I`ve had mine for 3 years now- my first boat- and what attracted me was its heavy layup, some standing room in main cabin, in my configuration a seperate heads. The berths are very long and roomy and the inboard is well placed for service etc.Petrol Vire in my case. Front cabin what you would expect but still a good size with large storage under and chain locker.
Being high sided - windage is a bit of a hassle when mooring to buoys in tricky places.Very manouverable under power and with its high bow quite dry in chop. Mast height is modest so not a huge sail area but makes for a safe cruiser in coastal, estuary areas. I havent ventured far but i have been told some " pop across" for tax free shopping to calais/Dunkirk.
Mine is 69 vintage and had been neglected so the headlining was in tatters (common problem) so I scraped clean and painted as a temporary measure still to finish. Some gelcoat cracks and crazing but thats just the age and can be treated.Watch out for rudder damage there is no stop on the action so you can turn it too far and ding it on the prop!
The only down side is lack of room in the cockpit if you have more than two large crew..children would be ok. The tiller with its placing well within the transom tends to sweep too much of an area if that makes sense.
Apart from that if the price is right for condition go for it nice stable solid boat. Where is the one you are thinking of??
Thanks for info Andy, your comments mirror my opinion on the Nomad. Seems to have everything but still small enough to handle. The separate heads great selling point, one likes one's comforts. Am looking at several have not made decision as to which one. Ta.
I agree with most of Andys points, having sailed one in West wales for 6 years. As he says a modest sail area and those rather high topsides mean a lot of windage, and I found that although mine pointed reasonably high, once the wind freshened she was sagging off to leeward rather more than was comfortable, so that a reliable engine is important. Having said that, I reckoned I could still claw off a lee shore in a F6-7 given time, and unambitious tacking! i.e: dont try to sheet in too hard in those conditions - let her sail a little freer, to give speed and grip on the water.
Mine was a 1968 model, Sail no 231 (anyone know where she is now?). A good and solid boat - a bit too solid for any fancy peformance, but a comfortable and safe family cruiser for its size.
Faults? Not many that I am aware of: The rudder is a bit vulnerable, and like many Westerlies uses wood to join the steelwork to the GRP shell. This rots, and the shell comes loose. Check that the bottom edge of the rudder is parallel to the waterline, and that the shell is not moving. A straightforward enough repair, involving splitting the shell round the edge, cleaning it all up re-seating everything with epoxy filler. By now most of them will almost certainly have been done, so you need to check its been done properly!
Like all Westerlies of that vintage and much later ones, the foam backing on the headliner perishes, and the fabric detaches from the roof showering you with what feels like sand - took me two seasons to suss where it was coming from! Relining is not an easy or cheap job! Again I would expect most Nomads to have been sorted by now!
Another more serious problem that can arise is splaying of the bilge keels. A potential fault shared by almost any bilge keeler with angled out keels. If they live on a mudberth, or on a drying mooring with deep mud, a huge hydraulic pressure is created between the keels as they settle on each tide, and if the keel bolts are not 100% tight, movement rapidly developes. Look for failure of the gasket between the casting and the hull, and check whether the gap on the inside is any larger than the outside. If the boat is afloat, this joint will remain wet long after the hull has dried off, if it is on the move. Tightening the keel bolts may resolve the problem, but more likely the keels will have to be dropped, and the joint re-made. Centaurs with their deeper wider keels were much more prone to this, and I only once met this fault on a Nomad. If you buy one, it is worth nipping up the keel bolts as part of the annual maintenance schedule, just to be on the safe side.
I nearly lost the mast when the weld on the bow roller fitting failed - but I suspect that may have been a one off, as when we got the fitting off there was evidence of collision damage as well.
For the rest, a solid, safe and extremely comfortable little boat, with an unspectacular sailing performance, but which gave us six years of fun with a our then young family!
