South Coast One Design

[capnsensible]

Was out this afternoon on one of these most delightful vessels. I suppose its easy these days to get a bit snobby about older wooden boats, but what a blast from the past.

Its the style of boat I learnt a lot on many tides ago and a great reminder of how things weren't always so convenient. This particular one, no. 71, is not exactly in mint condition, plus used as a temporary live aboard, but with a bit of effort, we got her going!

We set off with a rather nasty choppy sea plus not much wind aross Gib Bay, engine on and off to keep clear of the commercial stuff....mind you, engine may give 3 knots! As we got further south though, wind picked up to a nice fresh breeze and off we went. Log broken so guess 5 and a bit.

Got nicely exciting, enough for a reef, then a real blastig broad reach, seas increasing, to the south harbour entrance. Flat again and a nice few gybes downwind past that russian geezers boat Pelorus, thence back to base.

It all came back, hanked on sails, stowing on the guardrail, tiller, interesting low engine power, the lot.

Loved it.

 

[jhr]

Yes; great little boats, and a cracking bargain if you can keep on top of the maintenance.

 

[john_morris_uk]

We had one for several years (SC60 - Camper and Nicholson built, ex John Lewis boat "Norama" which was renamed "Lusula" and we renamed "Tiggy")

Great sailing boats - as one friend who had only ever sailed modern fin keeled boats said when he did a Cowes week with us, "This is fantastic, when the wind blows harder it just leans over a little more and goes faster". True to a point, and we never did get ANYWHERE near broaching. He also used to joke that when racing and the wind got up, all I ever did was ease the genoa car forward a touch to open up the leech.

We did put reefs in sometimes, and I remember some great sailing.

 

[capnsensible]

It was a great afternoon, had it not been for the sea state, she would not have needed a reef really even at a good 6. Very impressed!

 

[john_morris_uk]

4.5 tonnes on 26 foot takes some getting going - although she was not a complete dog in light airs. Heavy wind days in Cowes week were our speciality and we won sometimes which showed the modern plastic boats in Class 8 a thing or two. The trouble was that there are more light days than heavy days in the regatta and our best was only second in class over the week.

I do remember losing the propellor one Cowes week (a long story) and having to shout quite urgently to boats in the Medina not to suddenly stop in front of us as we had NO WAY OF STOPPING in midstream as we sailed up the river. They also couldn't understand why we couldn't tack round as quickly as them...