Paper Tiger was the first of the seagoing skeletons to make the yachting world take notice. The ingenious steel frame was called, with admiration, the secret of Paper Tiger's remarkable ocean racing success.
In '61 and '62 she handily won the SORC series.
Charles Morgan designed another skeleton and his new Sabre captured a second overall and a first in Class C in the 1964 SORC.
In 1965, Morgan's newest and most improved version...the Columbia 40...is ready to take her place among her winning skeleton forebears.
One of the advantages of a steel skeleton is this: when the stays and shrouds are tightened, the mast is thrust downward, placing strain on the hull. When the sails fill out, the strain increases. In Columbia 40s however, that pressure is absorbed along the length of the pipe backbone, passed on through steel ribs to the plywood bulkheads, and finally dispersed over the broad deck. All the while the stays and shrouds, themseleves anchored to the skeleton, stay uniformly taut, allowing the sails to retain the best aero-dynamic shape.
Result: More driving power to windward that is the envy of many a larger keel boat.
The steel skeleton also permits setting the headstay (5800 lbs. tension at rest) very taut for improved windward performance.
Because of her low weight and a large modern sail plan, the Columbia 40 is a superior light wind performer.
The weight of the steel skeleton...the placement of fuel, water tanks, engine and batteries under the water line, all greatly increase her stability.
This stability, plus a fine entry and heavy displacement, make her a top performer in heavy weather.
A kell centerboard yacht like the Columbia 40 (10' draft) has many advantages over a keel boat. Kell centerboarders go to weather better because of the added draft; you just make less leeway and the less leeway you make, the quicker you get to the weather mark.
Keel centerboarders go down wind better because of less wetted surface. By tucking the board up you can effectively reduce the drag of the extra area you needed to prevent leeway while going to weather.
Keel centerboareds reach better. When reaching in a strong breeze and particularly with a spinnaker up, most boats have a problem of rounding up into the wind quite hard. This naturally requires quite a bit of rudder to bring them back down to course. By lowering the centerboard by about ¼ you can effectively move the center of lateral plane of the yacht aft and thus alleviate much of this rounding up problem. And by doing so you not only hold a better course, but you have less rudder off center causing undue drag in order to correct a radical course.
And last of all, centerboarders rate better. Outside of sailing better on every point of wind, you also have a yacht with minimum draft, thus opening up many harbors and gunk holes not normally available to a 40 footer.
Until now the biggest disadvantage of a keel centerboard yacht was that it cost considerably more than a keel boat. As you can see now, with the advent of the Columbia 40 this is not the case.