The Gunboat 62, Comfort at Speed
Last summer an e-mailed video clip made the rounds of the sailing community. Set to the Ventures' classic surf tune "Wipe Out," it showed a large performance cruising cat, Peter Johnstone's Gunboat 62 Tribe,
tearing past an 80-foot raceboat moving at top speed on a beam reach.
The multihull community loved the clip; the maxi-boat's project manager
was less enthused. For many, however, it was a first glimpse of
Johnstone's brainchild, a South African-built, Melvin &
Morrelli-designed cat that's more worthy of the title performance
cruiser than almost any other on the water today. Johnstone had spent some time on the largest, fastest cats in the world (Team Adventure, PlayStation),
and had previously owned a 68-foot sled refurbished for cruising, so he
knew the rewards of high-speed sailing. When he decided his monohull
was too uncomfortable when the weather got ugly, he knew the path to
follow. The first three Gunboat 62s were built from male
tooling, using epoxy andE-glass with carbon-fiber structural
components. The fourth, also from male tooling and now being built for
an English owner, is made entirely of carbon, and has a taller rig and
more sail area than the first three boats. "The other boats
were E-glass with carbon for the big bulkheads and the stringers and
then Kevlar on the undersides of the hulls," says Johnstone. "The newer
boats are all carbon, but there's still Kevlar on the bottom and
outboard sides of the hulls, and the weight came down about 1,800
pounds. We also extended the boom 2 feet, went up on the mainsail
roach, and up on the hounds by about 8 feet." Johnstone says
the changes in construction and sail area were made because the boats
keep getting more luxurious and people keep adding more stuff. "We
didn't want to give up any of the sailing performance, and if we could,
we wanted to improve upon it." All four 62s are equipped with
a carbon mast and boom-the rigs were originally built by Marstrom, but
are now made by Novis Composites, in Conneaut, Ohio-as well as
carbon-fiber compression posts and bow sprits, all of which are
supported by Aramid fiber rigging sheathed in PVC. As on many modern
performance multihulls, there no shackles; instead, there are Spectra
lashings everywhere. "We use Spectra because it's reliable," says
Johnstone, "and when you feel it getting hard, you just throw it out."
We sailed the Gunboat with Johnstone during the passage of an October
cold front off Annapolis last year in which we saw windspeeds over 40
knots. The boat handled the big gusts with aplomb, and inside
the condo-like structure that serves as the main cabin, galley, and nav
station, all was calm. Soda cans placed on tables stayed put, and an
Apple Powerbook showing a continuous loop of the "Wipe Out" video sat
on its desk unsecured; all this while we were scooting along at speeds
up to 17 knots. Serene is a strange word to describe sailing a
performance boat in 40 knots of wind and steep chop, but that's how it
felt. The steering station, complete with a helmsman's seat
that looks like a lounge chair on steroids, has 360-degree visibility
as well as overhead hatches to monitor mainsail trim. The galley is on
the starboard side aft and is delineated by a large storage area,
countertop, and bar. On either side of the deckhouse are the entrances
to the hulls, where staterooms and heads, offices, stowage, and engines
are located. The hulls are narrow, but not so much as to
induce claustrophobia, and the emergency exit hatches double as sources
of natural light. There are eight watertight bulkheads in each hull.
Each interior is custom built so we won't go into detail; suffice it to
say, there's plenty of room and lots of privacy. Two Saildrive units,
powered by 56-horsepower Yanmar diesel engines, poke out through the
inside wall of each hull at an angle, so when, and if, you beach the
big cat, they won't get beaten. The twin rudders are mounted in
cassettes, and when retracted, allow the boat to float in less than 2
feet of water. Going on deck to work the boat isn't bad
either. We stepped out of the pilot house through a heavy glass door
and into a recessed cockpit where everything to manage the headsails
and hoist the main is immediately at hand, including the anchor, its
rode, and the windlass. There's even an exterior steering station; a
wheel mounted on the same axle as the interior wheel. This is a cockpit
in which you'll feel safe and secure no matter the conditions, and
since the helmsman has a great view of the crew, communication is easy.
Should you choose to venture out of the cockpit, there's plenty of
trampoline space for lounging, provided you don't mind the occasional
high-velocity dousing. Astern of the deckhouse is a large veranda, with
the main traveler mounted on the aft crossbeam, as well as davits for a
tender. At the end of each hull is a set of stairs, which makes it easy
to board from a dinghy, or when stern-to at a dock. Steering
the Gunboat in the big breeze wasn't a chore, but it could be intense.
We hit 18 knots, but breaking the 20-knot barrier won't be a problem in
more moderate conditions. During one stint on the wheel one of our
helmsmen was advised, "If you feel the hull go up it's time to head
down hard." Unlike a beach cat or an ORMA 60 trimaran, these hulls are
meant to be in contact with the water, or nearly so, at all times. If
you fly a hull there's a chance of a pitchpole or a capsize, hence the
escape hatches. The Gunboat tacked easily in the breeze, but as
expected of a large multihull, the boatspeed dropped considerably
before we filled sails on the other tack. Sailing the 62-footer was a highlight of the SW Boat of the Year competition, and it left us dreaming about high-speed ocean passages. The Cruising World
magazine judges liked it too, crowning it their "Most Innovative Boat."
Johnstone, who now has thousands of miles of Gunboat sailing under his
belt, told us what it's like to sail one offshore. "On the delivery of Tribe
to the Caribbean," he says, "we're going along in a storm, three or
four days of 35 to 45 knots of breeze. The top speed we saw on the
speedo was 36.6 knots. We had three reefs in the main and a storm jib
up and it was totally relaxing. It's nice standing watch from inside
your studio apartment wearing pajamas and slippers, without even
putting on foul-weather gear."
Gunboat 62 LOA 62' LWL 58' Beam 28' DSPL 26,000 lbs. Draft (board up) 2' Draft (board down) 8'6" Mainsail 377.2 sq. ft.* Jib 170.5 sq. ft.* Deck gear Harken Mast Marstrom/Novis Designer Morrelli & Melvin Builder Harvey Yachts/ Acheson Rossa Custom Yachts Price $2 million www.gunboat.info.com *now larger
