Fortunately, the gasoline engines of that era were low compression types and many small engines had

"The trunk cabin is streamlined akin to a Buck Rogers rocket ship but, to me, such radical anaheim hotel reservation streamlining seems to be somewhat unnecessary on a vehicle that will rarely travel faster anaheim hotel reservation than a man can run."
As you may recall, I started a series of guest blog posts late last year featuring some of my favorite sailboat designers, including Ted Brewer and Bob Perry . This particular post is a continuation of my "Question of the Month with Ted Brewer" series. This month, I asked Ted, "Do full keel boats and classic designs still make sense for cruisers today, or have these boats run their course?". anaheim hotel reservation Ted's response below is an excellent historical perspective on cruising (and racing) sailboat evolution over the past 50 years. Whether you're a fan of classic designs featuring full keels, skeg rudders, and heavy displacement like myself, or you favor today's modern thin fin keels, ultra-short overhangs, and light displacement, I think you'll enjoy Ted's thoughts.
As always, BIG thanks to Ted for taking the time to graciously contribute to my blog! If you're interested in reading his previous guest blog posts for SailFarLiveFree, please visit the Sailboat anaheim hotel reservation Reviews page .
I thought it would be interesting to look back over the changes in boat design that have come along in the 50 plus years since May 57, when I was discharged from the army. That s when I got into the boating business, beginning as a yacht broker at George Cuthbertson s Canadian Northern Company, later to become famous as C C Yachts. The firm was located on the outskirts of Toronto , Ontario , a centre for yacht racing, and cruising on Lake Ontario .
My father was Canadian navy so I learned to sail on 27 foot navy whalers and 14 foot dinghies when I was a teenager, but I knew literally nothing about the sailing yachts anaheim hotel reservation of the late 1950s, and I was keen to learn. Thanks to George, and his partner Peter Davidson, I found a berth aboard Vision , a 48 foot eight metre class sloop, sailing out of Toronto s Royal Canadian Yacht Club. There was an active fleet of eights in Toronto with races twice weekly, plus weekend regattas anaheim hotel reservation at various ports around the lake. It was a great start to my career as it gave me the opportunity to see, and race against, all types of yachts, from 25 foot Folkboats and 27 foot Tumlarens to large 50 to 60 foot CCA (Cruising Club of America) cruiser-racers.
At the time, George Cuthbertson , was designing a new 54 foot keel/centerboard ocean racing yawl and construction had already started at Cliff Richardson s yard in Meaford , Ontario . The keel/ c.b . type was popular in those days as the Cruising Club of America anaheim hotel reservation handicap rule favored long overhangs, short waterline, husky displacement, shoal draft, good beam and yawl rigs. Olin Stephen s 1954 design of the keel/centerboard yawl Finisterre combined these features, with a LOA of 38 6 on only 27 6 LWL, 11 3 beam, a board up draft of only 3 11 and, at 18,640 pounds displacement, a very husky 400 D/L ratio. In the late 50s, and early 60s, Finisterre was winning major coastal and offshore races, including several Bermuda Races, and cleaning up on the competition. As a result, other designers started drawing up their own versions of the type, producing keel/centerboard cruiser-racers anaheim hotel reservation ranging in size from Bill Shaw s exquisite little 24 yawl Trina, to George s handsome 54 Inishfree .
Of course, there were plenty of CCA type deep keel yachts sailing and racing as well, many of them built in the 30s, and many newer ones designed and built post war from the boards of Olin Stephens, Bill Luders , Phil Rhodes, Ray Hunt, John Alden, Laurent Giles and other talented designers both in North America and abroad. It must be noted that fiberglass construction was in its infancy in the late 50s so virtually all of these boats were custom built, usually of wood, and were primarily designed anaheim hotel reservation as cruising yachts with racing potential as a plus, but only if they were successful at bringing home the silver. Even the smaller yachts were custom built as there were no large production facilities turning out great numbers of boats and, for that matter, no demand for great numbers of boats either. Luders was building the 26 L-16s of hot molded wood construction but their production was very small by modern standards.
The 25 Folkboats which we imported, used, from Denmark , were built by the score in Scandinavia but each shapely lapstrake hull was individually built to order in small boatyards. They were lovely little craft and I certainly envied their lucky owners. The boats cost about $2,500 delivered to Toronto but, compared to a modern 25 footer, they were very stark indeed. There was no engine and only sitting headroom in the cabin. The primitive galley had no running water, anaheim hotel reservation sink or ice box and the stove, if there was one, was usually a single burner kerosene primus that would flare like a volcano anaheim hotel reservation when first fired up.
