By VANESSA BIRD

“When my second oldest son Gerhard was 14 he wanted his own boat, so I decided to design one myself,” wrote Jack Köper of the Dabchick dinghy he designed in 1955 and first published details of in June 1956.

“It had to be safe, easy for a young boy to handle, simple and cheap to build, yet fast enough to plane and provide real excitement. The result was the Dabchick, which I designed in six months.

The size of the boat was entirely dependent on the materials I had to hand so I tried to get as much boat as possible out of three sheets of 8ft by 4ft plywood, 3¹/₁₆ in (5mm) thick, and I succeeded in that I only had a few small bits left over.”

The resultant design was a sporty little single-hander that soon attracted the attention of other local youngsters sailing in the waters off Cape Town, South Africa, and by 1957 seven Dabchicks had been launched.

The Dabchick’s unusual looks and innovative design led to an article in the South African publication Yachting News, and by 1963 1,200 were on the water – twice the number of South Africa’s previous most popular class, the Sprog.

Köper worked in the printing industry, but was a keen amateur draughtsman with a good eye for innovative designs. Alongside Dr Ken Warr he had handled the importation of the first consignment of Flying Dutchman dinghies to South Africa and he had a particular interest in lightweight scow designs, having studied the lateen-rigged board-boat style Sailfish, designed in America in 1945.

His interest resulted in the creation of the Dabchick and subsequent Tempo and Sonnet designs (see sidebar), all of which featured the distinctive low-profile scow hulls.

The beauty of the lightweight scow is that it combines a lively performance boat with one that is inherently stable, so therefore suitable for inexperienced sailors too.

Featuring an incredibly shallow double-chined hull with wide bow sections and a V-bottom, it was unlike anything else in South African waters at the time and had a performance to match. Designed principally for racing, the Dabchick, if just off the wind, was quick to rise up onto the plane, highly responsive and, with a hull weighing just 85lb, fast, too.

It was rigged with a bermudan mainsail set high up off the deck and a small jib, giving a rather conservative total sail area of just 60sqft (5.6m²). However, as it was originally intended for youngsters to sail, and the conditions off Cape Town are notoriously windy, it was considered ample.

Although the prototype Dabchick, which had a narrower beam, curved transom and slightly more rounded bow, proved tricky to build, subsequent revisions to the plans created a boat that was very easy to construct, and which lent itself to home construction as the plywood did not need to be contorted into difficult shapes.

By 1966, 2,100 had been launched and interest had spread abroad, too, to several other African countries including Nigeria and Kenya, and further afield to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.

In 1970 the Dabchick Association of South Africa was formed and the following year the class was granted National status, its suitability as a class for junior sailors having been recognised.

Today, around 3,500 sail numbers have been issued and Dabchicks have been built in GRP, too. Its surfboard skimming dish looks may be less unusual now, but 55 years on it is still considered to be one of the best junior training boats in existence in South Africa, and for many the obvious next boat up from the Optimist dinghy.

Different Dabchick

Don’t confuse this Dabchick with the Alan Buchanan-designed Dabchick. Although they were also designed for home construction, Buchanan’s 14ft (4.3m)Sharpies had more freeboard and sailed out of Leigh-on-Sea Sailing Club in Essex.

Distinctive sails

The Dabchick was not only distinctive in hull profile: many of the class have coloured sails, which sets them apart from their contemporaries.

Designer-sailmaker

In 1966, at the age of 55, Jack Köper decided to set up as a professional sailmaker. The amateur designer and boatbuilder had previously worked in the printing trade.

Sophisticated Dabchick

In 1963, Köper designed the Tempo Scow – a ‘sophisticated’ version of the Dabchick, with “sufficient comfort for adults, but which was built for speed. To capture public imagination, it also had to look fast in appearance and be utterly different from any other class.” It took him two years to design the 19-footer and over 180 were built in South Africa. A smaller, 14ft 4in (4.4m) version, the Sonnet, was launched in 1970, again based on the Dabchick.

Vital Statistics

Designer: Jack Köper