Short(er) boats with higher head room

[rtooh]

Contest 35s meet your criteria, but as you pointed out earlier with another boat, availability in the States will likely be an issue.

[Elegua]

Most boats designed by Ted Hood or Deiter Empacher will have the headroom.

[gonesail]

the bristol 40 had a ton of headroom. I could hardly see thru the ports and I am almost 6' tall.

[slowpoker]

Take a good look at a 33 footer with the room of a 38. Modified full keel with keel protected rudder. Plenty of headroom and bunk lenghts, even under the Bimini. Not the fastest to windward but a dependable 50 HP Perkins Diesel. A strong, spacious, comfortable, beamy boat. The Morgan Out Island 33.

[Sailing302]

Hi! Making my first post for this. I'm 6'5" and looking for options that could eventually do an Atlantic crossing, probably 30-40' range.

[MARK98110]

Dufour 31! We have one for sale right now. great boat, and lots of head room. no need to crouch. They are also more affordable.

M-

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by Sailing302

Hi! Making my first post for this. I'm 6'5" and looking for options that could eventually do an Atlantic crossing, probably 30-40' range.

Welcome aboard Sailing 302!
You might check into Columbia 43s too. They are a little bigger than you mention, but they have the headroom.

[Heathenly Twins]

Originally Posted by mdsdurango

Thanks Heathenly and Trekka, I have looked a some Westerlys on line but seems the VAST majority are across the Atlantic. Very few in the US. Am I looking in the wrong places?

I was just looking at my paperwork today and it looks like Westerly's US sales were based out of Maryland so you may have luck there. Ironically, mine was used as a trailer sailor for most of its life
And raced and was sold and sailed in North Dakota of all places 🤣 a design specifically for high tidal ranges and steep seas sailing in lakes, lol.

Anyway, I suspect they are rare even on the East coast.

I met a bloke out here in Western Canada with a roomy Islander 32 or 34 I forget which. Not high performance but a beauty and I could almost stand up in it (I'm almost 7' tall). If I were going to go for a single keeler with wheel steering, Islanders seem like a good value.

[Trekka]

Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s Westerly sailboats were commonly seen over the Chesapeake and southern coasts. They are great bay boats! But in the early 1980s the long time importer retired and the dealership passed through various hands.

I always felt the dealers and company did not know how to advertise to Americans. Their print ads were boring and they never put any effort into owner outreach. The company itself went out of business eventually. I organized the first Westerly list serve in the mid 1990s. The company restarted in new management and they had awful bedside manners. Claimed trademark on the term “My Westerly” and legally threatened a fellow who was growing a website about the line. I had boxes of promotional literature picked up over more than a decade and a half of boat shows and we were scanning and indexing all the older - and no longer built - models. They stomped the website hard. Wanted total control over anything about the boats and history. Eventually they went under again.

Sadly, with no visibility here in the states, and no collective sense and experience, the models faded from visibility. The average sailor did not know what to make of twin keels. Seemed as likely as a six legged horse to them. I loved them. But resale values dropped and dropped. Many of the line from late ‘60s to 1980ish met the chopper after failure to sell. 15 years ago you could still find a fair number of them on web and print used boat sales. Now they are rare.

They were strongly built boats with Lloyds 100A certificates. They were designed and built for people whose sailing area included the North Sea off the U.K. Much stronger than most similar sized boats of American construction. Ocean capable but also great for shallower sailing waters like west coast of Florida, gunkholing the Chesapeake... The author of the book “Cruising the Chesapeake- A Gunkholers Guide” sailed a Westerly Berwick. (Twin keels, apx 31ft length)

[Paul J. Nolan]

Headroom is overrated. You wanna stand up? Go on deck.

Paul