Baja Bash / Hunter 45 Center Cockpit

[FranklinGray]

I am a Whitby 55 owner now, but am a Hunter fan and owned and sailed one for 30,000 nm while also going halfway around the world on my H376. It was a 'Friday' boat. The supervisors were not around when they built my old boat. It had 18 different creeks due to manufacture defects...with that said, they were just annoying, not structural and I fixed them all. Structural it was a fine boat. One thing I did do to the boat that totally changed how it sailed was adding 2 inches on the leading edge of the rudder to balance the rudder. That made the boat very easy to sail and the autopilot could handle anything then.

We bought the Whitby because it was half the price of the used H50CC. Although I had a great time sailing my 376 all over the place, the Whitby is a much better boat and not all due to it being bigger, but I would also go so far as to say it is a better built boat than just about everything including Oysters. Shame they only made 3 of them. Great cruising boat for a family, maybe the best for the size.

So what are the sailing differences besides size and all that goes with that? The boat sails straighter (Long fin keel with skeg hung rudder vs wing keel with spade rudder)....a lot straighter. The 376's autopilot would make an adjustment like every 3 seconds; the Whitby like every 3+ minutes. The heavy keel gives the Whitby a lot of stability. Now the Whitby being a ketch with two head sails makes it much harder to sail. There are times I miss the simplicity of my old boat.

Hard to compare the differences going into the seas because of the size differences (the Whitby is so much more comfortable but a lot of that has to do with size and weight of it), but I can say that the H376 didn't like pounding into steep seas. She had a patch of the hull just in front of the keel that was flat which pounded hard when crashing down into the trough. Do not know if the other Hunter models had that flat patch. This was a problem in the Gulf of Mexico with the steep seas due to all the currents there. Wasn't a big problem in the Atlantic, Caribbean or South Pacific.

[Mauruuru]

Why take the time to ask a question if you have already decided what the correct answer is?

[FosterJourney]

Heres a good video of the Hunter 45 sailing from Guadelupe to Boston. At 9:00 the seas appear to be 8-10 ft. https://youtu.be/KLBi6-5yDvI?t=540

[B_Hunter45]

I am the captain of the boat in the video posted by FosterJourney.
The boat is a Hunter 45DS.
We sailed through a storm with 25' waves and 40 knots winds. The main sail was old and not in a good condition, on top of that it was NOT an offshore sail, should have been replaced BEFORE the passage. When we were hit by a squal with 50+ winds and variable directions the main broke.
During all the passage the boat handled very well and gave a good feeling of stability, including in the motoring part after we lost the sails.
All in all, great boat.

[Fbfisher]

Originally Posted by FosterJourney

Heres a good video of the Hunter 45 sailing from Guadelupe to Boston. At 9:00 the seas appear to be 8-10 ft. https://youtu.be/KLBi6-5yDvI?t=540

8-10ft seas, under sail, and the water bottles on the cockpit table don’t move? That’s impressive!

Glad that all are safe.

[Greg Mason]

Fbfisher, I noticed that too! Not only that, but the Canadian flag was on a beam reach, a lovely point of sail for any vessel. What part of the Baja Bash is beam reach? Parts of the Baja haha maybe.

[Kamakiriad66]

As much as I hate these discussions, I am going to jump in.

Say what you will about Hunter, once you get to their 45-46 ft boats they are capable of long passages. There are many Beneteaus and Hunters in this size sailing all over the world at any moment.

There will ALWAYS be people telling you every Hunter and Beneteau are "coastal cruisers" but that just isn't true once you get to their larger boats (+38). These companies have good lawyers and are lawsuit averse. They build them to be safe if not comfortable. Yes, there are anecdotal stories of failed masts and dropped keeps, but you can look up ANY boat and find the same stories. They build in the hundreds. B & H build in the thousands.

Can a Hunter 46-center zig-zag back up the California coast and go 200 miles offshore? Of course. The safety or danger of that depends on the skill of the Captain, the accuracy of the weather, and the condition of the boat. A well-kept Hunter with good standing rigging should have ZERO problem doing this trip. But, if this owner is asking this question I would say he probably is not skilled enough to do it unless he has very favorable weather.

Always be safe, and if you cannot be sure or confident in the weather, put in to a port and wait it out. That goes whether you are in a Hunter or Island Packet.