Langendals to turn old racers into comfy day sailers
Demo model launched this month
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The Etchells, designed way back in 1965, is, after all these years, still considered a very serious racing sailboat. At 30 1/2 feet overall, 22 feet on the waterline and a little under 7 feet in the beam, the Etchells is a long, lean, take-no-prisoners racing machine. Since Skip Etchells built his very first boat, a wooden model called Shillalah (the boats are now all built in fiberglass), more than 1,300 have been launched, 800 or so are being raced worldwide and 16 or so of those belong to the Shelter Island Yacht Club fleet.
In 1965 Yachting Magazine sponsored a design competition for a new three-man Olympic keelboat. Skip Etchells, a yacht designer and boat builder from Greenwich, Connecticut, decided to build a contender. The result was Shillalah, which, right out of the box, won 8 of 10 qualifying races in 1966 against top one-design racing boats including the Soling. Unable for some reason to agree on the obvious winner, the judges decided to try again in 1967. Etchells recreated his design in fiberglass, using the wooden Shillalah I as the mold plug. In the second set of 13 races, he and Shillalah II won 10 and missed an 11th by just one second. Although Etchells' boat was the uncontested winner, the Soling was inexplicably picked as the Olympic boat. But the Etchells' appeal as a personal racing machine was not lost on the sailing public and yacht clubs here and abroad began accumulating fleets.
In the interests of speed, the Etchells, in its original, unadulterated state, is spartan, not particularly roomy or comfortable inside, physically and mentally taxing to sail with its complicated running rigging, and usually appears, like the racing fleet shown here, in plain vanilla. As the boats and their owners age, though, a trend is emerging for some older Etchells to be converted into very attractive high performance day sailers.
Although the Shelter Island Langendals — father Anders and sons Erik and Christian — are often engaged in restoring classic boats to their original condition in their Greenport shop, they weren't blind to a slightly different sort of opportunity. With all the unmodified Etchells lying around, there is a big inventory of potential day sailer conversions out there and a market for them that includes former racers who are getting out of the game, and non-racers looking for a quick day sailer. Older, unconverted Etchells can often be had very reasonably when their former owners quit racing. Eighty Four, originally built in 1971 and just re-launched in its new incarnation, is the Langendals' demo.
Named for the boat's hull number, Eighty Four is a showcase conversion designed by Anders. Upgrades include a new deck and interior, a larger, more comfortable cockpit with ample seating, an inboard engine and much-simplified running rigging. Besides getting a coat of Flag Blue Awlgrip paint with a gold cove stripe, her original classic lines have been enhanced with mahogany toe rails and coamings, making her as presentable as any Hinckley at the club.
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