I owned one for 15 years. In full disclosure I now own a Westsail 42. Most everything said so far is correct. A couple of slanted comments though on the sailing.
She's definitely not a round the buoy boat. She takes some
work to sail.
Work in setting her up, not work in the
steering. If she's rigged right and the spar is set correct she'll balance well and you'll be more comfortable in her than most other boats. She will in bay chop, even the GOMEX under the right conditions hobby horse. If you get enough
power into her though; like in the video above, she'll punch though happily for hours and days. In spite of the Wetsnail slam she sails very well but can't point as high as a round the buoys
racer. Once you fall off from beating to any kind of reach she finds her legs and can really move. The motion is kind to the body and inspite of one poster saying he was tired after sailing a day, she got us to
ports generally in fine shape without our teeth having been knocked loose. We sailed her 25k miles, about 10 k
offshore and the rest coastal. We had an Aires
wind vane that steered almost all the time. The key to moving the boat is having the right sails and large enough. I believe she first earned her snail slam because the boats shipped from the
west coast to the east had sails designed for
California and not the finicky winds we have on the
east coast. We used for 90% of our sailing on the
east coast the 130
Genoa, the staysail and well built main. In the trades we changed to the Yankee, keep the staysail furled and then a reefed
mainsail.
Look for one that has at least the 36hp
Volvo or larger. The 25 hp put her as underpowered and that's the
engine we put on her. Thank you Lynn and Larry P for that
purchase. It was the only
purchase on the boat I really regretted.
As for factory built vs owner: Look the boats over closely. I'd say of all the owner built boats I've looked at about 1/2 are significantly better then the factory built and 1/2 are worse. By now after almost 40 years most all boats have been owner modified enough that everyone is custom.
There were I think 3
deck mods so make sure the year you're looking at is what you want. The earlier boats had a large
teak lazzerate
hatch, the next mod was a center skylight, and the following was putting stanchions bases molded in, a flush lazzerette, a
cockpit locker a molded in shim fo rthe
bowsprit (that may have been in the second mod) and a
cockpit locker. We had the last mod.
If you want to sail around the world or do some serious offshore stuff the boat will stand up to anything you can handle. There is more room than you'll generally know what to do with. (We had over 50 lockers
storage areas). She isn't however a condo at the
dock. There is room for stuff and things and not for playing charades down below.
All that being said I think a well found one is the best bang for the buck in todays market. If you
price boats by the pound (that's how builders figure much of the cost) then you're easily
buying a 40- 50' boat in a small effecient package.
Fair Winds
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