wongaga said..
Yes, totally irrelevant comparison. How many have circumnavigated in them?

Plenty of people have circumnavigated in Beneteau Oceanises (Oceaniii?) and when the first Golden Globe was on, a French singlehander on an Oceanis went down to help the guy whose Atkins double ended ketch was sinking. A Farr 40 IOR one tonner has done a singlehanded RTW race, and finished with no real issues. Heck, a Finn dinghy has sailed across much of the Pacific. Circumnavigation numbers don't prove seaworthiness either way.

The thread is also not about how many boats have circumnavigated, but how many 34 footers are faster than an S&S 34. The answer is thousands. That's no disrespect to the very fine S&S 34, but a reflection of reality.

Try taking different designs to windward in 4 metre seas and 30kn for a day or so. The S&S would be my preferred choice.

MorningBird said


I see Morning Bird is for sale again, down in Melbourne.
www.boatsonline.com.au/boats-for-sale/used/sailing-boats/sparkman-stephens-34/287391

Just looking at the mast base at deck level.No waterproofing boot. Almost looks like there might be a pin through the front so that it can pivot forwards and down like a backwards trailer sailer which seems totally wrong. These things have keel stepped masts don't they?

julesmoto said..

MorningBird said


I see Morning Bird is for sale again, down in Melbourne.
www.boatsonline.com.au/boats-for-sale/used/sailing-boats/sparkman-stephens-34/287391

Just looking at the mast base at deck level.No waterproofing boot. Almost looks like there might be a pin through the front so that it can pivot forwards and down like a backwards trailer sailer which seems totally wrong. These things have keel stepped masts don't they?

Standard design on Perth boats, where you need to drop the stick to get under the bridges at the mouth of the river. I think even the maxis have tabernacles there, and WA boats are built to handle rough stuff.

MB did have very simple single spreader deck stepped short rig with single inline lowers and a baby stay (mast support not for a sail). To compensate for the inherently lower strength of a deck stepped rig, MBs mast was much more robust than the keel stepped ones and with bigger section stays. Being deck stepped there was no water ingress from that area.
The majority of S&S34s I know, which is quite a few, had folding masts so it was a disappointment that MB didn't. I would have like to be able to drop the mast to take her more places like up the Hawkesbury or under the Spit or Iron Cove bridges. She was built to race in Pittwater so had no need for the folding mast.
The pin I think is referred to is possibly the sheave pin.

All@Sea said..
Disclaimer, I have a vested interest in this post;)

Prion (31') will beat an S&S34 every day of the week on the water and often on handicap.... depending on conditions she is more than competitive boat for boat with the likes of the sf3200 and j99....

yachthub.com/list/yachts-for-sale/used/sail-monohulls/mount-gay-30-cat-1-capable-exceptional-performance/280186

Lovely boat, and what a keel!

good discussion. I'm going with Prion. Sailed on a MG 30 for a couple of years and it was a brilliant but at times scary ride. Scary because it was a fast boat that was quite technical, same number of strings as the whitbread 60 but in half the size.
Best sailing I have ever enjoyed was from the sf lightship to santa cruz, downwind with big winter swell and that beast surfing for 20 minutes at a time.

btw, the first one, Sticky Fingers (Rogers Design) won the 94 round Britain race.

Chris 249 said..


Nice wipeout, but ...

Actually if you rewatch the video carefully it was actually pretty much under control until the guy lost his footing on that ridiculously little fold up footrest due to a wave coming into the ridiculously unprotected ridiculously wide cockpit/sidedeck/seating position with ridiculously absent coaming or any other structure to hold onto except the tiller.

Talking about French boats, this one shakes my booty. Would be a bit different than this in a 3 to 4 m swell.

OK so I have not done much offshore racing in the last ten years but before that plenty of the previous 30 years including some pretty tough delivery passages short handed on all types of boats from 1970 classics to late IRC and ORCi boats.

Here is my top five of boats to be in a gale and be able to go upwind despite the sea state.

Sonata 8 fixed keel (I will let the geniuses here work out why)

Dubios 1/2 ton (similar consideration to the Sonata 8)

Swanson 32 (properly built one not a bad owner builder job) or a Brolga over an S&S 34 any day.

All time winner against all opposition is the Sydney 38

Any IMS boat over 43 feet.

Sure none are perfect but each are standouts and a few just miss out like the Peterson 43 (which I will also now add to the list for Cisco.)

That should get people going.

And just remember, I am still here to type this.

lydia said..
Sure none are perfect but each are standouts and a few just miss out like the Peterson 43 (which I will also now add to the list for Cisco.)

