Our Sailing Dream...: Boat Design

Caribbean 50 Center Cockpit Ketch

The Concept

Garry Hoyt, an Olympic sailor and 1970 Sunfish World Champion, took a background of seventeen years sailing in the Caribbean to put together layout ideas for a cruising boat of maximum comfort. Not a cold water compromise, and not a half-assed ocean racer, but a full powered center cockpit ketch designed specifically for warm waters and trade winds.

The Designer

Halsey Herreshoff was asked to blend his knowledge of traditional sea kindly lines with the technology of modem fiberglass construction, to create a boat that pleased the eye while performing well on all points of sailing. Special considerations were maximum ventilation and ease of handling under sail and power.

The Builder

David Cheng is a master ship builder with over twenty-five years experience. Not to be confused with Hong Kong production houses, David's shop is a small group of custom craftsmen who know how to make teak work with fiberglass and stainless steel. All fittings, rigging, and hardware are top grade U. S. A. manufacture and the overall construction quality of these boats is first-class .

LOA: 50'
LWL: 37.75'
Beam: 14.1'
Displacement: 45,000lbs
Sail Area: 1042
Displacement to LWL: 373
Hull Speed: 8.23
Sail Area to Displacement: 13.18
LWL to Beam: 2.68
Motion Comfort: 49.06
Capsize Ratio: 1.59

Original Flyer
File Cover from Herreshoff Designs

7 comments:

UnknownDecember 25, 2018 at 11:33 PM
Very interesting blog and a beautiful old boat! would love to see more posts :)
UnknownFebruary 4, 2019 at 5:12 PM
Would live to read more. There is not much information out the about these rare and beautiful boats
MarcusApril 18, 2022 at 4:31 PM
I just purchased a sister ship, s/v Faith from Napa, CA. She'll take a lot of work but i'm very excited to get going. Also, I have all the original drawings from Hasley Herreshoff for the Caribbean 50'with a typed letter to the 1st owner of Faith in 1979.
MarcusSeptember 24, 2022 at 10:56 AM
We have been working on SV Faith since July 20 in the workyard at Napa, CA. Our first project is to strip off the teak deck and fill in deck delamination and then coat with non-skid. We peeled a large piece of deck skin of the forward deck where it was the softest and found the deck core was constructed of 1.5x.5" teak strips. the original construction resin was brittle and broken up into little pieces with no bond between the ceiling skin and the deck skin. We proceeded to pour resin ont the exposed teak and let it soak into and fill around the teak strips before bonding the deck skin back into place. As of the writing of this comment we have injected resin throughout the entire deck to strengthen the core bond, sealed the entire deck surface with vinylester resin and are laying down biaxial17 fiberglass cloth over the entire deck surface to provide extra rigidity, surface integrity and compressive strength. This has been a slow process as the details to accomplish a proper job could fill an entire book itself. The final result will be very nice and very yacht like quality.
MarcusSeptember 24, 2022 at 11:08 AM
The gelcoat throughout the entire exterior (yes, no exaggeration...every square half inch is crazed) of the boat is crazed and alligatored. Not entire sure why but if the sister ships are not dealing with this gelcoat failure then I presume it's due to the extremely dry, windy and hot weather conditions here at the Napa Valley Marina while she has sat in the yard for more than 10 years and is suffered from heat stress. We shall experiment with a resin coating forced into the cracks to fill them and then primer and topcoat with polyeurathane enamel. Mind you, there is no comment online that states this is a successful coating repair...but as the boat name 'Faith' would suggest, we are moving forward with faith that we will find success without stripping the gelcoat from the entire boat above the waterline. Maybe after we circumnavigate we will need to do it again but hey...seems like a success story to me!