On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 08:44:17 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 23:33:20 -0500, rhys wrote:

Typically, they would self-steer, and rigged twin headsails for
downwind work. All pumping was manual, and if they had inboards, they
were one-cylinder gas or paraffin engines or heavy diesels that might
give four knots in a flat sea.

=============================================== ==

Also typically, they would plan their route to be exclusively downwind
because the boats they were on were almost incapable of meaningful
work to weather, and even if they could have, conditions would have
been hell on board.

That is largely true as well, although some boats in the "crossover"
period of the '60s were cold-molded composite hulls with
race-influenced rigs that featured enough foredeck to work upwind. But
yes, many of the older "cruisers" did not work well to weather, for a
number of reasons.

They typically took a lot of water over the decks in a way
unacceptable to current thought. On the other hand, they were also
designed to bob free of that same water and didn't ship tons of it in
huge cockpits.

But in other ways, they had highly desirable sea-keeping
characteristics. That why I like 25 year old Ted Brewer/Bob
Wallstrom/Roger Marshall/Bob Perry designs, for instance, that in my
limited experience of looking at plans and sailing on a few examples
in heavy weather, seem to combine a lot of the old with the new and
more efficient hull shapes developed since, say, 1960.

We have better boats today than 50 years ago, in nearly every respect.
That's categorically true, in my opinion. However, marketing to a
generally coastal cruising/entertainment-oriented pool of potential
boat buyers has meant that some aspects of sea-kindliness have been
sacrificed, again in my opinion. There are vastly greater numbers of
recreational sailors today, but the number of truly skilled sailors,
able to get the best out of their 35-45 foot boats in all weathers, is
probably a smaller proportion today than 40 years ago, if only for the
simple fact that then, if you couldn't sail yourself to safety, you
were very likely dead. Today, you trigger the EPIRB and get into the
liferaft and two hours later, the helicopter lands and someone hands
you a nice cup of chicken soup. While this is not a bad thing in any
sense, we have made some compromises in boat design and general skill
level that would have seemed questionable to the Don Streets and the
Pardeys still sailing among us.

R.