Skegs and the Matrix story told by the designer and builder :: Catamaran Sailboats at TheBeachcats.com

In talking to Buddy Bond that lives here in the Daytona Beach area I asked about the Matrix and history What follows is an email from Buddy Alex,

--- Begin quote from Buddy Bond's email ---
I am writing this to set a bit of the record straight regarding skeg keel beach cats.

I read a trade magazine a few years ago that said: The symmetrical hulled skeg keel beach cat is the "design breakthrough in beach cats for the new millennium". I suppose I should consider that flattering since I came up with it on my first line of beach cats, the Surf Cat 18, back in 1971, then a follow-up, the Carib 18 in 1974, a refinement on the Surf Cat design, and in 1976, the Matrix 5.5 (18"0"), a plumb bowed Nacraesque integrated skeg keel cat muchly reminiscent of the current Hobie line of beach cats.

I started sailing in Hawaii as a kid on Waikiki Beach in 1959, on the Woody Brown, CSK beach cats. A typical grommet, I begged borrowed and surfed my way to getting rides with friends whenever the opportunity would avail itself, but I was no sailor, just loved cats. In 1962, my family moved to Alexandria, Virginia, and a schoolmate brought me home to meet his Dad, Col. C.E. Cornwell, who had two beautiful new 25" cats in his side yard. I admired these two sleek and beautiful catamarans from our school bus; it turns out the person next to me, Kit, lives there. He introduced me to his father on the way home. They only lived one block over from our house, and after that I practically lived in their home, going over plans, foam cores, spar sections etc etc.

Ed was a true pioneer in many, many fields of cored hulls and aircraft design. Ed Cornwell was an aeronautical engineer (USC graduate) and Marine Colonel, veteran of the south Pacific during WWII, and an old San Onofre surfer from the 30"s. He also helped Woody Brown build a 16" beach cat that looked very much like the old Waikiki Surf in miniature, built in 1947. I gave the only picture I had of it to Tom Roland, Nacra designer, at a boat show so it would find its way to the proper history archive.

The two Tremolino catamarans I first saw in his yard were built by Ray Greene & Co. in Toledo, Ohio from Ed"s designs, for the 1962 Little America"s Cup. They were the first boats I actually learned to sail, at the Wash. DC sailing marina. The boats showed great promise but were ultimately defeated in early trials by another American contender, at Buzzard"s Bay, and that contender was in turn defeated by the British designer of Shark, Phoenix, Iriquois etc etc fame, Rod Mac Alpine Downey"s catamaran, Hellcat.

After graduating from college in Florida, Fla Technological Univ. (now UCF), I approached Ed about co-designing a skeg keel symmetrical hulled beach cat on the Tremolino shape, semi-circular sections, raised pedestals and a spoon bow, (Tremolino had graceful clipper bows) something for the surf that resisted pitch-poling in steep breaking seas. We put our heads together.

Ed wanted a skeg keel with a horizontal rudder protruding from the rear of the skeg; nothing to kick up or deal with hanging off the transom, and nothing to break when a wave drops you backwards on your blades and there is no way they can "kick-up". He [erroneously] felt the skeg would mitigate the weather helm, but the pivot point would have to be too far aft of the skeg to make that work or it would be a miniature version of a cat boat"s "barn door" rudder with incredible weather helm.

We built two Surf Cats of this type, one cat rigged w/o a jib and one with. The jib version alleviated some of the weather helm but all in all, it was pretty much a failure and we removed them in favor of transom mounted kick-up rudders. The hulls were not cored; it was a simple hull and deck glued on top of each other with interior glassed in bulkheads and poured foam for flotation, pretty remedial.

The Caribe 18 was a refined version of the Surf Cat, lowered pedestals, rails to sit on ala Hobie 14 & 16, Clark foam vacuum cored, rolled lip like the Hobie, Prindle cats of the day and a skeg keel which allowed us to outpoint the Hobie 16, did not pitchpole, and had extremely good manners in very rough seas, and it was built like a brick shithouse! EVERYTHING was very heavy duty for big surf. They accounted themselves well in Hawaii and Don Langer took his first one to Waikiki to be in every Hawaiian Tropic ad. He was the distributor there and came up with the name Hawaiian Tropic; prior to that it was Tropic Tan.

We were the first to offer a black porous mesh trampoline, after unsuccessfully using nylon industrial safety netting which rotted in the sun. The black mesh came from Chicopee mfg co. in Georgia and was polyethylene mesh. I shared it with Geoff Prindle and Gene Vernon of Sol Cat and soon, everyone was using it, but we were the first to discover it, and the first to use a tube to connect to in lieu of grommets; also a belly in the tramp where it laced in the center, to catch sheets to keep them from dragging in the water.

At the Miami Boat Show, I noticed the Aqua Cat people under the Carib 18 checking out the skeg and sure enough, a few months later at the Miami Midwinters an entire fleet of "new" Aqua cats showed up with skeg keels; the rest of the boat still looked like a plumber"s nightmare, but they had skeg keels. Also a Miami native purchased one of our cats and made a mold and a shoddy copy and called it the "Chris" cat. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I"m flattered. I"d have been more flattered if he"d have done a better job of finish work.

With people wanting more speed than the Carib offered and a more hi-tech look, I came up with MPG, Matrix Performance Group in 1976, and the Matrix 5.5 was launched later that year. I co-designed it with Naval architect Don Wilson of Daytona Beach. Don was not a cat sailor but a fine designer. We built a plug of C-Flex, and had the advice of Paul Lindenburg, a tremendous boat designer, winner of the Tornado Worlds, and other prestigious yacht races, who also built the Super Cat molds to help with the split molds and aligning them properly. I was later involved getting Paul to design and build the 60" Ostar Cat "Fury" with my close friend Hugh McCoy.

As an interesting aside, at the Annapolis Show, when we introduced the Matrix 5.5 (it actually was introduced at the same show as the Hobie 18, Houston a month earlier), I was smoking a joint in an alcove watching it rain, when I look over at my booth and who is under my cat on his hands and knees seeing how the skeg fairs into the hull but Hobie Alter. I wished I"d have had a camera but suffice to say, he is and has always been one of my heroes, so I had absolutely no desire to embarrass him, so I finished my joint and stayed put. But God, I"d loved to have talked to him!

Two boat shows later, the president of Hobie (when Coleman owned it) offered me an engineering job with Hobie at a private boat party put on by Yachting & Southern Boating magazines. I told him I was honored and flattered but thought I had a better boat than they did! He agreed I did, but also pointed out they were Hobie with unlimited money and that I had none. He said "your breakthrough boat is the boat we SHOULD have designed instead of the 18" and I agreed. We shook hands and parted ways.

Later I moved to Aruba to start Scuba Aruba when interest rates were 21% and the catamaran market for all practical purposes died. I"m not surprised to see the new generation of Hobie"s, an easily constructed little mini-Matrix. By then I was into bigger racing cats with 30 to 1 beam to length ratios, pre-preg epoxy construction, but still the semi-circular hulls, low wetted surface, elliptical hull shapes and minimal weight, and daggerboards.

The skeg keels were always intended to be able to fit a "shoe" on the skeg that could be easily replaced for beach erosion; they were never intended to be for any type of racing other than one-design against other skegs keels. In that they are superior to asymmetrical hulls is a testimonial to the elliptical hull shape and plumb bows, but they are hardly racers even though some have acquitted themselves quite well in sloppy conditions and heavier air. In light air, there is just too much wetted surface.
--- End quote from Buddy Bond's email ---

--
Captain Alex Pandelos
2- Matrix 5.5 s And a Hobie 16
Daytona Beach , Florida
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