How well does a Falcon sail?

[BlueSkyNick]

I am thinking about buying a Westerly Falcon (1986) but have no experience of how well they sail, and no opportunity to find out.

Does anybody have any views, especially past or present owners, on their performance and stability.

Also on any views on the comfort and spaciousness of the aft cabin/berth.



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[jamesjermain]

A bit short on performance but acceptable in a cruising context. Otherwize comfortable, seakindly, tough and easy to handle.

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[MartinGPerry]

Check out the Westerly Owners Associatn web site www.westerly-owners.co.uk
Form the web site join the westerly yahoo discussion list and post the same question there
Martin


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[andy_wilson]

I helped deliver one from Pwilhelli to Brest a year last Easter.

From memory we logged about 350 miles and to within an hour or so took 3 1/2 days.

Not a fantastic passage time, but this included a spell sailing backwards inside Ushant due to lack of accurate tidal info. (sailing backwards that is with engine on full chat too!), followed by a spell pretty much sailing nowhere off Ushant, as the Owner / Skipper wanted us to keep going.

I say sailing nowhere, the vertical progress was amazing. If you have ever been through overfalls off a headland in The Channel, consider that Ushant represents a whole country sticking out into the Atlantic. I can say with some confidence therfore that they handle robust conditions very, very well indeed.

She seemed reasonable to windward though we didn't encounter any competition beating to windward so it is hard to say.

I started one particular 4 hour trick across the Western Approaches by setting the sails and locking the wheel, and didn't attend to them again all watch. I sat with the dolphins (or porpoises) at the bow, watched their efflorescent torpedo-like wakes, brewed up, plotted etc, etc, and she just plugged on and on through the swell in a F 3-4. Indeed, nearly everytime someone stuck the A/P on, whoever sat at the chart table and caught the battery switches with their boot tops left us heading up to wind, sails flogging once the power was accidentally switched off. If the batt. switches are in front of the chart table seat, watch out for that.

Having not been afloat for some months, I was suprised not to be sick all trip (though I was on Stugeron, I expected to succumb).

Layout was good for the length, given the beam of 12 feet or so, and worked well on passage, something that cannot necessarily be said for many modern designs. So good accomodation per metre charged by the marina then.

Engine access was good, aft heads were useable (but the front ones wern't as they had about 5 mountain bikes in there !).

Aft cabin seemed OK as a crawl in bunk, with good standing headroom between cabin door and heads if my memory serves me correctly. No good for sleeping on passage (I was shuffled in there for 1 period of rest, which was unsatisfactory for some reason, may have been sea state, probably also noise) but bags of space for in port. Probably suffers from slap under the afterswim at rest.

I prefer aft cockpit to centre for open seas as the motion is kinder at the back, so more brownie points there.

You may get the impression that I rate them well.

I do, and if I ever tire of my Fulmar I would consider highly a Falcon as a next, modest step up.

You will of course have sea trial?

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[BlueSkyNick]

Please do not post any more replies on this. Thanks to all those who responded, and on the Westerly Owners Association too. We had a look at a Falcon on Saturday and have decided to buy a Moody - apologies to the Westerly die-hards !!


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