These photos (courtesy of Derek Stroud) are from the start of the 1989 Fastnet Race, featuring a number of the Maxi yachts that would go on to race in the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race. The photos include an interesting couple of shots of Grant Dalton's Farr-designed masthead ketch Fisher & Paykel, showing quite efficient looking mainsails, particularly the mizzen. Steinlager 2 (also pictured) went on to take line honours in the race by just over 3 minutes from Fisher & Paykel.
Fisher & Paykel (above and below)
The Dave Pedrick designed Nirvana
Steinlager 2, the eventual line honours winner of the race, and which would go on to win all six legs of the Whitbread race
Maxi yacht CongereVI
Whitbread contenders Rothmans (left) and Merit Cup
I recently came across an article penned by well-known yacht designer Julian Everitt and which had been shared to the One Ton Class Facebook page. Julian has been kind enough to allow me to publish his insightful and thought-provoking article here (to which I've added a few images): A while back David Macfarlane posed the question: “Why did the IOR die?” The answer is surprisingly simple and has little to do with economic downturns, crazy, escalating costs or the perception that the boats were unseaworthy and slow.
Australia's Ragamuffin during the last Admiral's Cup under IOR in 1993, not long before the eventual demise of the IOR altogether
The very people, the members of the International Technical Committee (ITC), who were tasked to protect and develop the rule for the benefit of the owners signed the death warrant some six years before the beast was finally deemed extinct. It wasn’t a deliberate act, by any means, it was just kind of allowed to happen as interests grew in the development of a new ‘super’ rule that would cure all the ‘ills’ of offshore handicapping. It was called IMS. The International Measurement System.
IMS was very much an American based initiative formulated by a burgeoning interest in the power of computers as envisioned by ‘idealists’ at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This belief in a ‘perfect’ system filtered into the ITC who then increasingly believed that IMS could replace IOR as THE rule for Grand Prix Offshore Racing. At a stroke IMS was perceived as a handicapping system that would allow the return of ‘wholesome’ cruiser racers to the Grand Prix level.
ILC40s, as a level-rating derivative of the IMS rule, seen here competing in the 1995 Admiral's Cup
The 1976 French cat rigged Mini Tonner L'Effraie
And so the scene was set for a showdown between the two rules. Funnily enough however, this ‘conflict’ largely took place behind closed doors - the closed doors of the ITC. This erstwhile Group of designers and boffins had done a reasonable job of helping to develop the original, Olin Stephens/Dick Carter created Mk 1 IOR, into an ever more complex Mk III IOR. They had dealt with the slings and arrows of ‘cat’ rigs, unballasted daggerboards, extreme overhangs, bumps, chines and many other rule dodgers thrown at it by a vast army of new, young designers. The rule really was the ultimate mathematical, but organic and holistic challenge imaginable and so it required a lot of policing and an awful lot of tweaking.
The Farr One Ton centreboarder, Jenny H, 1977
At the annual ITC meeting always held in November and euphemistically called The November Meetings informal submissions were invited from the ‘floor’ for what would eventually become IOR Mk IV. But the minds of the powers that be were elsewhere. Despite impassioned pleas from designers including Tony Castro, Geoff Stagg, representing Bruce Farr, the Dubois office, myself and several owners to use IOR as the ‘baseline’ for producing more user friendly designs, the ITC elected to promote IMS as the rule for the future. Gary Mull, chairman of the ITC at this time, seemed to be heavily influenced by a growing love affair from American designers, like Dave Pedrick, Bill Tripp and the ‘scientist’ Jerry Milgram, with IMS. Together they envisioned a new breed of fair hulled, moderate designs, with great stability, proper cockpits and fitted out interiors.
The IOR Mk IV, proposed from the audience at the 1988 November meetings promulgated similar outcomes, but utilising the proven and robust linear formulas of IOR rather than the largely unknown reliance on unproven Velocity Predictions inherent in the IMS formula.
Turkish Delight trying to stay on her feet during the 1987 Irish Admiral's Cup trials
In the proposed revisions to IOR, stability would be unmeasured getting rid, at a stoke, of the dreaded Centre of Gravity Factor - a measurement fraught with inaccuracies and held largely responsible for producing unstable boats and ones overly dependent on crew weight on the rail. CGF was also directly responsible for such undesirable idiosyncrasies as beam waterline bumps.
