Legend or Jeanneau?

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I am weighing up the choice between a number of boats in the 29 - 30ft range and would like opinions from recent purchasers of the legend 306 and the jeanneau 29.2 - build quality, reliability, performance, after sales etc. Don't spare the makers' blushes - worts and all please.

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For what

First of all you'll need to tell us what you want to do with them.

For example, if you remove the keel and park it under a tree a Legend makes a very good summerhouse.

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Re: For what

Jeanneau, much better boat..as Ken says - for what?

There is a marina in Emsworth that won't lift out leg ends - since one had the top come off!

Ian




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A friend had the Jeaneau, hated and got rid of it very smartly and changed to a Bavaria 32. Don't know about the Legend but at this end of the market price tends to be very accurately reflected in the quality, or lack of it.

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Re: For what

How anyone can really trust that rig in a real blow, I just dont know. One of our near neighbours has just taken his off to the Caribbean (via the ARC). As an ex policeman, he's much braver than me.

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Prompted me to have a look - they must be rebranded Hunters (USA) I think. Not knocking them for non voyaging use, but I don't think I would like to go far in one (like out of sheltered waters). I can see now what Coco means in the Biscay thread about the larger 41 slamming, etc.

Good luck to your policeman neighbour, glad I am not with him.

John

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I gather someone tried to do the ARC in one last year - and it only made it half the way across before they had to abandon ship :)

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I am the owner of a US built Hunter 34. FYI several have made transat crossings - one was even single handed - and none had any problems. My own has been to the Med and back although I have only sailed the Caribbean/Bahamas as yet. I've single handed her about 2000 miles in the last year including several 300+ mile legs and through some rough weather. She's as tough as any comparable size boat and I'd sail her anywhere. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

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Hi Neil

I have to say I am not in the habit of knocking things I have not had at least some experience with. I have actually had a surveyor visit the factory for a client with a view to certifying the sailboats in a non USA country for charter use - for in sheltered water, it happened to be, and could never have been for any other limits. Doesn't make them bad boats, just a question of fitness for purpose.

Some have sailed across oceans in 12 foot boats too - sorry, doesn't make it a good idea or something I would wish to do myself.

John

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That was the well documented rudder stock failure. The photo of the (GRP) rudder stock showed woeful moulding quality - huge voids.

I believe that the company said that they had only had a 'few' rudder stock failures, and didn't anticipate changing the design. Not a reassuring way to go to sea, IMHO.

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I think some of the problems with these boats and their rudders is not necessarily the claim that "it must have hit something sometime" but more a case of:

- Lack of the realisation that to engineer and build a strong light boat is expensive. That means that one needs to think carefully if one has a light cheap boat and you take it somewhere where it needs to be strong.

- The other is that with their long wide flat bottom sections with shallow canoe draft they can get well above hull speed on a sea and then if they broach, which they are claimed to be prone to, one has enormous cantilevered rudder stock loadings which any deficiency in build will show up sometime in the future as a failure, even if those loads were taken into account in the design. The 450 that was lost in the Atlantic was claimed, in support of its stock's strength, to have had thousands of offshore miles on it - it may be that those miles were in fact exactly what culminated in the stock failure.

Again, I am not knocking the boats, just a case of not exposing them to service which is perhaps inappropriate to their design and construction in a cruising context.

John

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The rig's the last thing I'd worry about. Several such rigs have proved themselves (on different hulls) both on circumnavigations and numerous atlantic crossings. From an engineering point of view, they're a much neater solution than a conventional rig with inboard shrouds and overlapping genoas. Yes, the load distribution within them is different from a conventional rig, but properly designed I can't see any reason why they should be unreliable.

The hulls that Legend attach them to is a different matter.

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Thats very worthy - but surely a boat with an 'ocean' rating should be safe to go transatlantic - and do it time after time with adequate maintenance. I have never, ever seen any builder reccomend routine replacement of rudder stocks after x,000 miles of use.

Furthermore the voids in the lay up that were shown in the photographs are just downright sloppy. By all means have composite stocks, but lets filament wind them on a mandrel, not wrap clumps of woven rovings round, and fold them back on themselves for good measure. If composites are to be used in very high stress locations, then the engineering needs to be very good indeed.

Personally I like my stainless stock, and metal blade - I'd be surprised if it failed.

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Spade rudder

That particular failure, in which I took quite a bit of interest in view of my professional life, also begs the question whether any spade rudder is suitable for long-term ocean cruising. The difference in stress level at the hull/rudder interface must be considerable when comparing a spade and skeg rudder.

I agree that the construction of the failed rudder stock looked very questionable. I also thought, from the information presented, that the jury rudder looked to be fairly well made, using the full workshop facilities available on the rescue boat. It surprised me that it lasted for such a short time, only a day or so from memory. This seems to support the suggestion that stress levels, perhaps due more to the hull design, are extremely high.

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I remember the subject of the Hunter being scuttled coming up on the Hunter owners website so Hunter themselves posted a statement which basically said that the resaon the rudder failed was because the boat wasnt actually a Hunter but a copy of a Hunter built under licence in Europe.
I own a Hunter 34 which I bought in the US and sailed back to the Med.
It is a little different from the UK Legends as it has the B&R rig with a backstay and a 5500lb fixed lead keel.
With a mast height of 52ft and displacement of 12000lbs its quick in light winds yet stable in a blow.
Compare the figures to those of a typical 34ft French boat and you can tell why I bought it.
Personally I love it!

Andrew


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Hi QSIV - not sure but maybe you misunderstand me. Maybe I've misunderstood you?

I am not condoning the situation at all, just pointing out some of the difficulties as I see them to be. I think it is clear both from my last post and the one I made a few above, that I think that on the knowledge I have of them the boats are only appropriate for sheltered waters.

I do not think it appropriate that a rudder stock gets replaced every x thousand ocean miles either, the reference was just made because those ocean miles may have been the cause of the failure through a cummulative failure mechanism in an underdesigned stock (also contributed to by the poor layup, of course) not the claim that it may have hit something in the past (according to the defenders, all the failed stocks seem to have hit something!).

In the end sloppy workmanship, and I have seen the photos of the stock, is not to be condoned in any event. I'm on your side.

Regards

John

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Re: For what

I love that comment.

So the official position of the company is that you are unluck if the rudder falls off your boat - and it doesn't happen to that many owners.

That is a very reassuring comment.

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<<<because the boat wasn't actually a Hunter but a copy of a Hunter built under licence in Europe>>>

If they made that claim then that flies entirely in the face of fact and what the various Luhrs company internet sites all say because they confirm that all the Luhrs companies of Hunter, Silverton, etc in USA, and Luhrs Marine UK (that is Legend) are all in fact part of the same Luhrs Marine Group.

As far as I am aware Luhrs Marine opened their facility in Portland in latish 2000 and the boat that was lost in the Atlantic is claimed to have been ordered at the 2002 Southampton boat show, so I do not think there is any question that the boat was built either by Luhrs or for Luhrs.

Furthermore, the reports I have seen on the Legend 450 that lost its rudder and was consequently lost in the Atlantic claim that the rudder stock was actually made in a Luhrs Hunter factory in the USA not in the Luhrs UK factory - Yachting World May 2003 for example (I only rely on the reports for that - they may or may not be wrong).

John

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Re: Spade rudder

The late Philippe Harlé, one of France's leading architects was strongly against skegs. His argument was that if the skeg took a knock it would block the rudder whereas if a spade rudder was knocked out of line, it would probably still function.

John

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