The new Bieker Moth from Mackay Boats made its mark in style during the 2019 World Championship held last December at Mounts Bay in Perth. Mackay Boats feels that there is something right about the Moth that the boat-builder has decided to add it to their Olympics lineup. This boat has won 140 world championships and 30 Olympic medals.
The Bieker Moth gets the special Mackay touch to make it a formidable competitor on the water. The initial concept of this Moth saw the light when Paul Bieker, a boat designer from Seattle; James Gell, a former employee of Mackay Boats who was most recently running a company organizing yacht charters in Spain; Riley Dean design engineer of America’s Cup NZL team; and Scott Babbage, Australia’s moth sailor joined hand to come out with a unique boat.
There is no doubt that the ideas and the concepts of these biggies in the sailing field have come in handy when designing this Bieker Moth boat. This high pedigree boat showed its mettle during the World Championship in December in Perth. There were six Bieker Moths in the top 15 positions during the event.
America’s Cup champion Kyle Langford came in second on the Mackay Boat and Scot Babbage was able to end his race in fourth position on this new boat. A new production boat was able to achieve so much in its maiden run and this is a remarkable feat. The performance that this boat showed in such a class has given the right boost for its designers and engineers to take their talent to the international circuit.
The Director of Mackay Boats, Dave McDiarmid, said that they had started to develop the Bieker Moth in July and tested it out at the Perth World Championship in December. It felt that they were able to get their new boat ready for the race in a quick time and it came out with some good results.
Mackay has taken the original design and concept and included it into the Mackay fold. At present, there are five people working on building the Moth boat and they can produce two boats in a month. The Director is no mug as far as boat racing is concerned. He was the first New Zealander to win the JJ Giltinan Trophy for 18 feet skiffs after 44 years. McDiarmid went on to win this race two times more.
It was Babbage’s idea to come out with a non-compromising boat and had Riley Dean, Bieker, and James Gell in a company to build this Moth. Gell made 10 Bieker designed boats before he took up a job in the Mackay team in mind-July. Once Mackay took over the boat construction, it was lifted to a new level.
Mackay added the solid wig option to provide the kinetic energy for the boat to sail over the waters. It made the boat faster to gybe and tack with a reduction in the aero drag. The foils used on the Bieker Moth boat are designed by Paul Bieker and supplied by Mackays.