Came across an add for a yacht,a 60 foot Salona...the view of the saloon showed an interior without one rounded corner and no thing to hold on to.Do this class of boat not heel or are they for weekending in calm seas,
Came across an add for a yacht,a 60 foot Salona...the view of the saloon showed an interior without one rounded corner and no thing to hold on to.Do this class of boat not heel or are they for weekending in calm seas,
Was listening to the war stories of a group of delivery skippers and this topic arose.
Stringing ropes across the open spaces is standard practice with fenders or even cut up car tyres lashed to sharp corners.
Even the big girls can rock and roll.
Monkey patching programmer [retired ]
Never leave home without a metal coathanger or two, duct tape, personal EPIRB and some squirty leakfix in a tube.. How do I know that ( now)?
What are the coat-hangers for?
Ah. Clearing cockpit drains, wiring the kettle onto the stove, hooking stuff you've dropped into odd corners of the bilge, fishing rope tails out of the mast and boom....Issa Get-out-of-jail-free card![]()
Square corners are easier and cheaper to build. Handholds need to be strong so cost more money, so easier and cheaper to build without them. Spend time at a boat show and look at all the people mooching about below admiring the nice bottle stowage and big iceboxes. For every twenty that do this, one sits at the sidedeck and reaches out to see if the wheel and winches are comfortably in reach.
Many AWBs are dropping good features in an effort to save costs. Alloy toerails: first they stopped supplying useful rows of holes in them, now they have often gone altogether. Transom rubbers have almost disappeared - try springing the bow out of an awkward berth and keeping a fender in place on the shiny GRP edge. Eggbox inner bilge mouldings are now almost universal, cheap and strong enough to build, nice and clean dry bilge sections, but *@#%$#s to repair properly if you get hull damage.
You sound just like the people writing about the rise of leisure yachts in the early nineteenth century who saw centuries of fast fishing boat building ruined by a rush to lighter over canvassed versions with fancy cabins and polished brass work.
And don't even think about the J class imitations or worse still the IOR inspired designs around in the 1970s.
I hope that good design changes last, and others fall by the wayside but I have a horrible feeling that every decade sees the building of the good, the bad and the ugly to meet commercial demand. The difference is that the rubbish boats don't get looked after, so a 50 year old boat still sailing will nearly always be considered a classic. Whether now, 50 years ago, or in 50 years time when Lagoon catamarans will be considered the outstanding design classic of the "golden age of yacht building in the Millenium"
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