Gone too would be the ubiquitous 150 percent overlap on headsails which gave unrated sail area. This change would have opened the door to the development of non-overlap rigs.
The accursed creases and distortions around the aft girth measurements was to be addressed also. One simple suggestion was to rule out any form of reverse inflection in the aft profile. The days of the bustle were virtually over anyway and of course all of our proposed rule changes could be easily ‘grandfathered’ to prevent the existing fleet suffering too much. In reality small changes to the aft girth stations and most particularly the girth differences between inner and outer girth stations would have produced fuller, wider and fairer sterns in short order, while maintains an element of choice. Choice being a factor missing from today’s rules.
While the outcomes of such changes cannot ever be accurately predicted, cause and effect is highly influential in a formula like IOR. The simple removal of the penalty on stability would have quickly allowed designers to create lighter boats as stability could have been found in low CG keels rather than hull form and brute overall weight. In turn lighter and more powerful boats would have pointed the way to fuller sterns.
Gunboat Rangiriri - one of the new breed of Farr-designed light displacement centreboarders of 1977, showing the relatively clean lines that were possible before the ITC forced an increase in displacement
But the ITC very systematically destroyed these arguments as unworkable and felt IMS was a much more effective way of achieving the same outcomes. In fairness to the ITC a number of designers, including Rob Humphries - a member of the ITC board at the time - had IMS designs out racing that did showcase the rule rather well. But this was to be a short lived moment.
And so the ITC policy was set at that fateful November meeting in 1988. The two rules would run in parallel while the anomalies inherent in the VPP-driven IMS were sorted out and a new era of dual purpose offshore racers would begin.
Work would continue on the development of IOR, but with none of the suggested fundamental changes implemented. A Mk IV Rule was duly drafted, but few in authority had any real enthusiasm for it. As far as they were concerned IOR was dying and IMS was the new kid on the block to be nurtured.
The Whitbread Maxi ketch Steinlager 2
In an earlier attempt by the ITC to be more inclusive of heavier, more cruising orientated boats an IOR MK IIIA was introduced, but this backfired spectacularly when Bruce Farr, in particular, exploited the carelessly drafted rule by producing the heavier, but much longer Steinlager 2 Whitbread Maxi in 1989. This amazing own goal of a rule amendment created by the ITC finally allowed the creation of the all conquering inshore Maxi Matador2. Far from allowing the development of heavier, more fitted out boats, the Mk IIIA rule simply promoted heavier stripped out boats which in the case of the Maxi’s allowed them to effectively gain 3ft, or so, of unmeasured length. This was one of many misdirections the ITC took in trying to ‘protect’ the rule and it had a seriously deleterious effect on owner confidence.
Matador 2, the biggest and fastest of the IOR Maxis
But back to the ITC meetings of November 1988. I remember it like yesterday, Geoff Stagg’s final reaction to the ITC intragency. “We don’t really care what you do. Just give us any rule and we’ll go off and design winners for it”.
Gaucho (above and below)
And that is precisely what happened. Within two years Farr had produced the ultimate Grand Prix IMS boat in the form of the 43ft Gaucho. But it wasn’t the beginning of the new era predicted by the rule makers of elegance and internal comfort. Gaucho signalled a very different future. Her overhangs were very short, freeboard was high, the sheer line straight and the interior just as stripped as an IOR boat except for the introduction of a door on the ‘head’ compartment. Other required features like a galley and saloon table were treated with token gestures expensively built in carbon. But much more significantly, in order for velocity predictions to work ‘accurately’, actual stability had to be measured. It wasn’t long before lead was being replaced by wood at the bottom of keels. Not exactly the promised land of wholesome cruiser racers envisioned by the rule makers.
But while IMS continued to be promoted as the solution to ‘fair’ global offshore yacht racing IOR struggled on, shouldering virtually all of the blame for declining racing fleets.
I remember talking to Olin (Stephens) about it all. He was very sanguine - perhaps even a little surprised by the way IOR had developed, but ever the enthusiast for a mathematical solution he liked the theories behind IMS and perhaps felt that the apparent shortcomings in the IOR could be addressed more effectively by the overarching qualities of IMS. It was a mathematically-based theory that wasn’t born out in practice.
