I Found This Interesting.....

[Rowana]

Why is the picture there now? It wasn't when I first posted.

Anyway, it's not in the engine rooom, but H&W's test facility.

[Pete Cooper]

Well obviously nobody found this as interesting as I did ..... so ..... here are the results:

Joint first:

Ecume
Trapper 500
Macwester 27

Commended:
Ballad
Dufour 27
Brin de Folie

What I found interesting was that the Vega didn't feature in the winning lists. Of the boats tested the Vega seems to me to be the most popular nowadays so would seem to have stood the test of time. Brin de Folie I suspect very few have heard of, and I just don't believe that the Macwester 27 is in the same league as most of the rest. It just seemd a little odd to me.

[cpedw]

I read that a Vega has just completed a single-handed non-stop circumnavigation of the Americas. Quite a testament, though I don't know why he did it...

Derek

[ubergeekian]

What I found interesting was that the Vega didn't feature in the winning lists.

I'm mildly surprised that the Centaur (or a variant) wasn't mentioned. It was well established by then and just about the right size at just a whisker under 8m.

[Nick]

.
I find it extraordinary that the Macwester 27 made the top three. Their only virtue AFAIAA is that they are built like a brick shithouse.

OTOH, I met a guy in Porto Santo who bought one with no previous sailing experience and sailed it to Brazil and back - so the BLABS virture is a pretty big one I guess.

I have to admit that the Ecume is a cracking wee boat.

[wully]

In 1975 I was sailing aboard HMS Nubian - F131...

Drafted straight out of tech training to the the west indies to join her. My naval career was all down hilll from then on

[ubergeekian]

.
I find it extraordinary that the Macwester 27 made the top three. Their only virtue AFAIAA is that they are built like a brick shithouse.

OTOH, I met a guy in Porto Santo who bought one with no previous sailing experience and sailed it to Brazil and back - so the BLABS virture is a pretty big one I guess.

I have to admit that the Ecume is a cracking wee boat.

I'm rather fond of the brick shithouse school of boatbuilding myself, which may explain why I went from a Westerly to a Victoria. I find something intrinsically more reassuring about "another layer of chopped strand map never did anyone any harm" than about "the computer says we use 5.57852mm of blown layup here so 5.57852mm of blown layup we use." That's despite spending years of my life doing computer stress analysis .. or perhaps because of it.

I have seen Mr Cooper's Écume de Mer from the outside and yachtsnetted the inside. Very nice, though I do wish I could avoid translating the name as "Sea Scum".

[Nick]

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I have had the privilege of skippering the Ecume when Pete lent her to us for a Scuttlebuttt Cruise a few years ago.

There is no higher quality of man than one who will lend you his boat.