The 6 Best-Built Sailboats Ever Made — And The Modern Boats That Broke Where They Didn't
Yachts & Boats
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On 1 November 2022, six orcas pulled the spade rudder off a Beneteau Oceanis 393 called The Smousse, fourteen miles off Viana do Castelo, Portugal, and she sank. The rudder is the one appendage on most modern production sailboats that hangs alone under the hull. This video sets six classic sailboats, built with the rudder hung from the keel or a skeg, against the modern boats that broke at exactly that part.
The evidence starts with the World Cruising Club's own record of rudder failures in the ARC: a Dehler 41, a Sydney 41, an EC37, a Hunter Legend 450 and a Bavaria 350, two of them abandoned mid-Atlantic. Against them: the Contessa 26 that carried Tania Aebi and Brian Caldwell around the world, the Albin Vega 27 Matt Rutherford sailed through the Northwest Passage and round Cape Horn in 309 days without stopping, the Valiant 40 Mark Schrader took 27,300 miles round five great capes, and the Contessa 32 that came back from a 130-degree knockdown off Cape Horn.
We run the ISO 12217-2 Category A stability formula on the Oceanis 393 (114.4 degrees required) against the Contessa 32's 155 degrees, and cover the documented flaws too: Valiant 40 hulls 120 to 249 and their Hetron-resin blisters, the early Alberg 30 rudders, and the Pacific Seacraft 37's galley drains.
Every threat gets a fix: the lower-bearing rudder test you can run at your next haul-out, and the Cruising Association and Orcas.pt routes through orca waters off Spain and Portugal.
The 6 Best-Built Sailboats Ever Made — And The Modern Boats That Broke Where They Didn't
Yachts & Boats
536 views
On 1 November 2022, six orcas pulled the spade rudder off a Beneteau Oceanis 393 called The Smousse, fourteen miles off Viana do Castelo, Portugal, and she sank. The rudder is the one appendage on most modern production sailboats that hangs alone under the hull. This video sets six classic sailboats, built with the rudder hung from the keel or a skeg, against the modern boats that broke at exactly that part.
The evidence starts with the World Cruising Club's own record of rudder failures in the ARC: a Dehler 41, a Sydney 41, an EC37, a Hunter Legend 450 and a Bavaria 350, two of them abandoned mid-Atlantic. Against them: the Contessa 26 that carried Tania Aebi and Brian Caldwell around the world, the Albin Vega 27 Matt Rutherford sailed through the Northwest Passage and round Cape Horn in 309 days without stopping, the Valiant 40 Mark Schrader took 27,300 miles round five great capes, and the Contessa 32 that came back from a 130-degree knockdown off Cape Horn.
We run the ISO 12217-2 Category A stability formula on the Oceanis 393 (114.4 degrees required) against the Contessa 32's 155 degrees, and cover the documented flaws too: Valiant 40 hulls 120 to 249 and their Hetron-resin blisters, the early Alberg 30 rudders, and the Pacific Seacraft 37's galley drains.
Every threat gets a fix: the lower-bearing rudder test you can run at your next haul-out, and the Cruising Association and Orcas.pt routes through orca waters off Spain and Portugal.