before the Class acquired its Olympic status. Because there was a five-class limit set by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the CPOC had recommended 5.5, Soling, Tempest (its two new boats), FD, and Finn - these at the cost of Dragon and Star for the 1972 Olympics. The Permanent Committee was heavily lobbied by Dragon enthusiasts and so dumped the 5.5; in the same process, the Star owners forced the abandonment of IYRU's Tempest. In April 1969, after this battle, the IOC relieved the pressure on the IYRU by allowing a sixth "event". The IYRU then added the Tempest.
The news of the Trials' results not only assured the Soling's status but stimulated a building spree: three hundred in 1968 and as many or more in 1969. Elvstrom became the dominant builder in Europe, particularly after he won the first Soling World Championship off Copenhagen in 1969. One of the best American helmsmen, George O'Day, was given a license to build for the US market, just as Bill Abbott Sr. acquired the Canadian market.
Abbott became the producer of more Solings than any other world wide. The "Chief" (as he is now known in all the hemispheres) had been looking for a small racing boat in 1966 to build in fiberglass for the use of local sailors at the southern end of Lake Huron. Pictures of the Soling competing in the '66 Trials showed such a boat, and it attracted him as a solution to his search. After negotiations with Jan Linge, Abbott bought a plug which arrived in June 1967. Molds were then built so that six boats were produced by the end of the year - at a leisurely pace because Abbott was unaware of the pace of developments at the IYRU. But in 1968 he built 40, 129 in 1969, and then up to one per day as the American market opened to his benefit.
Abbott-boats Inc. of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada was one of the world's lead builders of the Soling until a tragic fire in the Spring of 2006.
The first World Championship was won by Paul Elvstrom in a boat named Bes, one of three Norwegian boats built in 1968. Elvstrom spent much time testing his idea, while "customizing" three of these boats - one for himself, one for King Constantine, and one for Erik Johansen, a fellow Dane. "Paul Elvstrom's boats tested the limits of the Soling class in every direction" (see Article by Graham Hall, "One Design and Offshore Yachtsman", November 1969, now known as "Sailing World": 3 pages of detailed photos and comments). When measured and protested "on general principles", Elvstrom's boats were faulted on only one point: he "had raised the floor about ten inches and had fiber glassed them to the inside of the hull, making an effective double bottom". With "Elvstrom bailers", the boat was self-bailing.
The value of the raised floor (now called the cockpit sole) as an essential element in the construction and sailing of the Soling is apparent to anyone today, but it was not in 1969. The ISA meeting of that November adopted it only after a tie compelled Bill Abbott to cast a deciding vote after overnight thought. His agony was in Canada where twenty unsold boats had been built without those floors.
While the Elvstrom boat of 1969 seemed a miracle of ingenuity that year, it nevertheless offered an extraordinary contrast to the Melges boat of 1972 in which Buddy Melges won the Class' first Olympic gold medal. The drums used in Elvstrom's boat to provide a mechanical advantage at either end of the cockpit, the center horse, the four big winches for trimming the jib and spinnaker, the clutter of lines coming into a console at the forward end of the cockpit, the spider web of shock cord to raise the spinnaker boom, the free-standing handles on each rail for the crew, the tracks to change clew positions, and even the shroud tracks - all became victims of the Melges systems below decks or behind the bulkhead hatches. Marine hardware had come of age between the Elvstrom boat and Melges'.
Anders Borresen, also a member of the technical committee of the ISA, produced at his shipyard many Olympic Solings. The yard took over the Elvstrom molds and increased the quality level of the Soling.
Nowadays, Borresen Yachts is still a licensed builder producing the boat. The company is based in Denmark with a Soling production line in Argentina.
After the class became an International class the International Soling Association was founded. This "Owners Club" became a very self-supporting club able to address the main issues of the class.
The main strategy of the Soling President has always been: "one-designedness", and creating opportunities that bring club sailors and Olympic aspirants together.
Russia 1978 6k + 3k sg4821, scott?
Upper Volta 1983 90f sg675, scott? 1983 500f sg?, scott?. 1983 500f sgMS679, ScottC282.
Ivory Coast 1987 155f sg944, scott830
Haiti 1978 5g sg 1383, scott C471
Tanzania 1991 5s sg887, scott?
Equatorial Guinea 1978 250f sgMS?, scott?
Gambia 1992 1d25 sg1293, scott?
Wikipedia
The Soling is a strong boat designed for any wind and sea conditions and is fun to sail. Fitness, sailing, and team skills are basic requirements for good racing. The boats are made in fiberglass reinforced polyester and are One Design boats coming from an authorized single plug and mold, making competition as even as possible. Masts are made of aluminum alloy and the best-known brand is Abbott, although Proctor, Borresen and other brands might be available in the market.
The lifetime of a Soling is long. Those produced in the early days still sail beautifully and some are still in competition (more than 30 years after being built), but the average competition life of a Soling boat is considered 15 years making the Soling the perfect cost/benefit boat for racing purposes.
