EXTRAORDINARY BOATS: NIGEL SHARP ON THE YACHTING WORLD DIAMOND

The Yachting World Diamond is a Jack Holt design which continues to attract devotees who sail them on some extraordinary adventures - in Australia, 60 years after its conception

- NIGEL SHARP

During the post-World War II boom years of small-boat sailing, Yachting World promoted some 30 designs, most of which allowed for home construction in plywood.

The largest was the Yachting World Keelboat, later renamed the Yachting World Diamond.

'For years the editor dreamt of a planing keelboat,' the magazine later reported of the resulting Jack Holt design. The prototype, Zest, built by R&W Clark in East Cowes, 'was thoroughly tested in the hard winds and seas of the autumn and early winter of 1960 (and) surpassed the highest hopes of her. Two rigs were tested-masthead and a three quarter fractional rig - before a compromise was reached with a 7/8ths fractional.

Zest was exhibited at the London Boat Show the following January, after which it was reported that 'boats are being built by several yards as

well as by a number of amateurs'. Around the same time, Bristol Aeroplane Plastics Ltd began to mould GRP yachts and the first of these, Bristol I, helmed by Jack Knights, was overall winner in the Round the Island Race that July.

The following month, Knights recorded five wins in six races in a YW Keelboat class of seven yachts in Cowes Week.

In 1962, Bristol Aeroplane Plastics introduced a GRP cruising version of the boat, with a 'cabintop to accommodate two berths, and the usual other arrangements, and two more berths under the raised aft deck' which, it was thought, would be 'the ideal boat for the man who wants a family cruiser but without those deadly dull qualities which usually go with a boat so described.' But despite these promising early signs, the class never really took off in home waters.

It was a different story in Australia, however.

Within a month of Bristol I's victory, people were buying plans in order to build yachts for themselves, all in plywood.