The Bell Mirror 14.
MGN (Mirror Group Newspapers) already had a solid working relationship with the Bell Woodworking Company through the construction and marketing of kits for the hugely successful Mirror dinghy. It was therefore fully to be expected that Bell would be closely involved in a similar way with the new 'big brother' to the existing boat.
This though created on of the first issue for the 'new' boat. Bell had a enviable reputation as a builder of solid mid range boats, yet this was not where the M14 should have been positioned. The boat was actually far further out to the performance end of the market than anyone realised, yet the promotional material for the home builder positioned the boat as more of a racy mid range product.
Oh dear! The rig says it all! The red sails , with their strong connotation of the 'Mirror' dinghy were not of the best cut. The rig was already quite low aspect, but with a jib, the light but beamy hull could stick in light airs and be sluggish in a chop when being driven upwind.
Downwind.....well, the spinnaker says it all.
A picture of a nearly complete Bell hull. The give away is the tented foredeck shape, where to facilitate home building, the decks were only curved in one plane. Note also in this shot the absence of the 'flooding' side tanks that were introduced to stop the boat floating so high following a capsize. With the full height bulkhead providing so much buoyancy forrard, it was also possible to have the boat stand vertically on it's transom, a difficult position from which to make a speedy recovery.
This interesting bow shot shows the deeply vee'd hull shape, with the maximum beam centred on the crewing area to maximise the effectiveness of the trapezing crew. The side tanks panels are kept straight, again to facilitate home building.
The apparent lack of chain plates suggests that this is a hull that has never been completed!
As the deep vee hull shape runs aft, it starts to flaair out and then becomes a hard chine, with the shape being induced by the cutting of 'darts' from the panels. Some 3 or 4ft aft of the bow, it is juist possible to make out the line of filler that indicates that the builder has looked to make this transition as smooth as possible.
An interior shot of a completed Bell boat. The building instructions for these erred on the side of KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!) yet highlighted many of the problems Bell faced with a more performance orientated, quality boat. If you look on the left hand side of the picture you can clearly see the row of panel pins used to secure the decking during construction, ditto the inner gunwhale that covered the top edge of the side tank panel. In the original Mirror dinghy, decks were not a requirement, so the easy to build method worked fine. On the M14 however, with a hull that could flex under the loadings imposed by a trapeze crew, the panel pins could work within the wood, with the result being visible in this shot.
Another 'problem area' was in the foils. The Mirror, with relatively low hull speed and small rig, could get away with a set of simply shaped ply foils. For the M14 though, the lack of sophisticated foils would be a major negative for the boat. If you look carefully in the picture, you can see that just the last 30mm or so of the trailing edge is chamfered.
Mirror 14 sail number 107, coming abck ashore at Portishead (one of the spiritual heartlands of the class) The boat had been rebuilt by Dave Whittock after being found in a barn...so Nessa, there is hope for you yet!