BOAT BIOS

Being biographies of boats in the club and notes on their owners and how they came to sailing.

Legato — Jim Richardson

I  have owned Legato for 4 years, prior to that I sailed a 17 ft  day sailor and I am still sailing canoes.  I belong to the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association restoring wood and canvas canoes.  I have 2 canoes that I sail, one is a 17 ft Old Town Otca built in 1936 and the other is an Old Town Guide 16 ft built in 1952.

Legato is a Luders 33, built in 1968 and her hull number is 34.  There were 107 of these built between 1966 and 1974.  She was designed by Bill Luders and built in the Catskills of NY. by Allied Boat Builders.

Legato is 33 ft over all and a water length of 24ft.  She displaces 13000 pounds, carries 524 square ft. of main sail with a beam of 10 ft. and drafts 5 feet.  The 4 cylinder  gas engine is original and made by Palmer who was the marine division of International Harvester.  Legato has a full keel and has absolutely no interest in reversing in a straight line.

The Luders 33 has some literary history in that a book was written about a 16 year old young man and his Luders 33 sailing around the world.  The book is titled Dove which happens to be the name of his boat,and is presently in a marina in Hawaii.   The author and sailor is Robin Lee Ghram.  It’s a great easy read if you have a chance.

 

Puff – Mike Sinclair

I have the J24 “Puff” , the little white boat with green, snorting dragons on the sides out D Dock. The J24 was designed in 1977 by Rod Johnstone and was the foundation of the J-Boat line. (Glern vanOtteran has a J92, Paradox.) It is 24 ft LOA, 20 ft. LWL and very fat, 8ft 6, giving it high beam/length ratio of 35. It’s light, 3,100 lbs, with 700 lbs in the keel. So you’d think it would have to heel over to get stability, but it sails quickest if you keep it flat, which requires a bit of active sailing. There are about 5,500 J24s, making it the most popular one design racing keel boat ever, although it’s now outdated. Puff was one of the first, 1978, and would need the keel reshaped to be seriously competitive.

How’d I come by it? I’m from New Zealand, where sailing was very accessible and popular. Like most kids I started in the P Class, an enclosed 7 footer, and later crewed on other kids’ bigger, hotter boats. During my teens, when serious sailors become seriously good, I went surfing, and didn’t really get back to sailing until my mid twenties in Wellington, the windiest city in the world, when I got into International Moths. For a grad student that was expensive. So I crewed on an ocean racer for a couple of years before following a girl, my wife Karen, to the United States. Here, years later, I got into Lasers, and sailed three seasons with a friend on a Flying Dutchman. (Light winds in southern Indiana, so my being too light didn’t hurt much.) When we came up here 10 years ago I figured it was time to get an adult boat, one with lead underneath, and the J24 seemed a good transition. I love it.