About The Boat
About The Boat |
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Rig dimensions:
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The Westsail 32 is certainly heavy. At nearly 20,000 pounds displacement with 7,000 pounds in ballast, about as heavy as you could make her without her sinking at the dock.
Most of this weight comes from the Westsail's excessively over built hull: two coats of gelcoat followed by 12 layers of hand laid fiberglass mat and roving. Today's boat builders would shudder at these specifications, but in those days there were still concerns about how fiberglass would stand up to the punishment of open water. Besides, the Westsail Corporation was out to build a bullet-proof boat. We don't know how many Westsail 32s have found themselves in the far Southern latitudes - but we can guess that if they did, none of those floating chunks of ice one often finds there were going to detour them from their course. Add to this incredibly strong (and heavy) hull, and equally built deck (with a half-inch marine plywood core with all two-inch plywood core at the mast step), a stout mast and rigging, plenty of solid teak on the caprail, rubrails, handrails, hatches, and interior, cast bronze hawse pipes and ports, and a heavy duty bowsprit and rudder (plus her massive tiller), and you've got all the makings of what could only be called a tank.
Ah, the question is, can this "tank" sail? The Westsail 32 has a long, full keel (this was before the days of cut-away forefoots) and outboard attached rudder. This is supposed to give her excellent tracking abilities. It does, but it also hampers her ability to quickly come back on course after being pushed down by a wave, as is often the case offshore. It's a problem with many boats of her genre. You win some, you lose some.
And, above all, the Westsail 32 was designed and built to survive. Which goes a long way in explaining the rest of the Westsail 32's offshore design features: nice, high bulwarks; lifeline stanchions bolted not only through the deck, but also through the substantial bulwark; wide, unbroken side decks (teak was an option); outboard mounted chainplates; a low cabin house with small, bullet-proof bronze ports; a small shallow cockpit with huge cockpit scuppers. (The Westsail 32 has a reputation for being a wet boat, mainly due to breaking quarter waves washing aboard, but any water that does get in the cockpit is quickly flushed overboard); a tiny companionway; and watertight hatches. She may not break any speed records in the process, but she will always get you there.
Let's go below to one of the most attractive of the Westsail 32's features - her interior. Her beam of 11 feet, which is carried quite a ways forward, provides plenty of volume - and she responds with a roomy, comfortable interior which must have surprised quite a few sailors in her time. She has a large V-berth forward, followed by the head to port (hanging lockers to starboard), a dinette (which converts to a double) to port in the main salon with the opposing settee and pilot berth to starboard, and a good sized U-shaped galley to port with a stand up chart table to starboard. The chart table is enormous with plenty of room to store charts flat. Storage space is everywhere, with her ample displacement you can load hundreds of pounds of stores without lowering the Westsail 32's lines. Lots of teak and mahogany, finished nicely - add a couple of brass lamps, light your pipe, and curl up with a good sea story. A comfortable interior at the dock or anchor, a workable one offshore. An optional interior layout which replaced the dinette with opposing settee and a centerline table was also available.
Westsails like wind. When the rest of your yacht club is heading for port because the winds have picked up, that's the time to sail a Westsail.
| No, she's not for sale! |
Copyright (C) 1995-2006 Ian Cameron Smith.
visits since 20Sep06.
Last modified: Sun Sep 24 22:28:52 BST 2006 ($Revision: 1.12 $)
