Anonymous wrote:
Hi Mark,
I recently sold a Swarbrick Spacesailer 24 a similar size boat to the Top Hat and would really recommend them, great design, standing headroom if your not too tall. a walk through transom, centrally mounted outboard which is far superior to the offset mount and they sail really well. JOG champs in their day. Pity they dont have a quarter berth, my favourite place to sleep, but you cant have everything in a 24 footer. I reckon they would convert brilliantly.
The Spacesailer 24 is a great boat, built by a reputable company. The 27 is even better for living aboard. The balsa-cored deck needs to be examined carefully, preferably with a water meter. They were on my shortlist, though I wanted a windvane on the stern, which would make the outboard location an issue to resolve. The Top Hat might have a nicer motion to windward, and has made a number of ocean voyages, but the Spacesailer would fly off the wind, whereas the Top Hat has a reputation as a roller. A guy I know, Bill Hatfield, sailed a similar boat to a Spacecsailer, a Triton 24, another very cheap boat these days, around Cape Horn in the mid 1970s. (He recently became the oldest person, at 81, to circumnavigate nonstop and solo, aboard a Northshore 38, another boat one might consider unsuitable for the Southern Ocean.) One drawback to many of these small boats is that the only decent bunk is the double in the forepeak, which is ruined by putting a keel-stepped unstayed mast through the middle of it. And changing the layout, if they have a glass moulded interior, is almost impossible.