With the advantage of a 21st century perspective and taking into account yacht racing developments since the death of IOR in 1994, would keeping IOR been better for the sport as a whole? In terms of continuity and preventing the explosion of multiple, fleet sapping alternative classes, it would assuredly have been beneficial. But it did need a major shot in the arm at the end of the 1980s to reassure an ever more cynical owner base that their worries were being addressed.
Cookson's High 5 followed the Gaucho theme and was dominant in the 2000 Kenwood Cup
In the rarefied atmosphere of Whitbread sponsored global racing, Bruce Farr, once again, showed the way. As IOR lay on its deathbed - an outcome accelerated by clumsy attempts to update events like the Admiral’s Cup with the proposed introduction of one designs and IMS handicapping - Farr, in tandem with the foresight of the Whitbread race committee who allowed asymmetric spinnakers to be flown, discarded the ‘heavy’ design route he had produced with Steinlager 2 and produced a new Maxi design that was some 7,500kgs lighter. This much lighter design was a great deal quicker around the world and potentially showed a new beginning for lightweight IOR racers. Sadly, however, these three Farr ketches, La Poste, Merit Cup and New Zealand Endeavour, were one of the last throws of the dice for IOR.
New Zealand Endeavour - one of three new Farr-designed Whitbread Maxi ketches for the 1993-94 race
But back to theorising about where IOR could have led in design terms. Would keeping a highly modified version of the rule kept ocean racing on its feet? Would it have prevented the almost total demise of classic events like the Ton Cups, the Admiral’s Cup, the Kenwood, the Southern Cross, the Onion Patch, the SORC? Who knows? Maybe it was all about economics or personal time management, but what I do know is that the defining legacy of IOR was its success at global continuity in offshore racing. To have made the decision to ditch this in favour of a hugely more flawed IMS was a grave mistake.
Would a boat designed to an updated version of IOR as suggested back in 1988 at the ITC meetings evolved into something equivalent to today’s high performance designs as typified by the IRC racers, TP52’s and Fast 40’s? Yes. Is the simple answer. Advances in lightweight construction, appendage design, carbon spars would have all contributed hugely, but the biggest single factor effecting overall design and concept would have been the removal of attempting to measure stability. Just as is the case today, boats would not have become more stable, but would simply have become significantly lighter and capable of carrying larger rigs effectively. These are the primary elements driving the performance in today’s designs. To have arrived at this point in the genesis of the offshore yacht within the IOR style framework would have resulted in far more fleet continuity across the globe and possibly allowed the major offshore championships to survive the various financial challenges and rule uncertainties that killed them off.
Julian's article concludes with the above image of his 43 footer Backlash, with the caption "It's not easy to pick a single picture that represents the entire IOR era from 1970 to 1994, but this comes from a high point of the rule in 1985. Fleets were huge and there was enormous variety of design from a multitude of designers".
New Zealand Endeavour (Farr design no.274) was Grant Dalton's entry in the 1993/94 Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race, a successor to Dalton's previous maxi, Fisher & Paykel. New Zealand Endeavour and her near sisterships Merit and La Poste (design no. 278) were born of an extensive research and development exercise by the Farr office. When planning for the boats began in early 1991 it was expected that the costs of that research would be spread over five programmes. However, as global economic conditions declined at that time, research was scaled back, although it remained very thorough, covering weather analysis, tank testing of 14 hull variants, velocity prediction development, appendage development, rig analysis and construction optimisation.
This Maxi class of 1993 took their lead from Steinlager 2, Peter Blake's all conquering ketch from the 1989-90 edition of the race (design no. 190). The new boats were 25.9m long, only slightly longer than Steinlager 2, but with a shorter waterline and much lighter in displacement (27,660kg compared to 35,150kg), with less rated sail area and similar rated beam (it is interesting to compare these displacement figures with the less constrained design of the 1995 ILC maxi Sayonara, of 24,400kg). Rated sail area was traded away to achieve a long light hull, while the rigs were developed to produce more power for their rated area. Appendage drag was drastically reduced through the use of smaller keel foils married to large bulbs, and more slippery hull sections ensured less drag for an equivalent stability and IOR rating.
