Racer

Sure, it's all those things, and if the designer really believes this he will have no trouble letting me include it as a small cruising boat this month. "It's a floor wax." "No, it's a dessert topping." It has berths, a head and a galley. It smells like a cruising boat to me.

Take a look at this sailplan. If I didn't tell you this was a Runnalls design you might think it was a Nelson/Marek design, or a Farr design or the work of any number of designers all using the same software to produce their drawings. Excuse me while I curmudge a little. I see little personal stamp on this design work. Maybe that's good. Maybe it means that this boat will be as good as any boat from those other offices. It's just that I miss the days when a designer's hand came through loud and clear through his drafting style. I'm not knocking the presentation style of these drawings. They are well done. But they are antiseptically clean and devoid of the human touch.

Mr. Runnalls has entered a very competitive field here. It seems to me we have a lot of boats like this one already. I can only hope that Mr. Runnalls has some tricks up his sleeve. The fact that this boat is a development of an already successful Runnalls design, the Fremantle 8, is a positive indicator.

The brochure says the boat is aimed at upwind speed. Overhangs are kept to a minimum and the forward waterlines show only a hint of hollow. The midsection is arclike with soft bilges and a narrow BWL. The sections flatten toward the stern going tangent by the time they reach the transom. The D/L is 77.85. The rudder is huge and almost 80 percent of the fin area of the keel.

Do you remember watching the America's Cup when it was held in Fremantle? It blew hard enough every day for it to be near survival conditions for a lot of sailors I know. You would think that a boat designed in Fremantle would be distinctly different from a boat designed for, say, San Diego, California. Specifically, I would expect a small rig and lots of ballast to contend better with the "Doctor." With its light displacement and high SA/D of 31.69, however, this boat would be at home and effective just about anywhere in the world. We really are on the brink of losing all local color and becoming a big dull gray world. I'm not faulting Mr. Runnalls. I'm just saying I miss the quirky local types, kind of like I miss golf swings like Lee Trevino's, Ray Floyd's and Arnold Palmer's. Do any of you remember a CCA race boat from the early '60s called Hoot Mon? Now there was a weird but effective boat. How about that silly IOR winner Cascade? There was a wacky boat.

Back to cruising. In terms of comfort I prefer this type of cockpit. Dogs like these big open cockpits. The lack of seat backs would not bother me until it came time to relax and read a book, and even then it's very easy to rig removable, upholstered, pipe-frame seat backs.

My major concern with this particular deck is the width of the side decks aft. The cockpit well gets wider as it goes aft and by the time you reach the helm position you have a side deck/seat width of about 14 inches. My butt's not getting any smaller, and I don't think I'd be comfortable for very long in this cockpit. The photos show a boat with no lifelines and these side decks would be less of a problem with no lifelines. Still I'd like some lifelines for cruising. Heck, I'd like them for racing. My race committee would like them too.