Albin Vega: Modest but Tough

You’d hardly guess by looking at one that the Albin Vega has earned herself a reputation for being an outstanding offshore cruiser. She’s a modest-looking little fiberglass sloop, totally lacking the massive fittings, bowsprits, and laid teak decks that most people associate with real deepsea boats. In fact, if you didn’t know how tough she is, you might judge her to be rather frail. The slight reverse sheer gives her a humpbacked appearance from some angles (though not an unsightly one) but otherwise her general appearance is quite unremarkable.

Like so many of the world’s seaworthy boats, the Albin Vega has Scandinavian origins. She was designed in Sweden in 1964 — the early days of fiberglass construction — by Per Brohäll, who obviously admired the long keel and skinny beam of the Folkboat. The Vega was given a short counter stern with an inboard rudder, however, instead of a transom and an outboard rudder, and her cabintop, raised in two sections, gave her more room below. Well over 3,000 Vegas were built in a production run that extended more than a decade, and thousands of them are now sailing all over the world.

Brohäll set out to design a boat that was light, fast, roomy, seaworthy, and relatively cheap. This was a seemingly impossible task because sailboat performance is the distilled essence of a series of compromises. What is seaworthy, for example, is not usually fast. What is roomy is not necessarily cheap. But Brohäll succeeded in producing one of those rare designs that exceeds most people's expectations in most areas. The one obvious thing the Vega lacks, in comparison with more modern designs, is space down below. But perhaps the comparison is unfortunate because modern designs deliberately sacrifice ultimate seaworthiness for interior space. The understanding is that today's roomy coastal cruisers will never need to fall back on the resources of seaworthiness an ocean voyager requires. Per Brohäll never had to make that compromise. From the outset, he aimed for seaworthiness.

Sidney Rosen, who runs the American Vega Association, sent this photo of a Vega under sail. The photo’s from 1991, and the boat is Norman Meissner’s. See sidebar at the end of this article for more information about contacting the American Vega Association.

That’s Mike and Cheryl Warren’s boat, above. The Warrens live in Ohio, but sail her in Texas. (One nice thing about these boats is you can move them from place to place as the mood strikes you . . . a novel concept for many keelboat sailors.) Notice the unusual cut of the bow pulpit. .

The Vega has a shallow hull with narrow beam and fairly hard bilges. Her keel is long, but not full-length, running for only about half the waterline length, from about the mast to the after end of the cockpit well. While there is more than sufficient length for good tracking, especially downwind in the trades, this keel reduces the surface area (and therefore friction) of the “traditional” deep-sea keel and helps the Vega perform better in light air.

The rudder is attached to the aft end of the keel, but while this is a very strong way to support it, the rudder itself has revealed some weaknesses. There is no cutout in the rudder for the propeller, which, unusually, emerges from the deadwood under the counter but above the rudder. The hull is solid fiberglass, said by the builder to be 3/8- inch thick at the sheerline and 1-inch thick at the base of the keel, but the deck and cabintop are cored fiberglass for lightness. It has been reported that you can press in the cabin sides with your bare hands. Of course because a panel flexes, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is too weak, but continual flexing will eventually cause fatigue and cracks, so in a boat intended for long passages at sea, you'd need to stiffen it with internal stringers or bolt on a large plywood or acrylic storm cover outside.

The caulked, internal flanges of the hull and deck are bolted together with 5/16-inch stainless steel bolts every 5 inches, which makes for a reassuringly strong joint and few leaks. The sheerline, as mentioned above, is reversed slightly to improve headroom below. It is actually almost a straight line from stern to bow, but the eye increases the humpback effect because it is trained to see a concave sheer in that spot. The bows, therefore, look lower than usual for the size of the boat and appear to lack buoyancy, but there is no evidence that such is the case.

The low topsides cut down on wind resistance, which means the coachroof must protrude more to provide adequate headroom below. Brohäll resisted the temptation to create a high, unsightly superstructure that would accommodate a standing 6- footer anywhere below. Instead, he placed a low cabin trunk over the head and the aft end of the V-berth, and then stepped it up another story to give 5 feet 10 inches of headroom in the main saloon and galley. The result is a fairly large superstructure, but one that blends pleasantly with the hull and avoids boxiness. The cockpit is selfbailing and small enough not to cause concern about pooping, but big enough for two people not to get in each other's way on long trips.

