@Barnacle Bill makes a good point, categorical statements about a particular brand of boats is not all that useful, it really gets down to boat itself and how that particular boat and model were designed.
Thanks for sharing this story and info, Dave. I wish I got the chance to meet Warren and pick his brain. He was a remarkable guy. I've always thought it was interesting how the innovations that Warren's world-class racing effort came up with eventually filtered down to their production boat line.As pointed out, Warren Luhrs, who owned Hunter was a global solo racer who enjoyed it on boats that were designed by his staff and him as well. He once told me that he took the knowledge and experience from those trips and applied it to Hunter sailboat designs which most manufacturers did not do. In fact each model was tested in all conditions and even ran them aground hard making improvements before manufacturing.
Every trip, I used to supply him with my favorite peach brandy liquor made in the mountains of Virginia called moonshine. I figured if he took those trips, there would be times he needed some grog. I of course always drank it first to insure it didn’t blind or kill me.
Crazy Dave Condon
Thanks for sharing this story and info, Dave. I wish I got the chance to meet Warren and pick his brain. He was a remarkable guy. I've always thought it was interesting how the innovations that Warren's world-class racing effort came up with eventually filtered down to their production boat line.
As for crossing oceans on Hunters, check out Sailing Jibsea on YouTube. They're actually doing it:
I am not an ocean voyager (yet), so take my opinion for what it's worth to you. With that said, my general thoughts on safe ocean voyaging is that the make of a boat matters less than the overall condition of the boat and its major systems (rigging, engine, structure), etc. Also with that being said, coastal cruising can be just as dangerous in a unkempt boat. Help is generally closer in a coastal cruising environment, but in 50° water that help may still be too far away.
Weather is the most important factor in ocean voyaging IMO. You're going to get your ass kicked in nasty weather whether you're in a 26' Catalina or a 65' Tayana. You need to be an expert in interpreting weather forecasts and routing accordingly. I think it's important to keep this in perspective. In a serious weather situation, any sailboat between 20,000 - 125,000 lbs (basically any serious recreational keel boat) is going to be in peril. There's a lot of discussion that happens online that, honestly, comes down to splitting hairs. Any common boat that you look at is, at the end of the day, a small, recreational keel boat that has a lot more in common with the next one than it has in differences.
As far as stability goes (which is extremely important) - the CE rating matters. I've seen an enormous amount of criticism thrown at this standard online, but it is the best, data-based lens we have to look at the major safety components of boat designs. I've attached a paper that the original standards committee comissioned for the development of safety requirements. It's a really interesting read, studying the characteristics of known losses up until the time of the study (1994). Edit - the forum rules won't allow me to upload the document. It's available here, under "Stablility": https://oossanen.nl/papers-and-publications/
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The stability requirements established in the report are remarkably clean, and suggest very strongly that a smaller boat needs most resistance to capsize (which the standard eventually adopted and still requires to this day).
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