Quarter tonner

[STOL71]

Some sailing boats are referred to as quarter tonners.
I have a Bowman 26 and the boat was referred to as a 6-tonner in an article. What does that mean?

 

[sarabande]

Ton, half-ton, and quarter ton were classes of racing boats about 30 - 40 years ago. An attempt to offer level racing to classess of boats produced by different designers.



The other reference (6 tonner) is the registered tonnage given to a vessel after she has been measured for internal volume. Something like the theoretical carrying capacity. It does not necessarily mean the vessels displacement.


A 26ft boat registered as a 6 tonner is going to be quite a chubby boat.

 

[Motor_Sailor]

The short answer is that each description refers to a completely separate and very arbitrary method of describing the 'size ' of a particular vessel. As there is no connection between the two methods (IOR rating versus Thames Measurement) there is no comparison between them.

The long answer is in Peter Johnson's book, "Yacht Rating - Speed, Success, Failure". Hundreds of pages telling you all you would want to know.

 

[STOL71]

Thank you for the input. You shall be forgiven for calling my boat chubby.

 

[Motor_Sailor]

You shall be forgiven for calling my boat chubby.

Don't worry about that. Lot's of people confuse registered Tonnage (as engraved on a deck beam of a Part One Registered UK Vessel) with it's Thames Tonnage. Long after Thames Tonnage stopped being used as a rating (handicap) rule, British boat builders continued to use it as a description of the type of boat they were building. A 6 Tonner of normal form would have been around 26 foot long.

Lloyds Register continued to list boats by their Thames Measurement right up until the late 1970s which was 100 years after it was last used as a rating rule!

Just out of interest, the 'Quarter Tonner' name has its origins in the same rating rule (sort of!). After the Thames Tonnage Rule died, a French man (Auguste Godinet) refined the idea and it became more popular again, especially in France. Although his formula resulted in a 'rating' in metres, the class for the most popular boats at the time became known as One Tonners, as that's about what they weighed. The idea then was taken on for naming other class bands of eligible sizes and by the 1900 Olympics, there were classes for 1/4 tonners through to 20 tonners. However those classes also soon dwindled in popularity, but their legacy was some rather handsome silverware as the prices. Especially the One Ton Cup which was rather magnificent. So the organisers scratted around to look for other popular classes that could race for the cups. At one time the 6metres races for the One Ton Cup. But in the 60s, when the RORC and CCA rules were in their prime, the popular rating band of around 36 feet LOA was chosen to race for the One Ton Cup. I think the French then also subsequently divided up the rest of the fleets into 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 1 and 2 ton classes raging from about 24 to 46 ft LOA. These 'classes' survived the morphing of the CCA and RORC rules into the IOR rule and that's when the terminology really gained traction. The little 1/4 tonners were the hotbed of development in the 70s for new designers like Ron Holland and 3/4 and 1 Tonners were (initially) the average man's perfect aspirational all round cruiser racer with designers like S&S doing dozens of designs between 29 and 34 feet LOA. The zenith of ocean racing (The Admiral's Cup) in its hay-day used teams where the eligible boats were designated by these IOR rating classes.