Finngulf 33, An appraisal (on deck)

[Quandary]

I have been asking a lot of questions about other boat and some of you have been very helpful with Info. so I thought that it might be useful to someone if I placed on record my opinion of the boat we sailed from 2007 until 2015 while it is still fresh.
They are a Strahlman design characterised by a slimmer than fashionable form and a larger than usual (Baltic style) rig. Out of the water they are not unlike the X334 with similar deepish lead fin and deep rudder. Performance is not that different though they all have Jefa wheel steering. The hull above the waterline and the decks have a balsa core. The engine is usually a VP D1 30 with saildrive and thre blade VP folder though some had the D1 20.
The standard wheel is 1200 dia. (mine was 1500 with a trench,it should have been carbon fibre but I managed to get that changed as I did not see us living up to that image) The Jefa steering is very direct, half a turn to full lock almost tiller like and the steering position straddling the wheel is carefully thought out and very comfortable with the traveller and mainsheet close to hand. There is a lot of teak in the cockpit and side decks, supposed to be an option but I tried to get them to omit it on the deck without success.
The rig is very tall and the boom is long, the 8 part mainsheet was just about adequate. The keel stepped mast was 7/8 Selden MDS section to carry 8 wheel batten cars, the through deck Furlex was neat but you needed to use a winch to furl in stronger breezes. 8 blocks at the foot and 8 Spinlock jammers for the halyards and single line reefing, The boom was just about high enough to be safe but was safer when reefed. The big main needed earlyish reefing unless I changed the 140 % genny for the 105% blade jib. There was a long track for the cars with fairlead car line running back to beside the Harken winches, the Selden gennaker sprit ring was built in to the stemhead. Sails from North Finland (dacron) came free as part of a Scottish demo. deal and were excellent, I sold one boat for them which helped compensate. The backstay was easy to use a 6-1 dyneema tackle from the stern scoop operating on a 4-1 wire cascade. gave a load of power for bending the mast when beating.
Downsides- the 140% genny I chose was too big for anything above about 18 knots while the blade was not efficient off the wind, I think about 125% would have been more versatile, similarly the gennaker I chose was the largest of the three sizes North offered, the middle size might have been used more. When you slackened the halyard to furl the genny the bottom snapshackle tended to foul the sprit ring at times. You had to slide the sprit right back to open both sided of the anchor locker, locker was big enough but the offset bow fitting looked on the fragile side. The fitting on the full length pole track on the mast slid on little plastic runners which were easily broken until I put in a stop to keep them from hitting the end of the track. The Finnish made spray hood looked elegant but its narrow form meant that we had to use a 8" handle for the halyard winches. The Scandinavian style double rail step through pulpit was a bit of a pain when getting the anchor out or back through it, I had a Manson Supreme and a Delta not much to choose between them, I think a Spade would have been better than either and easier handled.
The boat was an excellent sailer, a real joy, very close winded and powerful when reaching. 7 knots was easy to get.
Despite being VP, I liked the engine and drive, very quiet with good power and a rapid stop when needed, she motored at 6-6.3 kts at 1950 revs. burning 2 litres per hour, if you pushed it up to over 3000 she managed 7 kts. but burned nearly 7 litres per hr. Manouvreabilty under engine was excellent, berthing in the canal, even with a strong following wind, I could do a 180 in her own length by spinning her round the keel with a single squirt over the rudder. Tucking in to tight berths was so easy you had plenty of confidence aprroaching a gap the length of the boat. The deep aerofoil rudder contributed to this. On Chris Owens advice we added a fin around the rudder about 200mm. below the surface to reduce broaching when overpowered with the big sails but the purchase of the vertically battened blade jib from his loft made more difference.

 

[Quandary]

