Sailboat Reviews

In 1978, Tartan brought out the Tartan Ten, a 33', fairly light, fractionally-rigged "offshore one design." The boat was a huge success: fast, easy to sail, and unencumbered by the design limitations of a rating rule. But the Tartan Ten had one big problem: limited accommodations with stooping headroom, an interior most kindly described as spartan. A hardy crew could take the Tartan Ten on a multi-day race such as the Mackinac, and you might even coax your family aboard for a weekend of camping out. But cruising or extended racing in comfort? Forget it!

More than 500 Tartan 34s were built between 1968 and 1978. By 1978 the CCA rule was long gone, PHRF racing was beginning to surge, and the MHS (now IMS) was in its infancy. The Tartan 34 had passed from a racer/cruiser to a cruiser, not because the boat had changed, but because sailboat racing had changed. The Tartan 34 was succeeded by the larger, more modern Tartan 37, a boat of exactly the same concept.

Like a lot of people, our first recollection of the Albin Vega was an advertisement in the sailing magazines. In the early 1970s, a time when California production coastal cruisers dominated the American market, this little Swedish import was hyped as a serious offshore cruiser.

The Sanford Boat Co. launched its first Alerion in 1978 and eventually built 20. Edward Sanford says there are still several around, and owners have included such notables as America's Cup winner Bill Koch and singer Jimmy Buffet. In the late 1980s Ralph Schacter commissioned West Coast naval architect Carl Schumacher to draw a boat that combined traditional appearance with modern materials and contemporary "go-fast" thinking. The result brought so many comments and inquiries that Schacter joined with Holby Marine of Bristol, Rhode Island, to build the boat on a production basis.

The Alberg 30 is an adaptation of a 30-footer Alberg designed for San Francisco Bay and was first built in response to a request by some Toronto sailors for a cruising auxiliary that could be fleet raced. By the time the first boat was built, a large group of Chesapeake Bay sailors had also commissioned a fleet. Today those two areas are still the hotbeds of Alberg 30 ownership with more than 100 boats represented in the Toronto association, almost 200 in the highly active and enthusiastic Chesapeake Bay association.

The Bristol 27 is a product of its era and of the traditional bent of designer Carl Alberg's thinking--that is, a combination cruiser and club racer. At 6,600 pounds displacement with 2,575 pounds of internal lead ballast in its full keel, the boat is fairly heavy by contemporary standards.

Cape Dory Yachts was, until its demise some years ago, one of the more conservative firms in the boatbuilding industry. With the exception of a brief fling with modern cruiser-racers--the Intrepid series--the company's stock in trade since the late 1960s was traditional, full keel auxiliaries and sailboats, most from the design board of Carl Alberg, the octogenarian dean of American designers.

Just a few years ago, the prospective buyer of a 25' sailboat knew that some serious compromises awaited him. His 25-footer would probably have little more than sitting headroom, might have four shelves that could reasonably be called berths, and probably had a head stowed under the forward berth. The galley? With luck, a two-burner alcohol stove, maybe a sink, and a water tank holding ten gallons. Auxiliary power? Usually a 6 hp outboard hanging off the stern or in a well in the lazarette.

In the sailboat industry Ericson Yachts was some-what of the archetypal production boatbuilder: trendy, performance oriented, colorfully advertised, and, for the most part, successful. The Ericson line started in 1965 with the enduring 32 and 35, simple and stylized boats that sold mostly to West Coast buyers. The model line then grew, aimed largely at racing sailors, but with models successively introduced to fill in the line and keep Ericson buyers in that builder's boats, eventually reaching a high degree of acceptance throughout the country.

A number of European builders, most notably the British builder Prout and more recently Prestige and Ohlala from France, import to the U.S. a handful of boats each year. None, however, has made a splash as big as Ian Farrier's F-27 trailerable tri, first launched in 1985.