Issue 122: Sept/Oct 2018
Most Good Old Boat readers sail in US and Canadian waters, but our humble magazine crosses other borders to reach a smattering of subscribers all around the globe. Here are a few of them.
“She’s a 2002 Hawk 20 dayboat, a ballasted centerboarder, which I normally keep on a half-tide mooring about a 5-minute drive from my home,” wrote John Elliott of the UK. Here he’s sailing his Hawk on a crisp January day on the beautiful estuary between Salcombe and Kingsbridge in South Devon.
Aussie Bryan Oates has been reading Good Old Boat from the beginning, in Sweden, where he moved 45 years ago. “That’s ice just forming on the Baltic Sea behind me.” Bryan lives on one of the 20,000 islands that make up the Stockholm archipelago. “Light winds start at 0800 and stop at about 1830. There’s no tide and the water is deep right to land’s edge, so I just pull up and tie onto a tree! This is a sailor’s paradise.” Bryan sails a Tripp Lentsch 29, designed by the late Bill Tripp in the early 1960s. He does acknowledge a downside to Swedish sailing: “It gets cold in the winter, so all boats come out of the water around September.” Sounds familiar to some of us.
Cloud 9 isn’t just the Splendor 27 Bill Payne has owned for 15 years, she’s a teaching platform for BLISS, the ASA-certified sailing school he runs in Osaka, Japan. “It’s an acronym for Bill’s Little Informal Sailboat School,” Bill wrote. “Cloud 9 was built about 35 years ago in Nagoya, Japan, based on a New Zealand design for a 25-foot boat. The company is long out of business and there is no record of how many were built.” Attending BLISS and sailing on Cloud 9? Sounds like heaven.
Colin Webb, one of many Australian subscribers, has for the past 20 years been sailing Zenith, a 1974 Midshipman 40 designed by Bill Luders and built by Cheoy Lee in Hong Kong. Colin has sailed most of the east coast of Australia as well as Tasmania. “I am currently repainting and upgrading this great passagemaker. Then I’m retiring and heading for the South Pacific!”
Our only Good Old Boat subscriber in the Netherlands, Drew McCormack sails Luniz on the IJsselmeer. She’s a 1978 wharfbuilt 28-foot sloop designed by Dick Koopmans, a well-known Dutch designer. “The boat is steel, which is unusual for smaller boats in most parts of the world, but the Dutch have made it something of a local industry.” The model is the Koopmans Kustvaarder, which translates to Koopmans Coast Sailor.
Jon Zinke is one of two Good Old Boat subscribers in Hong Kong. He is pictured here with friends aboard his 1977 Taipan 28, Naiad, sailing in the Classic Yacht Rally in Hong Kong. “Naiad was built here in Hong Kong at Interchem Engineers, Ltd. Of about 100 built between 1970 and 1980, most were shipped to the US and UK. She is very similar in design to the Cheoy Lee Offshore 27.”
Takeshi Tanaka, of Yokohama, Japan, bought his Nor’Sea 27, Cookie, in Florida and had it shipped to Japan. At about that time, he became close friends with Good Old Boat contributing editor and fellow Nor’Sea 27 owner Ed Zacko. Japanese officials had refused to register Takeshi’s boat, deeming it unsafe for ocean navigation because they believed the offset companionway Lyle Hess had designed would make the boat prone to flooding after a knockdown. With Hess deceased, Takeshi had nowhere to turn. Enter Ed, who has sailed his own Nor’Sea over much of the world. “I got hold of Dean Wixom (the builder who commissioned Hess to design the Nor’Sea) and Terry Baylor (Dean’s shop foreman, who lofted the boat and made the plug, molds, and the first 181 hulls). We came up with enough data and documentation to convince Japanese authorities that the boat was, in fact, safe for ocean voyaging!” These days Takeshi singlehands Cookie all over the North Pacific.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