Sails are made of Dacron and the most used brands are Doyle, North Sails, Elvstrøm Sails, and UK-Halsey.Charac
The Soling history actually began in the mind of Jan Linge during the late 50s while he was doing design work and tank testing on a 5.5 meter to be built for a Norwegian friend for sailing in the 1960 Olympics. The friend, Finn Ferner, was a successful businessman and an outstanding helmsman, an Olympic medalist, and winner of many international events. Linge had become convinced that a slightly smaller boat with a detached spade rudder and short keel could be a fast seaworthy boat with the likelihood of great popularity - though such features were not allowed under the 5.5 rules. In the linked article you find pictures of another Linge designed 5.5 Metre in with you can already recognize the future features of the Soling. (5.5 Metre Kirribilli)
After 1960 Linge completed his design sketches to demonstrate his ideas for promoting a Norwegian national class.
By the time of the 1961 IYRU meetings, the forces for change had organized themselves to seek four new classes - a single-hander as companion to the Finn, a two-man keelboat to complement the Star, a three-man keelboat like the 5.5 or Dragon, and finally a catamaran.
The underlying goals for these new boats was not explicit, but hinted: "high performance" and "popularity" were keywords for whatever boat was chosen. The two-man keelboat process started in 1962 under the auspices of the Dutch sailing magazine "De Waterkampioen" with the announcement of the design competition, to culminate at the 1963 IYRU meetings, and Trials perhaps in 1965. This resulted in the Tempest.
It was the public announcement by the Class Policy Committee (CPOC) in mid 1963 that started events leading to the adoption of the Soling's Olympic status four years later. The American magazine "Yachting" undertook to accept design sketches for presentation at the November 1963 meeting. "What IYRU wanted was a nice compromise between maximum speed and maximum seaworthiness, with a good measure of both. Obligatory maximum limits and features were:
• LWL: 22 feet (6.7m)
• Draft 4'6 (1.37m)
• Displacement 3799 pounds (1723 kg)
• Sail area 310 sq. ft. (28.8m2)
• Non-sinkable
• Built-in buoyancy
• Capable of racing in open sea conditions
• Open cabin
Linge was determined to develop his version of a three-man keelboat. His next-door neighbor, Sverre Olsen (See S.O. + LING) became interested in backing the effort. A wooden prototype was built, for experimenting with sizes and placement of rudders, keels, and rig. Finn Ferner, the champion skipper and Linge's 5.5 client of 1960, became an important skilled partner in this activity. By mid-1965, Linge and Ferner were satisfied enough with their work to manufacture the mold needed for producing complete fiberglass boats. In November 1965, the IYRU scheduled trials to be held off Kiel during September 1966.
The high-performance revolution was underway: The Tempest was given recognition, Catamaran trials were set for 1967, and a 1966 re-run of the single-hander event which had had no wind in 1965 was held. During the Winter of '65/'66, five fiberglass Solings were built which were extensively sailed against one another during the following Summer. This competition was destined to be helpful in the heavy weather ahead at Kiel - chosen as a windy challenge for what the IYRU desired.
The Norwegians arrived in Kiel with two boats - one to be raced, the other to remain on its trailer ashore available for inspection. Ferner was the helmsman, Linge and Rudolph Ugelstad the crew. There were eight boats, all prototype one-offs except for the Soling. The first race was in moderate air, but thereafter for ten of the eleven races, Kiel lived up to its breezy reputation.
The final race may have been worth all the rest for the Soling: a meeting of helmsmen gathered in view of the forty knot wind. Not surprisingly, the Committee's desire to race was persuasive. On the way to the starting area, breakdowns and one sinking left but two to compete. By the windward mark only the Soling was left to sail the course, and so was able to demonstrate her outstanding ability to handle heavy air. The Selection Committee, consisting of Frank Murdoch (Chairman, GBR), Beppe Croce (ITA), Bob Bavier (USA), Costas Stavridis (GRE), Sir Gordon Smith (GBR) and Hans Lubinus (GER)) was impressed.
Two boats were recommended: Shillalah, designed and sailed by US Starboat Champion, Skip Etchells, and Soling, the boat referred to as "the undersized entry". Shillalah won eight of the ten races she entered - her speed was outstanding; although the Soling was about a foot and a half less on the water line, three feet less overall, 7% less sail area, she averaged a little over two minutes behind first place - was never outclassed, was good in rough weather, and was very fast on the reaches. Three months later in London, the CPOC decided to delay "until additional trials could clarify the matter" - wrote "Yachting" in January 1967.
More trials were scheduled - this time in Travemunde at the end of the 1967 summer. A Committee now called "Observation" rather than "Selection" was this time chaired by Jonathan Janson (GBR) with Beppe Croce (ITA), Ding Schoonmaker (USA), Eddie Stutterheim (NED), and Hamstorf (GER).
While the IYRU proceeded with deliberate speed, the '66 Trials generated action in Norway. The three promoters, Linge, Ferner, and Olsen, formed Soling Yachts A/S to build and sell the boats and to license builders. Paul Elvstrom obtained a boat for testing and sailing in the '66/'67 winter; he became an enthusiastic supporter. Even before the second (1967) set of trials, some sixty boats were sailing in Scandinavia - a "local" class, even without international status.
