That story about Lotus Boats (JCL) falling to bits.

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oldgit

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That story about Lotus Boats (JCL) falling to bits.Marine Law

Bit slow at work today and trawling the inter web this turned up.
Its an account of an actual court case regarding a JCL boat which lost part of its hull in rough(ish) conditions.
Its almost 3/4 of the way down the web page and the account is poss. a bit heavy going but if your interested in the things that Colin Chapman did regards boats and the arcane world of marine law then worth wading in
http://silverstone.fortunecity.com/...nails pace and the press were none the wiser.
 
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rubbish......
the boat oldgit is on about was built using a new injection kind of moulding..and it was'nt a moonraker..!!

ill stand my hull survey against your's...
 
jhr said:
My old man was a yacht broker and marine surveyor.

He's always said that he wouldn't take a Moonraker across the Serpentine without a favourable forecast ....
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The Moonraker 36 itself was laid up in the traditional manner and has a strong hull.
It was the boats built using the VARI method that had the problems.
 
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All the stories I have read about Colin Chapman and the Marine Industry are always very one sided, he's either the greatest designer / manufacturer there ever was or he didn't have a clue what he was doing. It's fair to say that Chapman wasn't very well received in the marine industry and his craft weren't fairly viewed by others. That said not everything he produced was good!
I remember reading somewhere (on another site), that the site referenced by Oldgit first published very complimentary reports of Colin Chapman both in his Car and Marine businesses. However, the site managed to infringe the copyright of a company and when they asked to have an article removed the site owner got upset and published very anti Chapman views.
Bias aside there is no doubting the Miss Jay Jay case took place and it's results, however I don't think it fair to condemn the whole JCL range because of it. Many hundreds of Moonrakers were built and are still going strong, I have never heard of any delaminating (incidentally Moonraker 36's Moonraker is pre JCL so has nothing to do with Colin Chapman), the other Italian boats in the range didn't suffer any problems either (I have a Mystere that is 30 years old and it doesn't have so much as a stress crack).
The Marauder on the other hand is where all the criticism has been directed. This was Colin Chapman's favoured craft and as such was the craft that received all the innovations (some good, others not so good), such as a semi flexible hull! It was also the largest vacuum injected hull produced at the time and problems were initially found of the resin not reaching all areas of the hull. Bleed holes were introduced in the mould to counter this problem. I don't know if Miss Jay Jay was pre or post this change or it was a design flaw in all Marauders (although I have yet to hear of anything similar happening to another one).
I would love to know the truth of JCL and it's craft but as many of the directors have since passed away and the company records being destroyed when the offices burnt down, we will only hear people's views.
 
could'nt have put it better myself...well said!!

and your right mine was built by bell&buxton.

their must be still 90% of the boats built by jcl still afloat today.
 
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rafiki_ said:
In the auto industry, Lotus is an acronym for Loads Of Trouble, Usually Serious!
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Very true, but when they are going they are one of the most exciting drives you can have.
And that may be a clue as to Chapman's workings, he was an engineer first and foremost and wanted to prove theories. With his cars he produced superb handling cars but they could (and did), go wrong. With the Marauder Chapman was determined to produce a 46' luxury yacht that would do 30 knots (you must remember that engines are not what they are today so this was a very tall order - the Marauder was fitted with Ford Sabre 275's), to do this radical ideas were tried.
As said this was just performed on the Marauder. The rest of the JCL range benefitted from this R&D by just having innovations from the Marauder that were proved successful.
 
Then of course was his aeroplane.
http://members.fortunecity.com/alicat1/type91ml.htm

ultralight.jpeg
 
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