Profile and deck plan for New Zealand Endeavour (Farr Yacht Design)
The bow profile was a modern interpretation of the clipper bow, having the function of a bowsprit but without the rule complications that use of a bowsprit might entail, a conservative position adopted as one of the lessons from the failed New Zealand America's Cup campaign in 1992.
New Zealand Endeavour is turned over at the Marten Marine yard - the square shape in the keel is the location of the internal ballast slab
The yacht was constructed by Marten Marine and was state-of-the-art - the hull being a complex layup of carbon fibre laminate of five outside and three inside skins, laid on top of three Kevlar skins, which in turn were sandwiched around a 25mm core of Nomex honeycomb and then cured at 80 degrees. More weight gains were achieved in her deck gear - for example the winches were moulded from carbon fibre and milled from titanium and aluminium. The total weight of the winch package was 300kg, compared to 500kg on Fisher & Paykel.
Early trials in the Hauraki Gulf, with main gennaker and mizzen staysail set
Despite carrying less sail, Farr's new 1993 designs were faster in light airs and significantly faster in moderate and strong downwind conditions due to the lower displacement and high effective length. Although New Zealand Endeavour was oriented towards heavier air than her two sisterships (less sail and slightly less displacement), Dalton was keen to ensure that the boat would still be competitive in the light, as a result of losses in these conditions incurred against Steinlager 2 during the 1989 race aboard his previous Fisher & Paykel. The design approach for New Zealand Endeavour also traded off some upwind performance in preference to reaching and downwind speed, but notwithstanding the crew were impressed with her upwind pace in early trials.
This aerial view shows the large separation between the main and mizzen rigs
New Zealand Endeavour slices upwind in light-moderate conditions in early trials - the clipper bow is a notable feature in this photo. The local Lidgard loft provided Endeavour's working sail wardrobe.
The development of the rig was an interesting area, with analysis of different options of rig separation and sail area distribution leading to a high aspect ratio arrangement for both the mizzen and the main, with taller mizzen masts than the 1989 generation, and substantially larger separation between the rigs. This increased separation resulted in smaller mizzen staysails, but greater efficiency was achieved due to the increased space in which they could be set.
The mizzen boom extended well past the transom
The use of a ketch rig was a result of the predominance of reaching conditions typically experienced on the Whitbread course, but also because the sail area of the mizzen was treated 'cheaply' under the IOR. Indeed, the official book of the Endeavour campaign records that an even larger mizzen was contemplated, with a mizzen mast of similar height to the main mast, but engineering challenges saw the height of this rig 'moderated' to just 2 metres shorter.
New Zealand Endeavour powers upwind in fresh conditions during her New Zealand trials
The overall impression was that of a more extreme version of Steinlager 2, with a more pronounced and elongated overhang, married to her unusual clipper bow, and a main mast set for'ard and her mizzen boom extending well past her transom. Her sail plan presented an unusual arrangement of small foresails and spinnakers, offset by large gennaker staysails. She was, to all intents and purposes, the ultimate expression of the offshore Maxi at the very end of the IOR era.
The official launch of New Zealand Endeavour in Wellington Harbour, November 1992
New Zealand Endeavour was officially launched amongst much fanfare in Wellington Harbour in November 1992, reflecting the corporate location of her principal sponsors, in front of a crowd of more than 30,000 - a thunderous fireworks display lit up the harbour in a ceremony broadcast on prime time TV.
New Zealand Endeavour power reaching and flying one of her Banks' gennakers
Any early passage to Wellington for the launching revealed the big advantage in the design of her rig, achieving high average speeds over long periods in five-sail reaching conditions. Dalton commented at the time that the performance gain was largely due to the use of assymetric spinnakers, by then permitted under the IOR rules, as amended for the Whitbread maxis, and which were more stable and could be carried closer to the wind.