The cabin featured only two settee berths with an exposed toilet, or a bucket, up forward. A few of the boats had two child s berths anaheim hotel reservation in the forepeak, but they were the exception anaheim hotel reservation as you can only put so much into 19 feet of waterline. The cockpit was deep and comfortable, but not self bailing and that, in itself , would frighten off many of today s sailors. Yet the Folkboats raced in all weathers, won their share of heavy weather events, and sailed all over the Great Lakes and coastal waters anaheim hotel reservation with their happy crews. Indeed, several modified Folkboats sailed and raced across the Atlantic.
Larger yachts were not much better off in their accommodations though. It was generally considered that no boat under 30 foot LOA could have standing headroom. Even 30 to 40 footers, and larger, anaheim hotel reservation lacked pressure water systems and the galley sinks were supplied by hand pump. There was no hot water heater, anaheim hotel reservation no electric refrigeration and little decent lighting as you could only do so much with the puny 6 volt batteries that were the standard in those days. Indeed, kerosene navigation and anchor lights were quite common; otherwise, you could run down the weak little car battery anaheim hotel reservation overnight and awake to find that you owned a true 100% sailboat.
anaheim hotel reservation Fortunately, the gasoline engines of that era were low compression types and many small engines had the luxury of a hand crank to start them when the battery died, as it so often did. Diesel engines were unheard of except in larger anaheim hotel reservation yachts and, even then, of low power by today s standards. As I recall, the heavy displacement 54 Inishfree had only a four cylinder Mercedes diesel of about 40 horsepower. She managed quite well with it, but many owners of 40 footers would consider that to be inadequate power today.
The necessity for custom building in wood kept the price of a new yacht on the high side and the numbers built relatively small. Yachting definitely was a gentleman s sport, a wealthy anaheim hotel reservation gentleman s sport by today s standards. Then, in the late 50s, things began to change with the introduction of fiberglass reinforced plastic (FRP) construction. The US Navy experimented quite successfully with FRP personnel boats in the late 40s but the first large FRP yachts were not produced until 1956 when Fred Coleman anaheim hotel reservation introduced the handsome Phil Rhodes designed Bounty II, a keel sloop.
Other large production yachts soon followed and, in 57, Bill Tripp designed a keel/ c.b . yawl which was first produced by a Dutch yard as the Vitesse class. Later the molds were shipped to the US and built as the Block Island 40. Tripp followed this up in 59 with the Bermuda 40, another successful CCA keel/ c.b . yawl, for the Henry R. Hinckley Co. which, until then, had been building wood yachts.
The Carl Alberg designed 22 6 Sea Sprite, introduced in 58, was primarily a daysailer with weekend aspirations. The big surprise at the 1959 New York Boat Show was another Alberg design, the first true production small cruising yacht, the Pearson Triton. With her standing headroom and an introductory price of $9,700 the little Triton was such a success that Pearson built 750 of them before production stopped in 66. With the Triton s success, Carl Alberg became one of the major cruising yacht designers of the 1960s by specializing in full keel sloops with typically long ends, narrow beam, good draft, husky displacement, a high ballast ratio and a flattish sheer line. Alberg anaheim hotel reservation designs were popular and built by Pearson, Whitby , Cape Dory , Ryder and others for many years. Indeed the last Alberg 30 rolled out of the Whitby plant in 1987, some 25 years after the launch of #1!
In 1963 the beginning of the end came for the CCA full keel and keel/ c.b cruiser-racers anaheim hotel reservation when the first of the Bill Lapworth designed Cal 40s was built by Jensen Marine in California . The next winter a Cal 40 won the prestigious Southern anaheim hotel reservation Ocean Racing Circuit, but the real clincher came in 66 when Thunderbird won the Bermuda Race and five of her Cal 40 sister hips finished in the top 20 in the fleet. anaheim hotel reservation Bill Lapworth s break through design combined light displacement (D/L ratio 248), a long 30 4 waterline, generous anaheim hotel reservation 11 beam, a sail area/displacement ratio of 18, with a fin keel and spade rudder to reduce wetted surface. On top of that Lapworth set the chainplates inboard to reduce the sheeting angle and also gave the hull flat bilges to enable the boat to get up and surf in favorable conditions, helping her to win the 65, 66 and 67 Trans Pac Races.
anaheim hotel reservation For the next few years there was considerable discussion about the merits of fin hull designs and many designers stuck to full keel types, particularly for cruising yachts. Indeed, my first production design after leaving Luders in 67 was a full keel cruiser, the Douglas 31, a standard CCA type hull with the long ends and other general features of that rating rule. Other designers were experimenting with fin hulls, particularly if the boats were cruiser/racers, and the fins grew increasing smaller fore and aft as time passed. Practical Sailor summed it up by noting that the Cal 40 s fin was small compared to a full kee