HULL NUMBER 1 of the Frances design, built by Tom Morris in 1975. It had a custom tall, double spreader sailplan, no pulpits, and beautiful sails, for racing.
LALUZ. A flush decked Frances that has sailed more than halfway around the world.
ONE OF THE British cutters, She has the more conservative, shorter mast and two jibs of short hoist. Her tidy rig would be the better choice for longer, further offshore voyaging.
The second FRANCES was fractional sloop rigged with a self-tending jib. The first few FRANCESes were flush decked like this. When a short house was added with full headroom (if one was less than six feet tall), and more efficient sailplans were designed, interest in the boat blossomed. Before all was said and done, more than 200 yachts were built to this design.
ORIGINAL FRANCES DIMENSIONS
LOA: 25′ 10″
LWL: 21′ 3″
BEAM: 8′ 4″
DRAFT: 3’ 10″ (NOW 4′-1″)
DISPLACEMENT, as built: 6,800 lbs Full load 7300 lbs (approx)
BALLAST (lead): 3,500 lbs
SAIL AREA (100% foretriangle): 317 to 340 sq ft (varies)
DISPL/L RATIO: 316 – 330 (varies)
SAIL AREA/DISP RATIO: 14.5 to 15.6 (varies)
LA LUZ cruising in the tropics. She sailed from Maine to New Zealand.
The FRANCES is one of recent history’s most admired small cruising designs. Well over 200 of the small yachts are now sailing, and they are well loved wherever they voyage. I decided to design this small but capable cruising boat in 1974. My own boat was flush-decked, and I cruised it from Maine to Rhode Island. Another (LA LUZ) is halfway through a circumnavigation. A third (YANLI) has sailed from England to Australia and then to Hawaii and back to Australia. Many of the sisterships added a small house for full headroom, and a variety of sailplans have been fitted.
FRANCESes were built in fiberglass by Morris Yachts in America and Victoria Marine in the U.K. Quite a few fine examples were custom built from our plans of cold-moulded wood using the WEST system.
And now, in her dotage, new aspirants are restoring these fine old boats for their own adventures. Sailing the open ocean in such a small boat is borderline foolhardy- though many have successfully crossed oceans. But if you are aware of the discomforts of facing a storm at sea in something of this size, and are aware of the many advantages of a small, manually handleable yacht, the Frances is one of the better alternatives.
The lines of the original FRANCES.
A preliminary sketch for the first FRANCES.
I often ponder what it might be about the FRANCES design that makes it so popular. I think it must be the aesthetics first and foremost. But the real surprise is how well it sails. Nearly half of her weight is ballast, and it is made of lead. So despite her shallow draft she is reasonably stable and surprisingly fast. Of the various rigs the ones with larger headsails and smaller mainsails proved to be the faster and more weatherly, at the expense of more work trimming, of course. Some of the earlier sailplans were frankly overcanvassed, and a new sailplan, designed in 2020, offers more drive with less heeling,
YOU COULD add a spinnaker, and then you could race her. With a shallow keel and a lot of wetted surface, racing the short-rigged Frances is an exercise in futility. But it’s colorful and if there’s not a lot of windward work, you might just possibly collect silverware.
In the last year I have been contacted by three Frances owners who want to improve their 45-year-old boats, and one who intends to build a new one. The biggest improvement among many small ones is to fit a carbon fiber mast and a new sailplan. This new rig falls about halfway between the old short and tall rigs. It specifies a roller-furler for the jib and a genoa, and a solid vang for the boom, plus a deployable Spectra inner forestay and Solent jib for windier conditions. If you own an old Frances and want to improve it, or can buy one for a reasonable price but are realistic about the significant cost to bring it up to date, contact the designer and invest in a new rig and sails that will significantly improve your boat’s performance, and leave the political craziness and economic uncertainty of life ashore behind.
The original FRANCES hull is pared away in width below the points where the cabin sole needs width and the fairing radius between keel and hull is tight. This is a shape without a lot of form stability, so the FRANCES compensated with an unusually low center of gravity thanks to 3500 pounds of lead ballast.
