Pocket cruiser

Tom Schock knows this business. He ought to, he has been working with GRP sailboats since he graduated from high school and has been involved with just about every conceivable type of sailing boat in the company his father started. Recently the W.D. Schock Corp. has had a lot of success with its Harbor 20. This little daysailer filled the needs of a lot of sailors who did not want the thrills and spills of a high-powered sport boat but still wanted good performance. But for some sailors the Harbor 20 lacked an all-important component, a head. Tom's brother Steve sat down at his computer and solved that problem with this new Harbor 25. It retains all the best aspects of the Harbor 20 and adds a head along with accommodations that could work for a small family for a short time.

Thanks, Tom and Steve, for sending me the hull lines. The hull form shows fairly soft bilges amidships that harden up as they go aft. There is considerable fullness to the forward sections above the DWL. The D/L is 175. The L/B is 3.19. The overall hull form is very traditional with traditionally raked transom and spoon bow. There is generous spring to the sheer. This will be a handsome little boat. The keel is odd in that it is an all-lead fin and bulb with a very long root chord. This means that the keel fin at the hull, the root, is long. Today our eyes are used to seeing high-aspect-ratio fins with very short chords and most of the time very little taper from root to tip. That is a very efficient shape in terms of lift to drag but it can be a demanding keel that stalls easily and makes the boat tough to steer. The low-aspect shape of the Harbor 25's keel is designed to make the boat forgiving on the helm. There is 1,750 pounds of lead in that keel for a healthy 45 percent ballast to displacement ratio. The 25 will be stiff and yet have a nice soft motion through the first few degrees of heel.

The rig features the Garry Hoyt boom forward to make the headsail self-tacking. You lose a little sail area forward and end up with a 98-percent jib, but the trade off is well worth it and you can easily compensate for this by just making the rig taller. In terms of self-tacking headsails there is no doubt in my mind that the Hoyt system is the best. It does put an obstacle on the foredeck but on a boat the size of the 25 you will not spend much time on the foredeck anyway. While the Hoyt boom may be an obstacle one moment, another moment it could serve as a handy hand-grab to steady yourself. Either way it ensures the right jib shape for a variety of apparent wind angles. The mainsheet leads to a Barney post in the middle of the large cockpit. This precludes a
mainsheet traveler.

Down below you have spartan accommodations that can sleep four. There is a porta- potti and sink forward of the main bulkhead. The berths extend aft under the cockpit area. The 12.5-horsepower Honda four-stroke auxiliary is mounted in a well below the companionway. This little engine, running on unleaded gas with a Flexo-Fold prop, can push the 25 along at 6.5 knots.
Life's complicated. It's a bear sometimes. As my barber friend Special Ed likes to say, "It's always something, never nothing." I don't see the point of dragging all your onshore complications along when you go sailing. At least your boat could be a simple and fun boat to sail with minimal complexities, like this Harbor 25.