Early Vegas were powered by gasoline engines, the 13-horsepower Albin or the 15-horsepower Volvo. Later models carried Volvo diesel engines, including the 10-horsepower MD6A (which was generally thought not to have sufficient power) and the 13-horsepower MD7A. But the really interesting thing about the Vega’s power train was the Combi variablepitch propeller, which was used without a transmission on the early boats. Even when transmissions were added at a later stage, the variable-pitch prop was retained. It was controlled by a single lever that changed the propeller pitch, from full astern to full ahead, without the need for a clutch. When the boat was under sail, the prop could be feathered for least resistance. It was reportedly a very efficient, but complicated and expensive to repair, piece of machinery.

Gunnar Asker’s boat, Wind Harmony, is the platform for feeding the ducks in the lower photo. Gunnar and family sail on Long Island Sound.

In top photo, Cheryl Warren enjoys the comforts of home below decks. Since this photo was taken, she’s recovered the cushions.

The Vega has comfortable bunks for four, two 6-footers and two of 6 feet 6 inches, but it would be a mistake to plan on long ocean crossings with four adults. Two would be plenty. The accommodation layout is logical for a boat with a 23-foot waterline, starting with a chain locker up forward, followed by a V-berth and a toilet just forward of gangway and can be closed off from the main cabin, but remains open to the V-berth.

Aft of the main bulkhead are transom berths to port and starboard, the starboard one being 6 inches longer than the port one. The table between the berths fits into sockets in the cabin sole, so it can be yanked out and stowed away — or dropped into similar sockets in the cockpit for that sunset drinks-andsnacks session.

At the after end of the cabin, under the sliding hatch, the galley divides itself into two portions, one each side of the companionway steps/engine cover. The cooker lives on the port side, and a sink and icebox on the starboard side. Cubbyholes and lockers in the galley and the main cabin provide ample stowage space for gear and provisions for two people on extended voyages. As usual in a boat of this size, there is no dedicated chart table, and the cabin table supplied with the boat is unlikely to be steady enough for serious navigation business in a seaway. But a removable or fold-down plywood table could be made easily enough to fit over one end of a berth or over the icebox/sink area.

All the deadlights are fixed in place with rubber gaskets, which means you can’t open them, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to add a couple of Dorade ventilators, although the existing ventilation system works better than most. If you’re heading for the tropics, you’ll need all the ventilation you can get.

Tom Currier, a software engineer in Pembroke, N.H., got to know Albin Vegas well when he used to deliver them around the coast for his father, who had an Albin dealership. But he got to know them even better after buying his own Vegas. He owned two — Resande and Skidbladnir (Little Liferaft) — for a total of seven years. He has owned other boats and sailed on many more, but his opinion after all those years of experience with the Albin Vega was very firm: "Out of any cruising boat I've ever owned, she has the best sailing characteristics. She's a sweet boat, fast, and well balanced. She has no weather helm; you can always balance her with the sails alone. She also points amazingly well.

Editor’s note: When we contacted Timothy Gill with our request for information on the Vega, he said, “You have struck the jackpot.” He told us he “bought a time capsule from 30 years ago” when he purchased Kelva. She had previously had only one owner, and all original brochures and manuals came with the sale. The boat was in original condition inside and out and only had 247 nautical miles on the log and 14 hours on the original Albin gas engine. Some of Timothy’s comments are from a letter which accompanied the drawings which we reproduce here:

"There are a couple of facts concerning the Vega that I thought may be of interest to your readers. One being the strange bow pulpit configuration. A lot of people would believe that it is made as such to accommodate the mast when lowered; but actually, being a Swedish boat, it was designed to accommodate the rugged coastline of the North Sea in Sweden when mooring bow to the coastline. It’s actually a step-through for this purpose.

Another fact that I thought was really interesting is the offshore capability of the Vega. Numerous ocean crossings have been made, including of course John Neal’s South Pacific voyage and the Atlantic Circle voyage done by Jonny Birkelund in 1997. Birkelund’s voyage was from Norway down the west coast of Europe to the Canaries then south across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and back up the east coast of the U.S. and across the North Atlantic to Norway. All the miles were done single-handed with very little difficulty.