David Glenn's blog
Web log entry dated 6 June 2007
Black Betty's fate
This is the hull mould for the now famed VOR winner ABN Amro One or Black Betty as she was dubbed, which is now looking for a home after builder Leen Schaap of Schaap ShipCare in the Netherlands was asked by ABN to dispose of all the tooling and other build materials associated with the project.
Leen told us during a visit to the yard yesterday that there was no way they could bring themselves to cut up the mould which has now become a part of yachting history, a special piece of VOR memorabilia.
"We can't take another boat off it unless we came to come arrangement with the designer Juan Kouyoumdjian," said Leen, "so we thought we might stand it on it's end and have it as some sort of sculpture," he added with a grin. "We certainly couldn't bring ourselves to take the chainsaw to it!" There's an interesting maritime museum near Schaap ShipCare in Lelystad and it might make its way there, but if anyone has any ideas they might like to contact Leen at www.schaapshipcare.nl
In the meantime Leen's fascinating specialist composites plant is just putting the finishing touches to what's been christened the 'Little Monster', a 38ft version of the same 70ft VOR hull, design by Juan K for Roy Heiner's Team Heiner a race training and events set up also based in Lelystad. The TH38 is a wonderfully potent looking machine, comes with the familiar Juan K chined hull, a canting bulbed keel and also a canting canard forward of the keel which can be trimmed to the vertical no matter what the angle of keel.
Heiner hopes to add a number of these extraordinary looking yachts to his fleet of J109s, a couple of Max Funs and an old Mount Gay 30 which are in demand as a corporate charter fleet. Check out www.teamheiner.com and more detail in an upcoming issue of Yachting World.
David Glenn
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