First built in 1975 by Chuck Paine to his own design, the Frances 26 is a small, shoal draft double-ended boat with rounded bilges and a transom-attached rudder. Measuring 26 feet LOA with an 8-foot, 2-inch beam, and drawing 3 feet, 10 inches, the Frances 26 displaced close to 7,000 pounds, roughly half of which was lead ballast.
Paine built the first hull as a one-off for his own use, but then his shop burned down with the boat and all his tools inside it. Fortunately, by then, Maine boatbuilder Tom Morris had already taken a mold off Paine’s hull.
That mold would be used to produce about 35 of the 200 Frances sailboats that would eventually be built around the world. Paine and his twin brother built a second boat at Morris’ Southwest Harbor facility, which would be displayed at the Newport Boat Show.
At the show, Paine and Morris experienced a flurry of interest and sales. The boat was drawn as a flush-decker, but that would change. “I liked the look of the flush-deck, and the first four or five that Tom Morris built had that profile,” Paine told Soundings. “But he soon convinced me that we would sell more boats if there was more standing headroom.” Consequently, Paine drew a low cabin top deckhouse in keeping with the overall flush-deck lines.
Paine’s Frances was partly inspired by the Westsail 32, which was highly popular at the time. “Everybody knew that the 32 was slow, but few owners cared about speed,” Paine said. “The 32 was extremely beamy and heavy, with short rigs that were very seaworthy in a blow.”
Paine knew that double-ended hulls are more easily balanced than hulls with transom sterns and easier to steer with windvane-equipped rudders. Below the waterline, he gave the hull a moderate cutaway keel profile forward. He did this to reduce weather helm and to allow the installation of a sloop rig, minimizing the need for a bowsprit.
Originally, the Frances was offered with a fractional sloop rig or a cutter rig with a bowsprit. Owners reported that both rigs balanced beautifully.
The Frances 26 was heavy. “I wanted the Frances to be the heaviest 26-foot sailboat on the market, just as the Westsail 32 was the heaviest 32-footer available,” Paine said. Early Sparkman & Stephens designs, like Dorade and Stormy Weather, which had relatively heavy displacement, were narrow for their length, and had slack bilges that performed very well in open water, provided additional inspiration for the Frances design. All that weight made the Frances 26 more expensive, but that was not Paine’s concern. Both he and Tom Morris were committed to building boats of the highest quality.
“Auxiliary power was provided by an 8-hp Yanmar 1GM diesel, which would barely get the Frances to her 5.5-knot hull speed,” Paine said, “but most owners doing restorations have selected replacement engines with at least double that horsepower. The Beta 16 is one of the most popular.”
This article was originally published in the September 2024 issue.