Thanks for the mention lydia. Envy II is actually 42 ft. The Petersons of that era varied from 40 to 44 ft. They were all designed as IOR 2 tonners and probably no two had exactly the same hull form as he was constantly experimenting adding a bump here or a hollow there.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Peterson_(yacht_designer)
sailboatdata.com/designer/peterson-doug

Mal Hewitt, the builder of Envy II, campaigned her in I think 4 Brisbane-Noumea races winning I believe 3.
The first was only a week or two after initial launching. The fleet headed to Cape Moreton and all but Envy turned back, anchored behind the Tangalooma wrecks and got into their duty free grog.

Envy continued and stood near vertical going through the waves. She arrived in Noumea and had to wait 4 days for the rest of the fleet to arrive. I believe that constitutes a line honors and handicap win.

All of this was related to me thus not my first hand experience however I did have her off Cairns once in 25 kts with a 2m wind swell and she just powered to windward at 7.5 kts with two reefs in the main and the working jib. The only other yacht I have been on that came near to that was my Windrush Wildfire 23 ft trailer sailor. Interestingly with yachts that power to windward like that you stay fairly dry in the cockpit with most of the spray going to leeward.

I never got the opportunty to have my Lotus 9.2 in similar conditions but I do believe she would point as well as an S&S 30 or 34.

The beauty of Envy was that the mast was in line with the front foot of the keel making her very much a headsail powered yacht.

Windward capability I believe is essential in a yacht because there will come a time when you have to claw your way from a lee shore.

Good to see your fingers are still keyboard capable. Mine are taking on a similar appearance to Keith Richards'.

I also find it interesting that science behind both the build structure and the science behind the balancing of the boat is usually ignored in choosing a good safe very heavy air boat.
These of course are the two primary criteria.

Chris 249 said..
The Sonata was also quite narrow in the stern for a fractional, so balanced well.

Dubois half tonners had high freeboard for their size and MW could put lots of off-duty crew in the right place, if I recall correctly.

Lou Abrahams mentioned that his Sydney 38 had the best rig of any boat he had ever owned; if I recall correctly it was tough and simple, not too stiff, and of course was fractional.

In terms of balance, in my first offshore season we were still allowed hydraulic rams on the forestay. The Kaufman one and two tonners could just crank the rig fore and aft to get perfect balance upwind. Superstar, the Peterson 46, was also an absolute upwind weapon in its day.

I can also remember watching the Farr one tonners Piccollo and Vanguard, ex-centreboarders, move upwind in an amazing way because of the mass of internal ballast and outstanding weight concentration. The knuckled bow would seem to hang in the air with the whole boat moving up and down bodily but level, while the other boats pitched.

I always thought the Brolga was under-rated but am curious to know why you would prefer it to an S&S34 upwind. I know "Fearless Freddy" Thomas, veteran sparmaker and Hobart winner, didn't like Joubert boats because of the narrow shroud base.

Excellent summary Chris and the brolga is far less wet like not under water

Chris 249 said..
The Sonata was also quite narrow in the stern for a fractional, so balanced well.

Dubois half tonners had high freeboard for their size and MW could put lots of off-duty crew in the right place, if I recall correctly.

Lou Abrahams mentioned that his Sydney 38 had the best rig of any boat he had ever owned; if I recall correctly it was tough and simple, not too stiff, and of course was fractional.

In terms of balance, in my first offshore season we were still allowed hydraulic rams on the forestay. The Kaufman one and two tonners could just crank the rig fore and aft to get perfect balance upwind. Superstar, the Peterson 46, was also an absolute upwind weapon in its day.

I can also remember watching the Farr one tonners Piccollo and Vanguard, ex-centreboarders, move upwind in an amazing way because of the mass of internal ballast and outstanding weight concentration. The knuckled bow would seem to hang in the air with the whole boat moving up and down bodily but level, while the other boats pitched.

I always thought the Brolga was under-rated but am curious to know why you would prefer it to an S&S34 upwind. I know "Fearless Freddy" Thomas, veteran sparmaker and Hobart winner, didn't like Joubert boats because of the narrow shroud base.

Great write up Chris, thanks very much. The previous owner of my Sonata 8 was bragging about how he found all this lead around the keel and he'd removed it to 'make it faster' . He couldn't understand why I was unimpressed.

Ramona said..
It's worth checking out the video Bass straight surfing part 2 on this page.

www.facebook.com/cruxracing

I was offshore yesterday in a brisk SE and a sloppy sea and I can say the SS34 is definitely a wetter boat than a Currawong.

That's an inspiring video! Thanks for posting.

K.