X-class yacht with the x-factor owner

Alongside our project updates, people profiles and museum announcements, we’ll also be using this blog to profile objects from our extensive collection that have particularly engaging stories to tell . First up, champion yacht Charade.

Among the Maritime Museum’s extensive collection of yachts sits the X Class champion, Charade. Donated to the museum in 2004 by its owner, Hugh Poole, Charade was a late flash of brilliance in the dying days of the X Class yachts.

Launched at Wellington’s Heretaunga Boating Club October 1965, Hugh guided Charade to four successive victories in the prestigious Sanders Cup between 1967-70. Charade’s last win was the last Sanders Cup race for the X Class, replaced by the increasingly popular Javelins.

An innovative rig
Charade’s owner, engineer Hugh Poole, had raced Olympic Finns and Flying Dutchmans and was familiar with their sophisticated flexible rigs. In 1966, Hugh put his extensive knowledge to use in designing a radical rig for Charade which was to giver her a significant edge as a racer.


First, the X Class’s usual stiff rig was replaced by a bendy mast. Not content to stop there, Hugh saw a sail as a three-dimensional object – one not best made on a flat floor. So he and his crew built a full-size mould of an X Class mainsail, making allowances in its ‘flying shape’ for mast bend.

Sailmaker Ron Nalder used the mould to make what is believed to be New Zealand’s first mould-cut sail. About 25 years later, North Sails in the United States built a computer-controlled mould to make three-dimensional sails – the type which powered NZL32 to America’s Cup victory in 1995.

Charade’s success was immediate and sustained, with Hugh’s four Sanders Cup victories being a record for successive wins in the class for the same boat and the same skipper.


A glittering career for Hugh Poole
Yachting success was a hallmark of Hugh’s over his long career, ultimately culminating in New Zealand representation in the Soling class at the 1976 Montreal Olympics after winning that year’s Olympic trials. Fitting reward it was too, for it was Hugh who, along with friends John Gillingham and Don Colebrook, introduced the Soling class to New Zealand several years earlier.

Hugh’s Olympic involvement also extended to sports administration, as he was the Yachting Section Manager of the New Zealand Olympic Teams in 1960 and 1968.

In 1990 after more than fifty years involvement in the sport, Hugh was awarded the New Zealand Yachting Federation Honour Award, in recognition of his outstanding services to the sport. In 2008, Hugh was also made a Life Member of Yachting New Zealand.

CHARADE
LENGTH 14ft (4.3m)
BEAM 5ft (1.7m)
SAIL AREA 157ft2 (14.6m2)