Quote:
Originally Posted by reed1v
The WS32 is a great boat if you like cramped cockpits. Personally, we liked spending a lot of time on deck and sought out boats that had lots of usable room in the cockpit and on deck for more than two people. We did sail our WS43 almost around the world in various stages for almost 40 years. Center cockpits really are the way to go if your a long distance cruiser.
We did sail in tandem with a WS32 across the Indian ocean and it performed almost as well as an atkins's ingrid 38. The problem with the Archer designs is the rather long beam, originally designed to allow maximum passenger loading when rescuing floundering ships. This also means one "plows" a lot of water. The Ingrid design tapers the beam more so the bow slices through rather than plows through short waves. So if someone is looking at a WS32, they really owe it to themselves to also look at the Ingrid designs which are, imho, more seaworthy. |
I think we are talking about different boats. Colin Archers fame among yachties was cemented by the Life Saving Boats he designed for the Norwegian Life Saving
Service which was an amalgamation of working boats that had been built and worked successfully in the stormy North Sea. Colin Archer subscribed to a then
current theory of design which carried the beam well forward. It works well for boats that mostly sail off the
wind, not so good for beating into steep seas. The full bows provided buoyancy forward to lesson the chance of burying the bow and broaching when running in front of storm condition waves but take a lot of
power to punch through waves.
In the late '20s, a guy commissioned William Atkins to scale down the 40 plus foot Archer Norwegian Life Saving Boat to 32'. He wanted a truly stout and proven boat for a short handed crew to sail on an extended
blue water cruise. The guy stiffed Billy Atkins on the plans so he marketed them to the general public to recoup his labor. Vito Dumas and Robin Knox Johnston are two people who built boats that they circumnavigated to the Atkins Eric Design. He also designed a Marconi Rigged, flush deck version that was the basis for the Kendall, the progenitor to the W32. William Crealock did the
interior layout and trunk cabin for the Vick's who started Westsail after they bought Kendall's molds at a Federal tax
sale. Crealock also made minor changes to the hull design for Kendall primarily making a notch in the hull for the prop so the
rudder had less of a cutout and was stronger. Other than that, the W32 hull is pretty much as Atkins designed it.
A big cockpit is not necessarily good for peaceful cruising. The multihulls had large cockpits and huge deck areas that tended to be a social gathering area for boats in an anchorage. Fine if you like to have a constant stream of people on your boat but not our idea of what we went cruising for. Having another couple over or at most two couples was comfortable but more than that wasn't something we even considered and would've driven us crazy if it happened regularly.
The double ender wasn't a design affectation though a lot of people were convinced that you had to have it for running before the
wind in storms. It actually was the strongest way to build a wooden boat and a solid way to attach a
rudder to the boat. 3 stout gudgeons bolted to the hull without a
packing gland or shaft as a potential flooding point really made sense to all those double end designs that preceded the W32 for centuries. A design affectation was the canoe stern typical of most boats that tried to emulate the rugged design of the W32. Of course you are familiar with that in your W43. Just wonder why you went with that boat rather than w W42 if you like the
center cockpit design??
The Alajuela 38 is the Ferrari of double enders. The additional length made for a much finer entry that goes to
weather way better than the W32. They also went with all lead ballast concentrated as much as possible in the center of the boat to lessen hobby horsing, the bane of the W32. They also had a much taller stick that greatly improved light air performance. The other FRP Ingrids have the same issues as some kit boat W32s. Spread out iron ballast, heavy wooden sticks, poor finish and ODD interior layouts. Just as not all W32 kits were poorly laid out or built, many of the Ingrids were built way better than a Hinckley. Every Westsail that was being built that we saw when we were building ours was constructed to way higher standards than the factory and most cost more to build. I know that our boat had every piece of wood that touched the hull bonded to it with 3 layers of cloth and mat. Where the factory used
plywood for the furniture, we used mortise and tenon joined real mahogany cabinet faces. The boat was insulated to the water line. Cabin sides and overhead were T&G mahogany over
insulation. Hatches were water proof
aluminum. Don't disparage the kit built boats till you've looked at them. Yes some are crap but many more are gems.
We bought the Westsail because of bad
experience with factory built boats. Had one boat try and self destruct at sea because of really sh***y construction. Having a boat threaten to come apart a 100 miles at sea makes you a believer in a truly strong boat. Another boat busted most of the bulkheads loose crossing the channels here. A W32 is not a perfect sailing boat, is there one?? It is the best deal in a
blue water boat for the
money IF it is in good condition or
cheap enough that you can put it in good condition.
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