Ranger - unbeaten for thirty years

by Sail-World on 14 Aug 2006 To understand Ranger, you have to understand that she was the achievement of the great Kiwi dream – to design, build and race your own boat – and beat all-comers.

Ranger was built by the Tercel brothers, were initially amateur boat builders. There were four brothers, Lou, John, Cryil and Leo, and they designed and built all their boats from launches to yachts. They stopped boat building just before World War 2 because there was no real money in it. Ironically World War II started soon after, triggering a wooden boat-building boom.

Construction of Ranger started in June 1936 on a part-time basis, and the hull was finished in June 1937. She was built alongside the Tercel home in Ponsonby Terrace.

Her skipper, Lou Tercel was the youngest of the four brothers and survived them all. He never married and had no family other than his brothers.

In a fore-runner to modern design practices, Lou used to build half models of his designs and then would do 'tank testing' by building full models and towing them behind a dinghy or launch. Or, he’d hold them in pairs against the current in a creek, and the one that pulled the hardest was discarded. Lou was a student of yacht design and went back to the design data he had back into the 1890’s to get the basic principles.

Ranger was built only because Lou and Cyril were getting out of the boat building business and wanted to use up their surplus timber.

Originally she was going to be 45ft, but they would not have been able to use all their surplus wood - so they stretched her out to 60ft overall. Others have it that the Tercel brothers looked around at yachts that would be her rivals and they decided to go a size bigger.

Ranger’s other dimensions are LWL 44ft Beam 10ft and draft of 7’ 3'. She has 7ft of overhang in a spoon bow, and 10ft of overhang aft, coming into into a transom stern. The original rig was 71ft mast with a 62ft hoist. The boom was 22’. Her main was 677 sq ft and jib 313 sq ft. The keel has five tons of ballast in her keel.

Ranger was diagonally built of three skins of kauri, She was christened by Mrs C Tercel (Lou’s mother?) and was initially moored at Mechanics Bay.

The following are excerpts from an interview conducted by one of New Zealand’s great yachting writers, Alan Sefton and published in 1978. Alan interviewed Lou when he was 82 years old and still sailing Ranger almost every weekend. (At the time time Tercel had his leg in a cast, having split a muscle after pushing a car!).

Waterfront pundits laughed at Ranger’s rig when she was launched. It was a double head rig – which was new in 1938. Tercel had read an article in an American magazine 'by a bloke called (Manfred) Currie'. He started to write a book called the 'Aerodynamics of Sail' and the first instalment in the magazine was all the dope on tall, narrow rigs. Curry reckoned the higher the aspect ratio, the more efficient the rig. He’d worked it all out. He advocated high aspect double-head rigs and this is what we went for on Ranger. He’d even advocated three headsails. He reckoned the more headsails you had overlapping the better.

'Leo Bouzaid, Chris and Tony’s father tried a triple head rig on Rainbow – a Yankee, a staysail and jib topsail as well.'

Ranger on the grid at St Mary's Bay, before the building of the Harbour Bridge and what is now Westhaven.

Ranger won her first race in 1938 and was undefeated for the next 30 years until 1968 – a remarkable record that will never be eclipsed.

Even towards the end of her reign, the only boats to get her measure were the 'Ranger-beaters' – Fidelis (Jim Davern), Infidel (Tom Clark) and Innismara (Bernie Schmidt). But even so Ranger finished second in the RNZYS season points in 1976/77 and won in 1977/78 when Lou was 81 years old and still skipper and helmsman.

Stories of Lou were legend – often told in an imitation of his distinctive voice that went with his weather-beaten countenance.

Sefton relates the following personal tale:

'It involves a Squadron race at Kawau nearly 10 years ago (1968). Ranger was getting a lot of curry from Jim Davern’s 62fter Fidelis and Tom Clark’s 63fter Infidel in those days (when first division racing was the glamour stuff of yachting) but still giving as good as she got. It was blowing hard for the harbour race of the traditional Squadron Wseekend at Mansion House bay. Ranger got a fine start and was leading the fleet. But her mainsail tore clear across the middle. The Ranger crew rigged a trisail in it’s place, but it was a token gesture.

'Ashore that night I commiserated with Lou - 'tough luck'.

'Yes, he said. 'But what makes me mad is that it is a near-new sail.'

Sefton recorded his comments in the Monday edition of the Auckland Star and pretty soon received a phone call from the man who made the Ranger mainsail, Chris Bouzaid.

'It may be new in Lou’s terms,' said Bouzaid 'but that sail’s nearly 10 years old!'

Sefton went to interview Tercel at the same Ponsonby Terrace address where Ranger was born.

'When we called on Lou, he was working on Ranger’s 70’ alloy spar. It was easy to spot his home at the end of the row. The masthead protruded from the driveway, one third of it disappearing into a shed behind the house. That was where Ranger was built. The area was littered with pieces of Ranger equipment and in the house, everywhere you looked, there was something to remind you of Ranger. Most of it was silverware, prizes Lou and Ranger had picked up in more than 50 years of racing with the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron.

'How, we asked, had a retired crane driver managed to continue racing a big, graceful 60 footer in the first division with costs spiralling every year?

'Lou grinned: 'Well I’m not married and yachting has been my only pastime. Anything that needs doing for Ranger we do ourselves. We make all her fittings, do all her maintenance. We even fitted reverse on the motor – still the original Ford 10. We couldn’t afford it otherwise.'

'It was obviously a labour of love and his matter-of-fact way of describing it conjured up the sight that anyone can see if they go down to Westhaven winter or summer and have a look at Ranger. There’s nearly always that squat little man on board, bespectacled, grey with the look of the sea about him. That’s Lou, attending to the thousand and one jobs that go hand in hand with keeping a 60 footer in racing trim.'

Lou died a few years after this interview. For a while Ranger was run by a Trust of his old crew, but eventually she got too much for them.

The current owner, Ian Cook of Yachting Developments, restored Ranger as a private project. She was re-launched two years ago in absolutely splendid condition. She is still a regular competitor on the classic yachting scene.

Ranger went on to be sailed in Cowes in the the America's Cup Jubilee Regatta in 2001.

The book 'Ranger' will be launched at RNZYS on Wednesday 16th August at 1800hrs

'Ranger' is available now from the Royal NZ Yacht Squadron Store for $40 - Phone Emma on (649) 360 6800 to reserve your copy! Or, email reception@rnzys.org.nz

The sources for this story were Century of Sail by Noel Holmes, an article by Alan Sefton which first appeared in the DB Yachting Annual, and the writer's uncle who is believed to be the only surviving member of Ranger's original crew and raced aboard her prior to World War II.