How to Keep an Older IOR Racer Young                                                  By Leif Beiley

Pendragon II, a custom 44 foot IOR racer, was originally designed by Laurie Davidson in 1980 for John MacLauren. Back in those days the IOR (International Offshore Rule) was the most widely used measurement system for handicapping racing yachts. That rule penalized speed producing factors of the design, and in a sense rewarded speed reducing factors. Designers were forced to tweak the hull shapes around the measurement points, reduce stability, and increase freeboards all in a quest for a better rating. The trick was to make the rule think the boat was slow without compromising the speed potential and seaworthiness of the boat. Needless to say, a lot of IOR boats were slow, unstable and not particularly seaworthy. In the mid-eighties, the lOR's demise sealed the fate of these boats. Resale values plummeted and a lot of boats were left to die.

Fortunately for Pendragon II, she was well built and had, by today's standards, sumptuous accommodations for a racer. Current owner, Dave Gray, spotted her in San Diego and realized her potential as a PHRF racer and fast cruiser and he bought her in 1989. With her old IOR keel and rudder along with her tortured hull lines around the stern, she was not fast and was getting beaten by much smaller boats in the local PHRF fleets. Dave, being a competitive guy, decided that he was going to have to improve her speed or racing was never going to be much fun in this boat. So, in 1993 he embarked on a program of continuously improving the boat's performance.

In March of that year he asked me to design a new keel for the boat because the IOR keel left the boat too tender and she was a bit sticky upwind. The new keel was deeper, heavier and more efficient. The result was much improved upwind performance along with fewer spinouts on the downwind legs.

Five years later Dave asked me to redesign the stem. I straightened out the waterlines aft and removed the deep bustle and crease at the aft girth station. The result was a significant improvement in performance, better motion in a seaway and a much quieter ride when the boat was at anchor.

Dave continued to race the boat and had reasonably good success with her, but the times were changing and to stay competitive he had to continue the improvements. In 2000 he commissioned me to design and build a new rudder for the boat. This new rudder retains the old stainless steel stock but the rest of it is all carbon/epoxy construction and weighs about 40 pounds less than the old one. It's also deeper, thinner and has a higher aspect ratio. This new rudder improved the boat's handling considerably, but Dave had been eyeing the newer boats with wheel steering and decided he'd like to have a wheel. This was partly due to the heavy, and peculiar, linkage system that connected the tiller to the rudder. So, we built a shiny white pedestal and installed an Edson "Ultralight" drum steerer. Dave had installed a pair of cut-down deck chairs in the cockpit which, while making the boat easier to steer, were, well... distinctive looking. With the new wheel and no more chairs the boat looked a lot better.

Still, Dave wasn't quite satisfied. In 2001 we tossed the old spinnaker pole overboard and fitted Pendragon with a new oversize pole and masthead spinnakers. Needless to say, the old girl's performance was remarkably improved. After the new pole, Dave thought it would be nice to upgrade the deck layout. Until then Pendragon had been rigged the old fashioned way, with a winch for every halyard and lots of other no-longer-necessary hardware. By adding some rope clutches and rearranging some other hardware we were able to eliminate four winches. The boat also had some clunky old transverse jib tracks that were on their last legs, so we swapped them out for some new Harken adjustable genoa blocks on longitudinal tracks.

One day Dave dropped by while we were been building a carbon/epoxy boom for another boat and he asked how much weight we could save with a carbon boom on Pendragon. Well, her old boom was a monster that weighed around 140 pounds, so I ran the numbers and figured that we could save just about 70 pounds. For an IOR dinosaur that weighs well over 20,000 pounds, a savings like that wouldn't amount to much, but Dave liked the looks of the carbon boom so he ordered one, which we installed last September. Dave figured that was about as far as he could take Pendragon in terms of reworking her to stay competitive. That is, until he saw the new Transpac 52's. Well, Dave is retired and there is definitely not a TP-52 in his future, but he asked me if it would be possible to build a new bow for Pendragon, and whether the performance would be worth it.

So, I analyzed the boat's hull, looked at changes in displacement, waterline length, prismatic coefficient, displacement/length ratios, etc. and concluded that yes, a new bow would definitely improve Pendragon's performance as well as give her a more up-to-date look. But it would be expensive and time consuming. Well, Dave had seen the work we had done on a previous extensive refit and decided to go ahead with the project. So in January of 2002 we hauled the boat up to my shop and began the job of rebuilding her bow.

First we took templates off the existing hull and compared them with the info I had derived from Laurie Davidson's original plans, then I redesigned the bow in the computer. Next we created a new set of templates that we could attach to the hull. These formed the new shape, which extended from the stem to a point about five feet aft of the mast. Once we had the new shape roughed in, we filled in the space between the old hull and the new with low density foam and faired it. Now it was ready for the skin, which is made of biaxial e-glass. Once the new skin was on, the boat was ready for final fairing, painting and new graphics by Gary Miltimore. On March 28th the boat was finally re-launched at Newport Harbor Shipyard.

Our first race was from Newport Beach to Dana Point. We got killed, finishing dead last in our class. This race was sailed in zero to five knots of wind...mostly zero, so we weren't too disappointed. Our next event was NHYC's Ahmanson-Dickson Regatta. Here we expected some real competition and perhaps even a breeze. Our eagerness showed in the first race; we were scored ocs for that one. Then we settled down to run off a string of four firsts and easily won the regatta. Conditions were much more to our liking with winds in the 10-18 knot range and a healthy windchop.

Next up on Pendragon's schedule was San Diego YC's Yachting Cup. Here we expected some serious competition and were not disappointed. Our class included, among others, a Farr ILC 40, JN 40, Nelson/Marek 39, J/130, Melges 30, Peterson 45, and a Farr 395. This five race regatta was sailed in 5 to 15 knots of wind and lots of kelp. Naturally, in race one we got off to an inauspicious start by getting hopelessly snarled in kelp and finished 7th. Over the next three races we sailed consistently, racking up three 3rd's. In the final race we got a poor start and had the lightest air of the weekend, so the newer boats, which all weighed somewhere around half of Pendragon's 21,000 pounds, left us behind and we once again finished 7th, which was just good enough to get us a third place trophy for the series.

So, was the new bow worth it? The answer is an unequivocal yes. Pendragon looks a lot better and more up-to-date, but more importantly she showed she can be competitive against the newer boats in her class. For Dave and his wife, Jan, it was important to be able to continue to sail competitively at, or at least near, the top of their PHRF class here in southern California. The new bow should keep her competitive for the foreseeable future and guarantee her resale value in the unlikely event that Dave and Jan would consider selling the boat. Of course I doubt that Dave will ever stop tinkering with the boat. We're now building her a carbon fiber foredeck hatch, and I hear he's thinking of some new carbon sails.

Pendragon II is not particularly unique. There are many boats of her vintage that can achieve the same, or perhaps even greater, improvements in performance, looks and resale value. All it takes is a good basic boat, an owner who is dedicated to making her better and a few extra dollars.

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