Last year was like this:


2013 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race Final Wrap Video from On The Water Anarchy on Vimeo.

This year will be better :-), the 70th anniversary of the race will have the biggest number of entries over a decade and with more candidates to the victory in real time: Not less than five maxi yachts and among them Comanche, the new American maxi designed by Verdier and VPLP, the main contender on the next race. The boat announced as the fastest sailboat in the world has just bit the dust on its first race, the "Solas Big Boat Challenge being beaten precisely by the chronic winner of Sydney Hobart race, Wild Oats XI.

When I posted about Comanche, sometime ago, I said that I doubted the boat being the fastest sailing boat in all conditions and expressed many doubts about light wind sailing and upwind sailing with considerable sized waves, even with strong winds. Well, regarding light wind conditions Wild Oats showed who is the Boss and regarding the Sydney Hobart much will depend on the conditions they will encounter, but with the right conditions of light winds and muscled upwind sailing I will bet on Wild Oats. The boats are as different as they can be, being Comanche maximized for downwind racing in muscular conditions and Wild Oats maximized for upwind sailing and sailing in light winds. It will be interesting, as it is interesting this movie showing the two hulls. It's fantastic how two different sail concepts can have such a close sailing performance :-)

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Only two drawings were prepared for this preliminary design proposal; a Lines Plan and a Sail & Deck Plan.  I believe the Lines Plan that is shown here is the only one of the two that has survived.  That's a shame as it would have been interesting to see her rig.

I always try to do an Internet search for the old customers to see if it might have been someone famous.  The plan list gives the name William McCoy.  I was more than amused to find that William McCoy was a rum-runner during prohibition and that he ran five different schooners between Bimini and Long Island.  Could it be that the firm designed one of them?  Probably not since prohibition ended in 1933 in the United States and this design was produced in 1935. Perhaps he just wanted to spend some of his profits on a fancy new boat.  Click here to read about him.

Principal Dimensions

LOA 76'-6"

LWL 66'-6"

Beam 19'-8"

Draft 5'-0"

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Here is a master list of S&S 8-Meters sorted by name, design number and year.

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After a month of sitting around in the yard, Pi was ready to get back in the water.  

Sasha and I spent four solid days working on her.  We put another coat of paint on her hulls, changed out a cutlass bearing, checked the valves on the generator.... and did some other not very interesting maintenance stuff.  

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Principal Dimensions

LOA 36'-2"

LWL 23'-9"

Beam 6'-0"

Draft 5'-5"

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