Finngulf 33 (down below)
The boat is really well thought out with great attention to detail, teak and teak veneered ply, Alcantara upholstery, good multi layer foam, zipped covers are buttoned so do not come off. All hidden surfaces below floor boards in lockers etc. were flow coated smooth , white in lockers, brown in the bilges, the lead keel was bolted to a deep stub but this only got wet when we were taking out the transducer. The engine sat over a massive grp moulding which contained any oil spills etc. The impeller on the front of the engine was awkward to reach through a round hatch in one of the battery boxes and the oil filter was reached through a hatch in the heads. I purchased and fitted the instruments, autopilot radio etc, this was helped by clearly tagged and numbered wiring tails to the positions. The Navix shorepower/ charger was very good but 230 v. sockets were continental and only provided at the chart table, in the heads locker and at the immersion heater. The Raymarine instruments worked fine but the 6000 series pilot had to go back twice. I like the Standard Horizon vhf with cockpit command mike, the original V'tronix antenna was replaced by a Metz from Salty John with about three times the range. The Bluespot music player/receiver was poor except on FM but you could put a lot of music on a single SD card, back up information from the Bluespot distributor was bad, I would avoid them in future. The main cabin was narrow at the front because of the slim hull shape so it was hard to squeeze past the frontof the table with the leaves up, but you got used to it and I would prefer to have the performance, similarly the forecabin berths went almost to a point but they were over 7' long.
Three big cockpit lockers, the stbd. side one held the holding tank under a floor hatch , calorifier, Eber, room for a cockpit table, spare sail, two folding bikes and a four man liferaft, someone suggested we should put a bunk in it, I suppose if she was French they would have. The locker walls extended to well above the water level enclosing the rudder shaft in a water tight compartment.
The calorifier was Isotherm, shiny Italian rubbish, it was eventually replaced with a Surecal. ( The Isotherm imm. heater element is fixed to an end plate of thin stainless with a rubber gasket round it, if you fell of a big wave, the whip action flexed the steel cutting through the gasket)
Ventilation was meant for warmer climes than Scotland with a mushroom vent and hatch over the forecabin a double dorade over the main cabin and two solar powered extractors aft. All the windows (7 of them) and access hatches are Lewmar and open, fly screens were supplied but never used. No leaky windows during our ownership,
The chart table faced aft against the head which bothered Yachting Monthly , it worked fine for me and it was big enough for both a laptop and a half admiralty chart behind it. Plenty of surface for displays. I liked the idea of the hollow front table leg with removable hatch where all the cables coming down the mast were led up for connection. Good galley, lots of drawers and stowage, Isotherm fridge was fine once we installed an isolating switch. The standard cooker should have been Eno but my wife likes toast so we switched to a Neptune. The gas locker came with racks for two Camping gas bottles but we found them short lived, hard to find north of Ardnamurchan and the gas was expensive, we switched to one 7kg Calor which we replaced at the start of each session, I installed an Alde bubble tester, ( cheapest from Hamilton Gas in Bangor) it impressed the safety examiner but was perhaps not used as much as it should have been. Berths, 2 doubles and two singles were a good size but you had to remove and find somewhere to stow the thick back rests to sleep in the main cabin. Comfy for four but six adults would have been tight.
Heads was a moulded compartment shiny white grp with stainless sink and usual loo but all the discharge went in to the stainless steel holding tank under the cockpit locker, this needed to be pumped out before sailing fast, as the stern wave covered the manifold where the tank vent discharged. There was a floor mounted foot water pump which could be switched to draw sea water, we used this more than the electric pump. The boat came with two faulty ball valves which sheared right off after the first winter, very thin wall around the valve (Italian again) when the first went the crane was handy and we were able to lift her, when the second one went I was on the way to sea so hammered in a wooden plug, tied her to the pier and waited nervously for her to dry out. Other problems, wave slapping in the aft cabin if stern to wind, but a lot of boats have that. Recommended gear, Boaties fry pan, Sea Trak nav. and live tide software, Patio Magic on the teak decks every third year with only light washing across grain with a soft floor brush, Jura malt.

 

[Quandary]