Several new boats, a fiberglass Shillalah, also a 5.5, and a Dragon to compare speeds, assembled in Travemunde for the second Trials - this time in what became a moderate air series. Again Shillalah was the big winner, but again Soling finished respectably. This time she was sailed by Per Spilling with Sven Olsen and Linge again as crew. Without comment, the Observation Committee recommended Soling alone; this result passed unanimously through the IYRU meetings. The Soling had become an international class.
The 1968 Games in Mexico were held before the Class acquired its Olympic status. Because there was a five-class limit set by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the CPOC had recommended 5.5, Soling, Tempest (its two new boats), FD, and Finn - these at the cost of Dragon and Star for the 1972 Olympics. The Permanent Committee was heavily lobbied by Dragon enthusiasts and so dumped the 5.5; in the same process, the Star owners forced the abandonment of IYRU's Tempest. In April 1969, after this battle, the IOC relieved the pressure on the IYRU by allowing a sixth "event". The IYRU then added the Tempest.
The news of the Trials' results not only assured the Soling's status but stimulated a building spree: three hundred in 1968 and as many or more in 1969. Elvstrom became the dominant builder in Europe, particularly after he won the first Soling World Championship off Copenhagen in 1969. One of the best American helmsmen, George O'Day, was given a license to build for the US market, just as Bill Abbott Sr. acquired the Canadian market.
Abbott became the producer of more Solings than any other world wide. The "Chief" (as he is now known in all the hemispheres) had been looking for a small racing boat in 1966 to build in fiberglass for the use of local sailors at the southern end of Lake Huron. Pictures of the Soling competing in the '66 Trials showed such a boat, and it attracted him as a solution to his search. After negotiations with Jan Linge, Abbott bought a plug which arrived in June 1967. Molds were then built so that six boats were produced by the end of the year - at a leisurely pace because Abbott was unaware of the pace of developments at the IYRU. But in 1968 he built 40, 129 in 1969, and then up to one per day as the American market opened to his benefit.
Abbott-boats Inc. of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada was one of the world's lead builders of the Soling until a tragic fire in the Spring of 2006.
The first World Championship was won by Paul Elvstrom in a boat named Bes, one of three Norwegian boats built in 1968. Elvstrom spent much time testing his idea, while "customizing" three of these boats - one for himself, one for King Constantine, and one for Erik Johansen, a fellow Dane. "Paul Elvstrom's boats tested the limits of the Soling class in every direction" (see Article by Graham Hall, "One Design and Offshore Yachtsman", November 1969, now known as "Sailing World": 3 pages of detailed photos and comments). When measured and protested "on general principles", Elvstrom's boats were faulted on only one point: he "had raised the floor about ten inches and had fiber glassed them to the inside of the hull, making an effective double bottom". With "Elvstrom bailers", the boat was self-bailing.
The value of the raised floor (now called the cockpit sole) as an essential element in the construction and sailing of the Soling is apparent to anyone today, but it was not in 1969. The ISA meeting of that November adopted it only after a tie compelled Bill Abbott to cast a deciding vote after overnight thought. His agony was in Canada where twenty unsold boats had been built without those floors.
While the Elvstrom boat of 1969 seemed a miracle of ingenuity that year, it nevertheless offered an extraordinary contrast to the Melges boat of 1972 in which Buddy Melges won the Class' first Olympic gold medal. The drums used in Elvstrom's boat to provide a mechanical advantage at either end of the cockpit, the center horse, the four big winches for trimming the jib and spinnaker, the clutter of lines coming into a console at the forward end of the cockpit, the spider web of shock cord to raise the spinnaker boom, the free-standing handles on each rail for the crew, the tracks to change clew positions, and even the shroud tracks - all became victims of the Melges systems below decks or behind the bulkhead hatches. Marine hardware had come of age between the Elvstrom boat and Melges'.
Anders Borresen, also a member of the technical committee of the ISA, produced at his shipyard many Olympic Solings. The yard took over the Elvstrom molds and increased the quality level of the Soling.
Nowadays, Borresen Yachts is still a licensed builder producing the boat. The company is based in Denmark with a Soling production line in Argentina.
After the class became an International class the International Soling Association was founded. This "Owners Club" became a very self-supporting club able to address the main issues of the class.
The main strategy of the Soling President has always been: "one-designedness", and creating opportunities that bring club sailors and Olympic aspirants together.
Russia 1978 6k + 3k sg4821, scott?
Upper Volta 1983 90f sg675, scott? 1983 500f sg?, scott?. 1983 500f sgMS679, ScottC282.
Ivory Coast 1987 155f sg944, scott830
Haiti 1978 5g sg 1383, scott C471
Tanzania 1991 5s sg887, scott?
Equatorial Guinea 1978 250f sgMS?, scott?
Gambia 1992 1d25 sg1293, scott?
Wikipedia