THE NEWEST SAILPLAN. It uses a carbon fiber mast and simplified rigging with sweptback spreaders, a single aft lower shroud, and larger diameter stainless steel rigging. The offshore or inshore mission of each boat can be addressed by the amount of overlap of the genoa. This particular boat’s owner anticipates heading off on an immediate ocean crossing, so the genoa is of modest overlap and a deployable Spectra stay and Solent jib are available for heavy weather.
I adored my little FRANCES. She was beautiful, well mannered, stable enough, and just plain fun. Her sleek lines cut through resistance like a dreadnaught. Point FRANCES toward a destination and she was unstoppable. Her timeless virtues seem to have disappeared from the modern world. They just don’t build ’em like FRANCES anymore.
LA LUZ had a big genoa so she goes very well in light airs. She spent five years sailing in the South Pacific and ended up in New Zealand.
THE NEW VERSIONS will have a short cabin very similar to this, perched atop the midship raised deck. The perception of space this lends to the interior is quite amazing.
WITH THE SHORT, almost 6-foot headroom house, the interior of a Frances could feel much larger than you’d expect on a 26-foot boat. This is a custom WEST-system boat built in New Zealand.
The Aft Head arrangement for the Frances with one seaberth and a permanent double. (Note: The companionway steps may have to be slid forward depending upon your choice of propulsion).
The Aft Head arrangement for the Frances with two settees, and a large double berth forward. (Note: The companionway steps may have to be slid forward depending upon your choice of propulsion).
The original FRANCES is a highly respected, classic design. She’s comparable in many ways to an MGTD or a J3 Cub. They spewed oil and weren’t very fast by today’s standards, but they were so cute and stylish and safe that owners have enjoyed every minute of their use for decades. The hullform is conventional, heavily ballasted , with no concessions made for speed. It has a CSV (capsize screen value) of 1.70. Anything less than 2.00 is considered a good choice for offshore voyaging.
This design is featured in both of my recent books; MY YACHT DESIGNS and the Lessons they taught me, and THE BOATS I’VE LOVED— 20 Classic Sailboat Designs by Chuck Paine. Both are beautiful, full colored, first class books which give you lots more information on this design, and can be purchased on this website.
QUITE A FEW sailplans have been fitted to a FRANCES. This is one of the “tall rigs”, which could even be raced, and really got the boat going in light to moderate airs, but are too overcanvassed for offshore voyaging. If your idea is to sail around the world, the more conservative rigs, with a three-foot shorter mast, would require reefing less often.
A British built cutter rigged FRANCES. photo credit Charlie Whiteman
FOR MORE PHOTOS OF LA LUZ, A FLUSH-DECKED FRANCES THAT HAS BEEN SAILED HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD, CLICK HERE:
http://frances26.org/laluz.php
Further information may be obtained from:
CHUCKPAINE.COM LLC
Tenants Harbor, Maine 04860-0114
To email Chuck:
A LONG, FUN HISTORY OF THE FRANCES 26 DESIGN
You’ll find great histories of the FRANCES design in both of my books, available as digital downloads from this website. But a recently formed Facebook Group called The Chuck Paine Yacht Designs Fan Club has produced all sorts of photos from owners all over the world, and a few interesting anecdotes. With the benefit of these gifts from the 48-year history of the Frances design, here is a much longer story, told mostly in pictures..
The first of many eventual sailplans had a tall fractional sloop rig with a self-tending jib set on a jibboom. This worked okay before jib roller-furling became popular, but the boomed jib gave up some potential sail area and the tall mast was heavy and required a lot of rigging with its weight and windage.
THERE I WAS at age 30. Young and ambitious, I’d come up with an idea of what life was about for me. Design a new yacht, build a prototype in my beautiful rented shop, sell it to one of the many emerging fiberglass boatbuilders and do it all over again. With my superb shop full of the finest tools someone else’s money could buy, a pretty girlfriend who looked like she might stick around, and my loyal dog Shep at my feet, what could possibly go wrong?
IN 1973 I had recently quit my job working for Dick Carter as a draftsman. I’d met this girl (now my wife) and decided to take her on a backpacking trip from Scotland to India. I had this idea that when we returned I would take my life savings and design and build a boat. The Westsail 32 had become a life-changing phenomenon for sea-seeking vagabonds, and I figured what the world needed was a smaller, more affordable double-ender. 26 feet was all I could afford so that determined her size. I lucked out and was able to rent this beautiful, heated and insulated shop full of the best woodworking tools for next to nothing. This shows the nearly finished hull upside down in midsummer of 1974, when I met this guy named Tom Morris who was getting started as a boatbuilder and fell in love with the design. We made a handshake deal that he would take a fiberglass mold off my hull, invest in a lot more tooling and a ballast mold, and I would press on and finish my boat in time for me to take it to the Newport Boat Show in September, and we would both become rich and famous. In the end, luck intervened.
