The Arion, Sleek ketch of 42 Feet, Has Hull of Spun Glass, Proves Fast in Race and Opens Revolutionary Methods of Small Ship Building.

BY ]AY BRIDGTON

WARREN, R. I. — The Arion, sleek and white, swings at anchor in the middle of the Warren River in back of this town, and there is little about her appearance to suggest that she is different from the other pleasure craft of her size and class anchored in the popular waterway.

She has fine lines and her paint seems a bit brighter, but otherwise the 42-foot ketch looks pretty much like any other. Actually, she is vastly different, not only from her sisters in the river but also different from all other boats her size in the world.

For in place of the usual hull of wood, hers is of glass cloth, reinforced with plastic. Although small boats, including dinghies have been so built, never before has any craft as large as the Arion been made of plastic. Not only is she the largest plastic boat in the world she is also the largest thing in the world made of plastic.

She was built in the shop and the yard of the Anchorage Plastics Corporation on the east bank of the historic Warren River. Skilled boat builders, some of whom have been plying their trade here for the past quarter century, took sheets of plastic glass, as limp as bedsheets, and welded the 46-foot hull of the ketch in a matter of only six days. The sheets of plastic glass were reinforced with other plastic substances to give it strength and rigidity.

The hull itself was built in the shop, and so were some of the parts. Then the hull was moved outdoors, next to the river, and assembled before being launched back in May.

Directing the construction was W. J. H. Dyer, president of the Anchorage Plastics Corporation and an experienced boat builder, who has become a pioneer in plastic boat construction. Mr. Dyer believes that it will not be long before most of New England’s boat builders will be doing their hull construction in plastics, and that the lowered costs of plastic boats will be a factor in bringing sailing and yachting within the economic range of more and more persons.

Not all of them will be in a position to purchase such craft as the S25, 000 Arion, but he feels that by bringing down the cost to the owner, possession of a sailing craft of some kind will be possible to many persons now denied that pleasure.

Although the Arion is in white, the plastic can be colored any hue the owner desires. He has a small boat aboard his yawl that has a cloudy transparency. This boat, when carried aboard the yawl, rests upside down over a skylight and the transparency permits the sunlight to pass through it and down the skylight.

The Arion is owned by Verner Z. Reed, Jr., commodore of the exclusive Ida Lewis Yacht Club of Newport. The commodore took her only a few days after she was launched and entered her in the Off Soundings race off New London.

Although she was built as a member of the cruising class, the rules committee took a thoughtful look at her lines and put her in the racing class. With a fine breeze filling her 562 square feet of sails, the Arion proved a fine racer. She took second place against some of the fastest yachts and the most skillful yachtsmen in the East.

One reason for her unusual speed is that the Arion's displacement is only 10,500 pounds, or about two-thirds what it would be were she made of wood instead of plastic.

The Arion was designed by Sidney Herreshoff, one of the foremost boat designers in this country, and he was in her when Commodore Reed and Mr. Dyer took her out on her first sail in May.

The cost of the $25,000 plastic boat is about $5000 less than it would be if she were a wooden craft, declares Mr. Dyer, who expects to see New England's extensive boat-building industry make a shift from wood to plastic within the nest few years. He feels that the Arion will have such an effect upon other builders as to revolutionize the whole industry.

The all-plastic one-piece hull was made in 10 days in the Anchorage Plastic Company's plant at the edge of the Warren River.. Had she been of wood, it would have taken 60 days, points out Mr. Dyer. She was made in a female mould, which can he used in the construction of five or six more hulls, thus amortizing the original cost of the mould.

The ketch's hull has no frame. Its shape and strength depend entirely on the material, which is a fabric spun from a plastic glass, and impregnated with polyester resin.

The Arion's deck is of the same plastic material, but it is reinforced with plywood. The ketch carries a 45-foot hollow main mast and a shorter mizzen.

She berths four persons, two of them in the cabin, and two of them in the cockpit, which has a canvas canopy. There is an icebox, stove, sink and toilet facilities.

The Arion is named for a Greek musician who, according to mythology, was a famous player of the lyre. One day pirates came to the island of Lesbos and sought to rob him. He escaped by leaping into the sea and a dolphin carried him on his back to safety at Taemaros.

During World war II plastic construction of many things came into being and attracted a great deal of attention. At the war's end boat builders on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts began experimenting with making small boats and the Anchorage Company started work with it in 1946. The company made its first plastic boat in 1947, in Detroit, and from then on it really concentrated on plastic boats.

The Anchorage Plastics Corporation, as a subsidiary of the Anchorage Company, was formally organized and the construction of plastic boats was transferred to it. It built some 500 reinforced plastic boats, most of them between 9 and 16 feet long. The parent company continues to make wooden boats.

The plastic boats, most of them finished in white, looked like ordinary wooden boats at first glance, but because they were lighter in weight, they handled faster. Many of these boats were dinghies. The company found many customers among the colleges of New England, and a number of them are to be seen on the Charles River. Some of the M.l.T. dinghies are plastic built boats from the Anchorage plant here.

In addition, the company built a 24-footer for the coast guard. It was a cargo boat with a let-down ramp at the bow, and designed to take provisions to lighthouses along the coast.

It then built the two larger 36-footers for the Navy. At the present time it is doing work for one of the armed services, but is only doing a little work for the civilian markets. Mr. Dyer feels that when the present emergency is over, and the strict allotment of materials is a thing of the past, civilian orders will more than replace the present military demand.

The hull of the Arion is very strong, declares Mr. Dyer, and takes a lot of beatings. "The hull is quite flexible, not brittle," he says. "Furthermore, if the hull is damaged, it is easy and inexpensive to repair."

There are other advantages of the plastic boat over the wooden in his opinion. The hull cannot be damaged by barnacles, although they may cling to it and so slow it up. Termites will not harm the plastic, nor will other types of worms, he says.

This revolutionary yacht was launched into waters with a long and great history in boat and ship building behind it. In the early days of the republic privateers were built all along the banks of the river and these staunch craft slipped out to sea to prey upon British shipping.. Later, when the whaling industry came into being, Warren was a big whaling town, rivaling Essex on Boston's north shore.

In recent decades there has been a great deal of small boat building along the river, and midsummer will find hundreds of yawls, ketches and other small craft based on the river.

The president of the Anchorage Plastics Corporation has loved boats and the sea ever since he can remember. A descendant of one of the 14 founders of Rhode Island, Mr. Dyer was sailing before he was 6 years old. In his background are many Rhode Island sea captains, but his father, a Providence businessman, had no liking for the sea.

The boy did, and after World war I, during which he was an army aviator, he had his first boat built for himself in Marblehead. It was designed by Sidney Herreshoff, who was the designer of the Arion. In 1926 he started building boats as a business.