Young 88

Jul 6th 2009
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Over a bottle of Inner Circle rum, they looked at the drawings of the wooden boat soon to be built by Greg Elliot and hatched a plan to make a mould from it, good enough for about five boats, which Roger thought he could sell reasonably easily, one of course to themselves. They persuaded the owners and designer to stretch the length from 8.5 metres to 8.9 metres and to put a little more rake in the transom and bow which had originally been drawn near plumb.

Young then designed a cabin and interior. The alterations to the hull were made on the factory floor. They then contracted Terry Cookson to build the moulds. They used the deck mould of their own boat, Inner Circle, as the plug for Young’s standard design and this became the Mark 1deck. Land, with a wealth of experience in fibreglass construction, first in surfboards and then in yachts, bought Jim Young’s plans. His company, then known as Roger Land Fibreglass, had limited production in mind.

They needed to build ten boats to defray the cost of the moulds and so were pleasantly surprised to have six orders by the time the moulds were completed! In view of this, they delayed finishing Inner Circle to get boats underway for other people….. more here

“I had for some time cherished the idea of a boat around the size of half-tonner ‘Mamma Cass’ that I had designed for the later Merv Elliot, father of Bruce, Greg and sister, Sue Satterthwaite. A boat that would feature the good points of ‘Mamma Cass’ but with the broad, yet nicely proportioned, stern (penalised under the IOR rule) much more practical for cruising and racing, faster yet well behaved and with a sensible, easily handled fractional rig, all unspoiled by Northern Hemisphere rules.

The opportunity came when I found myself dealing with Sue and Russell Satterthwaite simultaneously with a company known as ‘Moonraker Yachts’ who were interested in the design as a production yacht. Negotiations with Moonraker stalled, however and Moonraker subsequently went on to produce their own version.

‘Tickled Pink’ was therefore not only [one of] the first Young 88s but also had the distinction of being built using a new construction method that I had advocated in the July 1990 Sea Spray Magazine and that subsequently revolutionised custom boat building. In that article, I introduced both the Young 88 and the new construction concept based on the Rocket 31. (A Rocket 31 had won Class 1 at Cowes week in 1994 and the Round the Isle of Wight race in 1995.)

The new technique involved using a strip-planked core as a former for a special fibreglass and epoxy covering inside and out that provided enormous strength – a method now popularly known as the ‘West’ system after the material suppliers (the original Rocket 31 was built in 1983 by Terry Cookson).

In total, 158 boats would be built of which 143 were GRP-hulled and 13 wooden. Of these, 77 are still in the Auckland area, 9 in Northland, 13 in the rest of the North Island, 19 in the South Island, 38 have been exported (to Australia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, the UK and the USA),
one was lost (but was replaced by the owner) and the location of the remaining yacht is unknown.

The Young 88 is known for its speed, boat-handling ability and comfort when cruising. Its ‘one-design’ cruiser-racer features are a strong attraction and it is now without doubt New Zealand’s leading keelboat class. .

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