New Zealand Endeavour (photo Rick Tomlinson | Facebook)
Her first big test was the 1992 Sydney-Hobart race, which she passed with flying colours, taking line honours in convincing fashion (see video above). She was then shipped to Europe to take part in the UAP Round Europe race and the 1993 Fastnet race. New Zealand Endeavour came up against her maxi competition in the Round Europe (photo right) - Merit Cup and La Poste - where she rounded out the winner, despite finding some chinks in her light air speed due to some sails being off the pace and the boat being optimised for heavier winds. Just before the
Round Europe race, some delamination was discovered in the bow sections
and these were required to be repaired before the Fastnet race, resulting in
some major surgery. During this refit new rigs, designed and built by Southern Spars, were stepped, some 25kg lighter than the originals. A new lighter keel was also fitted (500kg) - being smaller in size it also reduced underwater drag. The changes proved successful, and New Zealand Endeavour was the best of the maxis in the Fastnet race, but they lost out to the smaller Whitbread 60s that were better suited to the fresh upwind conditions in the first half of the race.
New Zealand Endeavour at the start of the third leg from Fremantle to Auckland (8 January 1994)
The performance of New Zealand Endeavour in the Whitbread race is well documented - she won the first leg to Punta del Este, lost the top half of her mizzen mast on the leg to Perth, but bounced back to win the third leg to Auckland and the fourth leg to Punta del Este. She finished with the fastest elapsed time of 120 days and five hours, to give Dalton and his crew the coveted Whitbread trophy. Her time was nine hours faster than Yamaha, the first to finish of the new Whitbread 60 class, and some eight days faster than Steinlager 2's record breaking performance four years prior. Merit Cup finished third, 21 hours behind New Zealand Endeavour.
New Zealand Endeavour sails out of the inner Hauraki Gulf at the boisterous start of the fourth leg (19 February 1994)
At full power with spinnaker and her big mizzen gennaker set
New Zealand Endeavour was later purchased by Australian sailing interests and renamed Tasmania, which went on to take line honours in the 1994 Sydney-Hobart race. The video of that race can be seen here:
New Zealand Endeavour (as she has since been renamed) was listed for sale in 2014 (in Portoferraio, Elba Island in Italy) after having been largely unused in the prior six years, apart from an Atlantic crossing in 2008 (although she received some extensive refit work before undertaking that crossing).
Recent photographs (April 2022, Sailing Anarchy), below, show that New Zealand Endeavour is being maintained in much better condition, and is now located in Marina Santelena, Venice, Italy, under the ownership of Scuola Navale Militare.
New Zealand Endeavour, as seen in January 2023 (photo Facebook)
New Zealand Endeavour, sporting some additional sponsor decals, as seen in Dubrovnik in October 2025 (photo Facebook)
New Zealand Endeavour also competed in the Barcolana regatta, held in Trieste, Italy, in October 2025.
Ceramco New Zealand, Peter Blake's famous Whitbread race contender from 1981-82, has popped up on the radar again recently after her current owner, US yachtswomen Dianne Masters, announced the possibility thatthe yacht may return to New Zealand as part of a campaign to contest the 2013 Sydney-Hobart, a race that Ceramco won, both on line and handicap, in 1980.
The fast and clean stern sections of Ceramco
The design parameters for Ceramco were conceived by Blake as a result of his experience in earlier Whitbread races and in the Southern Ocean on heavy displacement yachts. Blake wanted a yacht that was fast downwind and paid little regard to the IOR rule. These parameters allowed Bruce Farr to design a very fair, shallow bodied yacht without the distortions inherent in IOR boats of the time. The Farr Yacht Design notes for Ceramco (Design #90) comment that "we opted for a boat designed primarily for speed, but with removal of any obvious rating penalty features where the effect on performance would be virtually unmeasurable but the effect on rating considerable." Still, a fair hull had to be paid for somewhere, and Ceramco carried a rating of 62.9ft IOR, high for a 68-footer, but it was expected that the ability to maintain high average speeds through much of the Whitbread race course would offset such a high rating.
The Ceramco half-model published on www.demi-coques.fr
Ceramco during initial sailing trials (photo Auckland Star/Sea Spray)
Ceramco makes a foray into the Southern Ocean on her way back to New Zealand after the Sydney-Hobart Race (photo Lidgard Sails)
Ceramco enters the Marlborough Sounds in the South Island as part of her New Zealand tour following her victory in the Sydney-Hobart race
Ceramco's initial shake down was the 1980 Sydney-Hobart race, which she won, both on line and handicap and not far outside the race record. She also contested local races in New Zealand, including the Auckland Anniversary Regatta in January 1981.
