Cornish Cormorant catboat dinghy

[Sybarite]

Son is looking to buy one this week and is having a test sail on Friday. He already has a Moth for club racing and this is intended for family outings (2 children: 9 and 2)

It is in excellent condition with a good inventory including trailer, launching trolley and ob. The asking price is € 4850.

I would appréciate advice, recommendations, suitabilty for purpose...

Many thanks.

 

[GaryRatclife]

Hi,

I used to own one, great little single handed cruising dinghy. Fairly heavy to shift around on-shore. Wife and I are fairly short and I'm pretty sure we scared the life out of a few people when stepping the mast. You have to lift it up and drop it vertically into a hole in the foredeck..think caber tossing.

From a sailing point of view they a very stable for a 12ft dinghy. The boom and gaff are faily big lumps of wood and I found gybing in a blow a bit intimidating.
Some have an outboard bracket on the stern, mine didn't and you had to remove the rudder to fit the o/b. There is a storage bracket under the foredesk for the o/b, however this only really works for a 2hp 2 stroke.

There is quite a lot of information on the owners site: http://www.solentsoundings.org/Cormorant_Home.html

Hope this helps.

Gary

 

[AndrewfromFal]

My brother and I were the proud owners of the prototype for about 15 years. We bought it when we were in our teens from Ed Burnett, who was a classmate of my brother, and whose family had purchased it from Roger Dongray, the designer. I believe it had originally been designed for his daughter to sail.

It was quite a different kettle of fish to the production version; - the hull was cold moulded with slightly less freeboard and was rigged as a gunter sloop rather than the Cat Boat which I believe is the norm. We also had a Genniker (made from a blown out yacht spinnaker), and this meant it was a lot livelier than the standard model and would plane quite readily when it got gusty.

The fundamentals of the hull meant that it was fantastically stable, and even when planing down Carrick Roads in a force 4 - 5 she remain marvellously controlable. In the four or five years we sailed her, we never had a serious incident or a swim!

It then spent a number of years in my parents garage, whilst we left Cornwall to pursue our careers, after many years of holding onto it in the hope we'd have the time to sail it, we eventually sold it to a gentleman in his 60s for him to take his grandchildren out on (similar ages to your own I think).

Although 'our' Cormorant was somewhat different to the rather more detuned production model, I would say the stability of the hull and ease of handling would make it a good boat to take young children sailing and get them participating. Although it's not one of the biggest dinghies out there, it was quite comfortable to sail with 3 large-ish teenagers, or two teenagers and an adult.

 

[Sybarite]

Thank you both very much for that; I'll pass on the message.