Practical Boat Owner - January 2016

Trailable,

sailable,

saleable

I

s it too soon to say ‘hooray, Britain is building small boats again!’? Perhaps it is. On the other hand, while

new boats hardly represents a revival in our boatbuilding industry, it’s a good sign.the launch of two great little

number of sailing-yacht builders in the UK has dwindled to the point where just a handful now remain. Over the past 20-odd years, the

We’ve had imports aplenty, of course – mostly of larger yachts, because that’s where the dealers make their money. And when

times were good, many people seemed determined to buy the biggest new boat they could afford. A number of new faces

did pop up distributing small, low-cost offerings from eastern Europe, but many of them proved to be short-lived and some of the

boats, shall we say, were better than others.time is more builders on our own What we’ve needed for a long

shores, especially of smaller boats, because the choice has been so limited in recent years. There’s no substitute for being

Spracticality or performance – let alone both. Gaffers don’t go to windward, they say (as some in ome people still don’t believe that a gaffer can cut it when it comes to

darkened corners still do about multihulls). And what’s the point of a having a stick poking out

The emergence of from UK yards is good news all new small boats

round, says David Harding

KITE

from the front of the boat and a mainsail hung from a yard at the top when you can have an efficient modern rig? At this

point, gaff enthusiasts might gently point out that they’ve been ahead of the game for decades: it’s only in the past

few years that racing yachts have discovered bowsprits and square-top mainsails.Wherever the discussion might

go from here, the fact is that modern gaffers – and other designs that draw inspiration from traditional craft – are winning

converts because they can be both practical and fast. For example, who would have believed a few years ago that a

6.4m/21ft gaffer designed as a simple, easily-managed trailable weekender could beat Squibs around the race course – and

competitive, well-sailed Squibs at that?production model of the Kite has This is exactly what the first

been doing, among other things.

We introduced the Kite in the May 2015 issue of PBO after I sailed two epoxy-plywood versions at the English Raid in Falmouth.

Kite No1 is jointly owned by her designer, Andrew Wolstenholme, and her builder, Colin Henwood, while Dick Phillips built No2 with a

slightly longer coachroof for an owner on the Dart.and delighted to hear that a I was impressed by the design

production version in GRP was being developed on the East Coast. After all, the Kite is fast, fun

and responsive. She has an enormous cockpit, a two-berth cabin with ample space for weekending, an all-up weight

that makes her easy to trail, a profiled, fully-retractable centreplate, spars short enough to stow within the length of the

boat (a big tick for the gaff rig) and a carbon mast that weighs just 7kg (15lb). No one is going to struggle to raise that. It’s a pretty

good list of ingredients for civilised trailer-sailing in a boat that also looks the business.

Boats

The Kite The long cockpit provides generous seating and plenty of locker space. It’s too deep to be self-draining, so there’s a sump beneath the sole