It is intersesting that this thread has been revived. Having done a fair amount of miles in a 26 foot boat I will give my 2 cents worth. Something that seems to have been under mentioned in this thread is the ability to go to windward. Any barge of any length can go down
wind, but if you need to
claw off of a lee shore ,the design, the rig ,the watertightness become far more important than standing
headroom or if you have a
diesel or not. I am not familiar enough with many of the boats mentioned here, but in general the shorter the boat and the lower the ballast to
displacement ratio means the poorer the windward ability. The fatter the bow is ,just means more
interior room at the expense of windward ability. If you can not beat off of a lee shore in a blow, then your boat is not really a safe boat. I understand that enough
wind can overpower any boat, but the more windward ability you have, the safer you are. I just read all 100 posts on this thread and must comment on the Contessa 26. I did about 9000 miles in a Contessa 26 and found the comments about maintainance issues to be a complete surprise. Mine was an
English built one so maybe the Canadian boats were not so well built, but I never had any
hull to deck joint
leaks or any trouble with a cored deck becouse the Rogers buiit boats didnt use coring. Only one portlight ever leaked and that was only a drop or two when really pounding to
weather. The key hole
hatch was great in that there was never any leaking into the
cabin from a sliding
hatch. Chain plates, stantions, deck
hardware never leaked. The lack of a bridge deck did worry me, but I made a
safety bar that went on the inside of the doors to keep them from breaking in a pooping. The only unexpected maintainance that I had was to get ship worms in the
rudder right at the waterline. I had the boat so overloaded that the waterline was above the
bottom paint on the
rudder, which didnt hurt the
fiberglass hull but made rudder
repairs on the beach in
Tahiti a chore. When I
sold the boat in
Hawaii it was 10 or 11 years old, and had been in the tropics for 2 years and sailed hard for several more years, and the only real maintainance issues were that the
sails were thrashed and it needed a bottom job. I pushed that boat hard and got very good passages out of it and it never broke. Would I recommend it for long
offshore voyages? HELL YES, but it pays to be young and flexible since there is limited space inside. It makes up for it in pure sailing ability and a deep comfortable cockpit. And back to my original comment, it goes to
weather as well or better than any other boat in that size range.____I guess this is more than my 2 cents worth, but I hope it helps someone in their decision making process.____Grant.