AFTER TOM MORRIS had taken his mold off my hull the day came to turn her over.
AS THE SUMMER wore on my boat was nearing completion. Her hull was built using the then popular foam core over stringers method, with a conventional glass covered plywood deck over frames.
WITH MY BOAT NEARLY FINISHED, the shop burned to the ground. Gone were my new boat, my life savings, all my tools, my landlord’s beautiful shop that I had planned to live out my life in, and my newfound livelihood. But I dusted myself off and determined to take the insurance settlement and build another Frances in the Spring.
IN A STROKE OF GOOD FORTUNE I had met Tom Morris and he had committed to building new Franceses. When he heard about the loss of my boat he offered to sell me a hull from his new mold at cost, and space in his shop in Southwest Harbor in which to complete it. I hired my twin and he moved to Maine to help me get it built. We worked together for six months of intense work and got her finished in time to show her at the 1975 Newport Boat Show. Tom and I sat together on the side deck for four days and sold boats… it was that easy back in the halcyon days of fiberglass boatbuilding.
WHEN CUSTOMERS CAME ALONG who wanted to build a FRANCES of some other material than fiberglass, I would sell them the appropriate plans. Most of these customers hailed from other parts of the world. This one is Tom Thumb, built in Australia.
NUTCRACKER was built in the WEST System by a lady sailmaker from Toronto.
HERE’s NUTCRACKER 46 years after first launched, restored to like-new condition. WEST System cold molded yachts last virtually forever., given a facelift every 50 years or so.
TOM THUMB coming at you. A lot of boat, a lot of ballast, and a lot of wind.
A GUY NAMED DICK CROSS BOUGHT A KITBOAT FROM Tom and hired my brother Art to help him finish it. Art drew a rig with a huge 150% overlap genoa, and in less than ten knots of wind the boat really flew. Like many well-drawn double-enders his boat KARMA could be easily steered by a wind-vane self steerer. Here Dick is having a kip while the boat steers itself happily to windward. Dick was a man’s man. No roller furling on that genoa, and if the breeze got above 10 knots he’d have to wrestle it into submission and hoist a smaller jib. And don’t forget his version had a bowsprit.
IN 2022 I caught up with hull number one of the FRANCES, built by Tom Morris alongside the hull that I was completing in his shop. She’s still going strong. I still remember that her original owner asked me to design a tall double-spreader rig for her so that she could be raced.
TOM MORRIS sent this photo of one of his first builds, BLENKEZOUKER, to most of the European yachting magazines. As a result Bernard Hayman, the then editor of Yachting World in Britain, wrote an embarrassingly favourable editorial, decrying the fact that it took a bloody Yank to design something so beautiful. Four British boatbuilders saw the editorial and heard that it had in the words of Hayman elicited more inquiries to Yachting World than any article in its history, and asked to build it under license. Tom Morris and I chose a young and ambitious entrepreneur, Peter Gregory, and his new company Victoria Marine, to build the Frances in the UK. In a few years he had built more than 150 Franceses is various versions, and commissioned three more Chuck Paine designs to be built at his shop in Warsash at the mouth of the Hamble river. The success of the Frances and my next design for Peter, the Victoria 30, caught the eye of Charles Maunder at Bowman Yachts in Woolston (Southampton, UK), and in the next few years he built hundreds of yachts to four of my designs.
CHUCK AND DEBBY at their first London Boat Show, 1977.
HERE’S ONE OF the many Franceses at her birthplace Stone Pier Yard in Warsash, UK. Not your typical English weather, but when the sun shines in southern England, it’s glorious.
A CUTTER RIGGED Frances somewhere along the coast of England. The wobbly perimeter of the sunshade makes me crazy.
