N2860 No Secrets

[National 12 Webmaster]

The life of N2860 No Secrets. Design: I O U, designed by: Jo Richards in 1975

[Guy Beckett]

I owned 2860 as a teenager and sailed her from 1982 - 1985. I came from sailing a Mirror and liked that I didn't need to persuade friends that they could handle a spinnaker. She was a fantastic looking boat - bright red, hugely flared at the hiking point, pinched in a little at the stern, with a long narrow fore-deck leading to a sharply  defined bow. I  bought her at  an auction in the winter (£200 I think)  and spent a very happy  Easter  holidays in the garage stripping the hull right  back and re- painting and varnishing her. I loved the fact that she was a one off design and that Jo Richards was more or  less a teenager when he designed her.

Inside was even better than the exterior:  a plywood space frame (with an elegant grid of weight  saving holes) ran like ribs off the deep spine of an extemely long centreboard case. She must have drawn over four foot.  All controls were dual which seemed very hi-tech coming from a Mirror. When I bought her there was an elaborate centre main with a full width traveller that arched right across one of the ribs of the space frame. With  over five foot of travel, the curve meant that the leach lost  tension as you eased it, It didn't really work and it made a cramped space even tighter. A year in I switched to an aft mainsheet running from wire strops and added a couple of muscle boxes to the rig - to adjust jib tension and create a mast ram at deck level - and to give me something else to play with.
 
 I sailed her sometimes on a river (Avon SC)  but mainly in school holidays from St  Just in Roseland on the Fal. She was very quick upwind especially in little or no wind, Downwind in flat seas, goose-winging was fine. But she was  a real handful reaching in any sort of wind. All my capsizes were nosedives and I have vivid memories of hiking off the transom trying to keep the nose up. Her fine bow meant she sailed  through waves not over them and downwind in any swell was precarious. Looking back she wasn't really a great  sea boat.

The biggest  problems were capsizes which left the transom six inches underwater and the nose up in the  air. The only recovery strategy we could work out was to sail waterlogged to the nearest  beach and  bail her out. Our best result was a second in Falmouth Week (light winds). Worst moment was calling starboard on a working boat in the Helford Estuary and being ignored. The  chain from the bowsprit carved through my side deck like a  cheese slice. The working boat's owner paid for a very  elegant boatyard repair.

Sometime later in the decade my parents sold her  to make more space in the garden. By  the time she went I was over six foot and the 12 rig felt underpowered. Spinnakers seemed like a good idea and wooden boats  less so. I sail an RS800 these days, but  the secret longings I feel whenever I see an i14, flying Moth  or International Canoe, come from years sailing something odd, unique and temperamental.

[biggles]

No Secrets was built by Mike Wigmore whilst at Nottingham University. She was named after the Carly Simon LP. I remember her as having a very v'ed hull shape with a slight bussle. I never got to crew for Mike as I was too heavy.