Owner's Comments
A Claymore under transport
From John Swannie - Notes on Sailing a Claymore: The common factor is obviously the hull - well - this is very powerful and the shape gives her some fairly broad shoulders around the bulkhead to the forecabin area. Going into seas upwind she uses these to good effect and so manages to stay reasonably dry on deck - of course when you hit a big wave then this can hit the wheelhouse screens but in rolling seas with a fairly long wavetrain - rather than short choppy seas she is very comfortable and somehow predictable. In following seas she is great as there is so much bouyancy in the hull that when a following wave overtakes her keel tends to sit her straight - as long as the sails are balanced and so she rises up and then sinks down the trailing edge of the wave. Quartering seas she takes under her stern and like any craft she will try to screw up tom windward but she telegraphs this - almost gives you notice in writing!
Wherever we go we always hear someone telling us that we look 'comfortable' and indeed thats how we view life aboard Claymore - she keeps us out of the rain and the beauty of the semi-enclosed wheelhouse is that if we want to take shelter from the sun we can do that too. We can also stick on the autopilot when motorsailing and sit up on deck or at the back of the cockpit which is my favourite place. I think that it means we can undertake longer passages or stay fresher longer than people sailing in open cockpit boats. I sometimes miss the sailing capability of our old boat which was a 25ft Hunter Delta - a fin keel boat which sailed like a dinghy - but cruising is different to dinghy sailing is it not - and involves exposure to the elements for longer periods - and who wants to sail to windward for hours on end anyway! _____________________________________________________
From Eileen & Peter Wicklund (M/S Olivebank): We have an unusual rig on our old Claymore. At one point, it was changed from a marconi rig to a junk rig, which makes for some interesting boat handling. The mast on our boat is quite heavy, and tends to make the vessel a little "tippy" due to the large freeboard. Someday when we win the lottery maybe we'll replace it with a nice, light carbon fiber mast! We turn a lot of heads on Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts due to the unusual tanbark colored sails and the sail pattern. We've never seen another Claymore Motorsailer here on the East Coast US. If you are out there, please contact us!