Meryl Grandy

Olin Rod on Constellation Design 1773

This image of Olin and Rod aboard the 12-meter Constellation has been rolling around the office forever. Some smart-aleck has hand written a caption at the bottom of the image "Gee look, it's hollow". By the looks of the handwriting I suspect Frank Kinney, the comedienne.

Constellation was built by the Minneford Yacht Yard of City Island, New York and launched in 1964. She is constructed of double planked mahogany over oak frames.

She was designed to be an improvement on the very successful Columbia. Although an America's Cup winner, in early testing her performance was lackluster. A change of skippers made all of the difference. She easily won the Cup by defeating the British 4-0. As allowed by the rule (Third International Rule) she sported titanium mast tip, boom and winches.

The boat subsequently made her home in Monaco under new ownership and for a time was used as a trial horse for a French syndicate, then off to England where she was a trial horse for a British challenger team. The last we heard she sank while under tow off of Turkey in the '80s.

Here's the sail plan.