Classic Boat — November 2017

(Barré) #1

SPIRIT OF TRADITION


58 CLASSIC BOAT NOVEMBER 2017

C/O JEREMY ROGERS

FIRST LIGHT BOATWORKS

Drascombe Lugger
The humble Drascombe Lugger, first built in 1965, has sold
more than all the other boats on this list: a lot more – 2,000
and counting. The 19-footer (5.8m) was designed by John
Watkins to be light, commodious and seaworthy. These days
built in GRP by Churchouse Boats, she’s perhaps the perfect
family boat, of a size to take six adults, beachable with a
plate-up draught of just 10in (25cm) and rigged with a safe,
boomless gunter yawl set-up. At less than 400kg, you can trail
a Lugger with an ordinary car. Plenty of built-in buoyancy
completes this capable open boat for river, lake or sea.

Price £17,500, drascombe.co.uk

Contessa 32
Is she a Spirit of Tradition yacht? Perhaps she wasn’t built as
one, but it’s true that at her launch in 1970, she balanced
traditional hull characteristics with what was then a very
modern underbody of fin keel and skeg-hung rudder. She sold
well from the start and has gone onto become a legend: fast,
sweet-lined, tolerably commodious for her era and her
reputation for seaworthiness was cemented after surviving
the notorious 1979 Fastnet. She’ll win around the cans and
cruise around the world. The 32 is still built today in GRP by
the same family, the Rogers, in Lymington.

Price £189,000, jeremyrogers.co.uk

Botin 22
The latest launch from Brooklin Boat Yard in Maine is Toroa, a
22m cruiser/racer designed by Botin Partners of Spain. A
single layer of cedar strip planking half an inch thick became
the mould, followed by a layer of carbon, foam, then carbon.
The wooden deck beams were laid up with a layer of carbon
in them and the deck itself was constructed of a thin layer of
V-matched plywood (to appear as a painted wooden deck
from below), followed by carbon, foam, and thin teak decking.
Pushing the envelope of modern construction and design in a
community of boat builders rooted in the traditional, this is
the very outer point of the Spirit of Tradition.

Price $POA brooklinboatyard.com

First Light 26
The First Light 26 (a 36 and 24 also exist) from Cape Cod
builder First Light Boatworks will appeal to anyone with an
eye for a pretty, utility-style runabout that goes like stink. At
26ft (8m), it looks the part (with or without sprayhood) with
workboat styling, wooden clinker topsides and your choice of
layout. The Suzuki 140hp outboard (mounted inside the
hinged engine box visible) gives 30 knots flat out, with a
20-knot cruising speed and draught of 2ft 2in (66cm) or just
1ft 3in (38cm) with the motor tilted, which makes her very
beachable. Add a swim platform and space for 12, at a push,
and you can see why she won a 2017 Classic Boat Award.

Price from $135,000, firstlightboatworks.com

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