The new production foiling Moth of Mackay Boats, Bieker Moth, had made a name for itself in the 2019 Worlds, at Perth’s Mounts Bay, last December. Paul Bieker, the Seattle based designer joined hands with James Gell, the former Mackay Boats employee; Scott Babbage, the top moth sailor; and Riley Dean the 18ft skiff sailor who turned to America’s Cup designing engineer for developing the initial concept.
As per the pedigree, it is not surprising that Moth, the production of Mackay, had 6 boats in the top 15 in the previous World Championship of December in Corfu. Kyle Langford, the America’s Cup champion for the Mackay Boats and overall he stood second. Two places behind him were Scott Babbage. The series saw the entry of 122 fleets of the previous Moth Champions, Olympians, and sailors of America’s Cup.
This is a significant achievement for a production boat that is competing in the class which can entice anyone who dreams to be a boat whisperer and enough scope to play their engineering and design talent in a closed international class.
Dave McDiarmid, Mackay Boat’s Director, the one who is in charge of the operations stated they started Bieker Moth in July and had the world in December at Perth. They said that they had quite a good result and their boats had been out of the box.
He also said that they have taken the original concept and the boat and have presented it with the Mackay brand. At present, they have 5 people assigned for the Moth production. After all, building two boats every month is quite labor-intensive.
McDiarmid isn’t a boat-whisperer but he is the first Kiwi to have won the sought after JJ Giltinan Trophy for 18ft skiffs in about 44 years. Thereafter, he went on to win it two more times. The 18ft skiff is a restrained design and it belongs to a class just like the Moth that embraces the boat designers and engineers who are trying to apply their ideas against the ILK.
The Moth project had been initiated by Babbage. He wanted to make a no-compromise boat and then he was joined by James Gell, Paul Bieker, and Riley Dean, America’s Cup builders and designers from Tauranga, his home. James Gell had developed 10 of Bieker designed Moths before he became a part of the Mackay team through the middle of 2019 July. Then James and the team of Mackay took the boat to a whole new level.
McDiarmid recalled that Scott Babbage made a lot of contributions to the project when Mackay had taken over the production. He was aware of how the controls worked and how he could make it work more efficiently with proper ratios and gearings.
The principal changes that had been made consisted of the development of a proper wing option for reducing the aero drag and for making the boat fast enough for tacking and gybing. Mackay developed a solid wing that enables sailors to provide kinetic energy to the tacks and gybe of the boat.