der are anodized aluminum, and the stainless-steel shrouds are plastic- 

 covered. The boat is equipped with buoyancy tanks. Builders are W. D. 

 Schock (3502 S. Greenville St., Santa Ana, Calif.) and Hugh Doherty's 

 King Harbor Boats (901 Pier Ave., Hermosa Beach, Calif.). The Metcalf 

 is used primarily on the Pacific Coast. Price is $820. 



VITAL statistics: L.O.A. 13'; beam 4'5V2"; draft without dag- 

 gerboard 6", with D.B. down 3'; sail area 93 sq. ft.; weight 130 lbs.; 

 trailable. 



MOBJACK 



There is a story that before the Revolution a British ship put into a bay 

 on the lower Western Shore of Chesapeake Bay. The sailors, or Jack 

 Tars, as they were often called, amused themselves by yelling and in 

 turn being mocked by an echo peculiar to the area. The bay was 

 promptly christened Mock Jack Bay, which was later corrupted to 

 Mobjack Bay, now a popular cruising area on the Chesapeake. So when 

 a new boat was designed by Roger Moorman in 1954, and built on the 

 shore of Mobjack Bay, she became the Mobjack and her insignia became a 

 jolly Jack Tar in blue in front of a red M. 



With the flood of fiber-glass planing sloops and catboats which have 

 been pouring into the boating market, it is not easy for any one of them 

 to be different. I think, however, that the Mobjack has achieved that diffi- 

 cult feat. For one thing, her flat floor-boards are integral with the hull shell 

 and transom, thus killing two birds with one stone: first, giving her a 

 sealed double bottom to provide buoyancy; and second, giving her a really 

 watertight cockpit. The cockpit floor is above the waterline even with 

 twelve hundred pounds loading aboard. 



In the fall of 1959, a year after the class got into production, thirteen 

 Mobjacks were on the last leg of a race at the Fishing Bay Yacht Club. 

 A wicked white squall hit them all. The skipper of the leading boat saw 

 those behind him disappear in the wind-driven spray and dropped his 

 sails. He stayed upright and finished first without sails. One other boat 

 dropped sails in time and stayed upright. The other eleven boats capsized. 

 All but one of these righted themselves without assistance and finished the 

 race under sail, free of water. A striking photograph which we have seen, 

 employed to advertise the righting characteristics of Mobjacks, shows the 

 fleet apparently dodging lightning flashes. Though the boats all escaped in 

 the real squall, we were sorry to learn on reliable authority that the light- 

 ning flashes were "dubbed in." However, that does not lessen the validity 



136 THE SAILBOAT CLASSES OF NORTH AMERICA 