Some more stuff.
The lead keel was a nice aerodynamic shape with a big fat bulb to keep the CG low, it was coated with epoxy but for some reason this came off one side after a couple of seasons, had to wait for a warmish day to re coat with west epoxy with plenty of thickening powder but it rolled on well and stayed in place. We took the antifouling off down to the epoxy undercoat after about 6 seasons and before repainting rolled another couple of coats of Jotun Penguard HB and a coat of Vinylester 88 primer rapidly followed by the antifouling. The Jotun epoxy was selected on price to begin with and because it had a low temp. additive for winter application but I was impressed with the stuff and it proved tough and durable. The boat was supposed to be delivered with navy blue antifouling but came with white which turns brown in the tea coloured canal water where we berth, so we slapped on two coats of Blakes, which seemed to react a bit with the original, later we used Shogun (recommended) but it was overkill (gettit?) for a boat moving between salt and fresh water regularly. Later we used Gael Force (rebadged Flag) which turned from navy blue to a light air force blue after a couple of weeks in the water.
The Selden MDS section is designed with an internal track to suit their batten cars and the full length battened sail was easy to handle if a a bit hard to de-power. The cloth and cut of the North (Finland) sails was really good, have to admit they were better and more durable than the respected local Owen lofts jib. The running rig package was supplied by Selden, mainly Dyneema, their colour coding was very very subtle, could have been improved if more distinctive. Handy wee set of lazy jacks which dropped from the upper spreaders and could be stowed neatly hidden along the boom by the simple expedient of hooking them under the gooseneck horns and tightening. The keel stepped mast was very secure but took a tall crane to drop it in, I padded the surfaces it passed with Duck tape to ensure it did not get scratched as we were too mean to order the optional elk hide over coat for inside the cabin. The shaped nylon wedges were bolted in place with a horseshoe casting giving positive positioning, there was a bit of fore and ft adjustment in the foot but you had to slacken everything to use it. The discontinuous wire rig was neat and functioned well for rake and shape but with bottle screw adjustment up at the spreaders needed a lot of swinging about in the bosuns chair to set up accurately. I made a spreader angle template from one of those cheap Ikea plastic cutting boards which stayed in a cockpit locker. We took the mast out every winter after experiencing the horrendous vibration the hull/keel was subjected to when trying to sleep aboard in a gale the night before before the first launch. We had those Selden alloy tube protectors over the bottle screws, I spent a lot of time with a grinder on the bottom of each to make them fit snugly to each other and the deck so as not to snag the sheets, we found that a bit of tape around the plastic caps was necessary to keep them in place when being lashed by slackened sheets. The mast was stripped of everything except the headfoil and wheeled up the towpath to our garden each winter, our club yard has limited space for long masts but has a custom made trolley for moving, you needed bright coloured yachty hi-vis. clothing when bringing it across the canal bridge on the A83. A light spray with weak Patio Magic solution dealt with any green on ropes when they came off with a quick run through the washing machine when there was no one looking. The boat was covered with a custom made cover made from lorry curtain side pvc. very strong and durable, the first year there was heavy snow followed by frost at night and thaw by day, two stanchions bent under the weight so thereafter we took them off. The aerial efforts for two old people involved in setting the rig up each year was one of the reasons we decided to sell her, (after they replaced my knee I was a dead weight when going up there.) That was a really bad decision but once I accepted the offer she was gone, though I had to keep her through the winter, launch, commission and deliver in the spring. (never agree to do that again)
What she cost us to own- we bought the boat in 2007 when the economy still seemed sound, a year later the price had gone up around 20%. Without sails, electronics, heater vhf etc she cost around £120k, because of our remote location we had to set the asking price 8 years later at just below £80k, being less than any had sold for at the time. Depreciation must have been around £7.5k per annum, berthing craneage etc, must have brought it to around £10k. She was used a lot, cruising for 3-4 weeks about three times per year plus shorter trips in between, but a lot of DIY hours went in to keeping her pristine.
The Eber failed and was replaced but that was because we never used it enough, the calorifier was just badly designed, it could have been bodged again but was inferior to the standard of the boat, so we took it out. The VP D1 30 (Perkins Japan) engine had some warranty work in the first year (electronics recall) but just normal fuel filter and impeller changes otherwise, it was the first VP diesel I enjoyed owning. The Mexican made (American brand???) fresh water pump lasted about five years before water got in to a bearing, so we replaced it. The three blade bronze folder with Ambassador rope cutter was excellent, kept polished and stayed clean, downsides were very short anode life, (less than a year) and while the leg anode lasted several years, Ambassador charged a lot for modifying it to suit the cutter. I have mixed feelings about Raymarine, their designs seem good but the display head on the pilot lasted only a couple of weeks past the warranty, they were particularly coy about explaining the problem and the repair bill to either me or the dealer, it failed again less than a year later, shame, their workshop used to be excellent to deal with. Anything made in Finland was of very high quality as was the Jefa stuff from Denmark. The Swedish Nimbus I have now, just does not compare in either design or manufacturing standard.
I may add anything else useful if I think of it.

 

[lpdsn]

On Chris Owens advice we added a fin around the rudder about 200mm. below the surface to reduce broaching when overpowered ...

Out of curiosity, do you have any photos of the rudder that you could post?

 

[Quandary]

If you give me a day or so I will try to post a picture and a description of how I made it, it was fairly easy to do. Chris provided the racing sails for another F33, Finesse which he sailed on at times, which did it first (by Ardfern boatyard) I took photos there when I copied it.

 

[lpdsn]

If you give me a day or so I will try to post a picture and a description of how I made it, it was fairly easy to do. Chris provided the racing sails for another F33, Finesse which he sailed on at times, which did it first (by Ardfern boatyard) I took photos there when I copied it.

Thanks. Don't go out of your way as I'm just curious to see what you did to the rudder. Might also have to see if IRC has outlawed it