Ceramcoduring the 1981 Auckland Anniversary Regatta (photo Auckland Maritime Museum)
As further preparation for the 1981-82 Whitbread, Ceramco contested the Seahorse Maxi series sailed on the English Solent. While off the pace in light airs, she gave a good account of herself on reaching legs and in any breeze.
Ceramco during the 1981 Seahorse Maxi series in the English Channel (photo Seahorse magazine)
Although a strong favourite for the Whitbread itself, her dismasting on the first leg to Cape Town put paid to any chance of overall victory. But her finish of the first leg under jury rig was a feat of seamanship and perseverance in itself, and the design philosophy of the yacht was vindicated when she went on to win the next leg to Auckland, with a sixth in the second leg and another win on the leg to Portsmouth. Ceramco finished the Whitbread in 11th place overall.
Ceramco nears Cape Town towards the end of her epic 4,000 mile journey under jury rig
Ceramco sails triumphantly into Auckland Harbour in the next leg, second on line and first on corrected time
The following is a short video highlighting the epic battle between Ceramco and Flyer in the 1981-82 race:
Ceramco was sold to a Californian surgeon after the Whitbread race, and was based for a decade at Marina del Rey in Los Angeles. Her sparse racing interior was refitted by the owner for cruising, who renamed her Winterhawk and raced her with a professional crew for 20 years, first out of California and later from Newport, Rhode Island. She raced in the 1984, 1986 and 1988 editions of the Clipper/Kenwood Cup - her rating increasing from 63.2ft to 63.8ft in 1986 but dropping to 61.51ft for 1988 (possibly benefiting from an age allowance). That helped Winterhawk to achieve her most notable result that year, with a third place in Class A (and 19th overall).
Winterhawk during the 1984 Clipper Cup (photo John Malitte/Sea Spray)
Another photo of Winterhawk during the 1984 Clipper Cup, by Phil Uhl
Winterhawk seen here in a Maxi race to leeward of Boomerang and Nirvana, with Sorcery and Ondine close behind (photo Facebook)
Dianne Masters bought Ceramco in 2005, by which time she had reverted to her original name (giving new life to a company name that disappeared from the New Zealand business scene in about 1989). Ceramco later competed in the 2013 Rolex Big Boat series (held in the US Virgin Islands), where she featured as one of the fleet's most historic entries. The crew paid homage to Blake when sporting red socks during a day of competition, as a nod to his famous lucky charm from the 1995 and 2000 America's Cup regattas.
Ceramco sailing in the 2013 Rolex Big Boat Series (photo Ingrid Abery)
Masters commented during the regatta about her famous yacht - “This was the first boat built with a favourable design to surf the big waves in the Southern Ocean. We need at least 20 to 25 knots of wind and then we’re untouchable. In light winds like this, we don’t have a chance of winning, but we’re all having a great time". Indeed, in the relatively moderate breezes, she had to settle for eighth place.
Another photo of Ceramco during the 2013 Rolex series
Unfortunately Ceramco did not make it downunder for the 2013 season. It would be a great sight to see her lined up with Blake's later Whitbread yachts Lion New Zealand and Steinlager 2that are both now based in Auckland.
Ceramco in Florida awaiting sale to a new owner, 2015 (GSA Auctions website)
However, by 2015 Ceramco was looking much worse for wear, and was put up for sale with comments that: "In 2005, Dianne Masters purchased her and she was last campaigned in the
US Virgin Islands-2013 Rolex Big Boat series. At that time a fund
raising [effort] was in place to sail her back to New Zealand. Reportedly the
vessel was last hauled in Trinidad and then sailed back to Florida,
where the undersigned performed the first survey whilst fully rigged at
Miami Marine Bay Sideon 5.9.15 and then afloat with her mast down at
Mirage Yachts, Miami on 5.14.15". After a rescue mission from Miami by Gary Golding, Ceramco was sailed to Bundaberg, Australia, and made available for charter - see her Facebook page here (although this hasn't been updated since July 2022).
Ceramco on her way to Australia, 2018
Ceramco as seen in Bundaberg Port Marina, Queensland in July 2022 and below in November 2022 (photos Facebook)
.jpg)