THUS BEGAN MANY YEARS of commuting to England to sell boats, and to convince either Peter or Charles Maunder of Bowman Yachts that he needed a new design. I would attend the London Boat Show at Earls Court Exhibition Centre every January, and the Southampton Boat Show every September. In all those years I can’t recall a Southampton show when the relentless rain that typifies an English summer didn’t cease for the week in September that I had to be at the show
A TYPICAL Southampton Boat Show scene.
DITTO. Was it my sunny disposition that brought the fine weather?
GALAVANT WAS built in New Zealand in wood/epoxy. If you ever get to Christchurch, drive to its seaport Lyttleton and maybe you will find her there.
SOME OF THESE home-built boats were really nicely done. GALAVANT‘s owner decided to open up the interior by eliminating the usual “main bulkhead”, using a series of hanging knees to provide adequate strength. I like it.
SAME BOAT looking aft
I PARTICULARLY LIKE the cabin sole- nice, light color.
ANOTHER PHOTO OF HER SHAPE.
FELICITY. A British Frances that sailed to Maine.
SOLEIL. Tom Morris owned this one himself for awhile.
A VICTORIA FRANCES. Location unknown. This is the tidy original “British Cutter” rig. Not fast, but it could stand up to much more wind than the tall, racy rigs.
I FOUND YANLI in Bateman’s Bay, Australia. When I encountered her I didn’t know her story. She must have been shipped there on the deck of a freighter, I thought. Nobody would be crazy enough to sail a Frances that distance. Then through the Chuck Paine Yacht Designs Fan Club on Facebook I learned her actual story. A fellow bought her new in Warsash, UK. He financed her. Put down his down payment, hoisted the sails, and that was the last the bank heard from her owner for years. He sailed her south to the Canary Islands, then across to the Caribbean. Then through the Panama Canal. Howcum the bank didn’t have an arrest warrant waiting for her at this obvious choke point I can’t fathom. Then on he sailed to New Zealand. As if that weren’t enough adventure sailing too small a boat on too large an ocean, he then sailed across the Pacific again to the North, to Hawaii. And that is where the bank finally caught up with him. The bank arrested the boat and sold it to an Aussie. Who then sailed it BACK across the Pacific to Australia. Which is how I got to take this photo in Bateman’s Bay Australia three years ago- not looking too bad after the equivalent of sailing around the world!
THE JOYS OF downwind sailing.
INYONI. Needs some bottom paint.
TOM THUMB in Sydney, Australia.
TULA. Someplace in Florida, I think.
FREJA. Location unknown.
A BRITISH BUILT FRANCES, someplace in England..
THE CUSTOM VARNISHED companionway and forward hatch are nice touches.
FELICITY SAILED transatlantic from the UK to Maine. She lives in Rockland, Maine now, a few miles from my home.
WILDWOOD is one of the Tom Morris built beauties.
THIS BRITISH BUILT Frances is trying out her new mainsail.
A HOME-BUILT Frances on turnover day. Location and details unknown.
ANOTHER PHOTO OF David White’s British-built FELICITY outside of Rockland, Maine harbor.
TOLERANCE. In my dotage I’ve come to find varnished teak railcaps intolerable. I really like the ones that are simply painted white. They’re so much easier to take care of. And if the shape of the design is inherently beautiful, varnished teak is just gilding the lily.
A CLOSEUP OF GALAVANT sailing in Lyttlton Harbour, NZ.
ERICA. I think she’s at Universal Marina on the Hamble river.
GALAVANT Galavanting nicely to windward.
GALAVANT’s colorful reacher.
ONE YEAR PETER GREGORY showed one of his creations in the water at the Southampton Boat Show.
WHIM. Tollesbury, Essex, UK.
WHIM‘s nice, wide open interior.
SOLEIL’s Interior
SOLEIL– Morris built Frances
SOLEIL‘s Galley.
A CUTTER RIGGED FRANCES. Location unknown.
AN ENGLISH FRANCES somewhere in the UK. One reason the Frances sails reasonably well despite the shoal draft is the absence of a garboard radius. The entire keel does its work of preventing leeway- all the way up to where it meets the hull.
A cutter rigged Frances somewhere in the UK.
ELLA is one of the two FRANCESes I am aware of that fitted a gaff rig.
STORMY is one of the newly restored Morris Franceses. She is once again in like-new condition, and comparable with a brand-new custom Frances that would cost well over half a million dollars to build today.