By JOHN COURTER
San Juan 21
This boat and the Penguin are the only two classes of boats that the club had gotten rid of before I joined. I don't remember anyone telling me anything about this boat. Pretty much the only thing I know about the San Juan 21 is that it has a swing keel.
More information here.
Bristol Caravel 22
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| The blue boat in the middle is the Caravel, the boat on the left is Excalibur. |
Years later I, I mean the know-it-all, did some math. I had finally noticed that at best with the genoa the boat tacked through 120 degrees. When sailing with the lapper which sheeted in between the uppers and lowers to a block on a post at an inboard position the boat could tack through 90 degrees. This means if I changed jibs from the genoa to the lapper I could point 30 degrees higher, but would lose some speed. I would have to lose more than 30% of my speed or about a knot if I were doing hull speed under genoa to make it to my destination later with the lapper. Since sailing that much slower under the lapper would be a rare circumstance the lapper would have been the sail of choice for most any upwind work. By the time I had figured this out the club had bought a used replacement lapper that no longer sheeted to the post, but instead had to be sheeted outboard to the genoa track, so it didn't point very well either.
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| Caravel with its original lapper. |
More information can be found here.
Islander Excalibur 26
This felt like a fast boat, and it handled well. My first cruising adventure was as crew to rescue the boat from Skyline Marina in Flounder Bay near Anacortes. Keelboat users will trade off in the Islands to save having to take the boat back to the club. Apparently one user left the boat at the marina and the next person didn't show up. The first person made no arrangements with the marina. A week later the marina called us and asked us about a boat that had been left in the marina with no payment.
I was taught a lesson on this boat. I was sailing along rail almost in the water and the boat had almost no weather helm. I commented to the more experienced sailor how well balanced the boat was with no helm. He looked at me funny and said look at the tiller. I then noticed that I had the tiller in my lap, at least 20 degrees from straight. That's when I learned that a well balanced spade rudder makes it so you don't have to pull hard on the tiller even when there is massive weather helm causing you to drag the rudder through the water like a big brake.
More information about these boats here.
Columbia 26
The Columbia 26 was not a well liked boat. Maybe it was the nearly flush deck that made it look funny, maybe it was that some felt that it was a poor sailor.
See the information here.
Cal 25
A donation that needed a fair amount of work. Deception, a Catalina 27 was donated before it was put in service and the Cal 25 was subsequently sold.
Neptune 24
People complained about the transom being weak. I discovered that the transom wasn't attached to the deck anymore, so when you pressed on it you could move it in to create a gap at the hull deck join. The importance of a bridle on the spinnaker pole was demonstrated when the foreguy connected to an eyestrap in the middle of the pole caused the pole to snap. The shock to the mast caused the tang for the lower shroud/spreader base made of pot metal to fail, now that there was no lower the mast bent...
Information here.
Stone boat
I forget why we took a donation of a 20 foot ferrocement hull with a wood deck. If you see any mention of stone boat fleet captain in old club documents, you now know what it refers to.
The Sol cat 15 and 18 were part of the club in 1976 when I joined. There were only Novice and Skipper ratings at the time, and you had to get a rating in each boat. You had to have your C-Lark skipper rating before you could even think about getting a rating in the mysterious, scary, fragile catamarans. Well that was over the top, but not much for some people. The 15 was cat rigged, (mainsail only) and was designed to be single-handed. The Sol Cat 15 had centerboards whereas the 18 had daggerboards. 
The 18 was sloop rigged and designed to be double handed. Having the tiller crossbar in front of the mainsheet block was normal for me at the time since this is the catamaran that I first sailed, but it seems odd now since this is the only cat that I have seen this way since then. Most cats the tillers are behind the traveller, so you must throw the hiking stick behind the boat to tack or jibe. This frustrates many people that I teach. The 18 allows you to bring the hiking stick forward, but you must have an extendable stick as it would be too short to trapeze with or too long to pass through on the tramp. The Sol Cat poster in the sail locker at the time claimed that the Sol Cats didn't pitchpole like the Hobie 16s. I'd never sailed a 16, but either the advertising was wrong or it would have been scary to see me sail a 16 based on the number of times I pitchpoled the Sol Cat. More info about the Sol cat 18 here. 
This 20 foot long, 10 foot wide wooden boat was designed in 62. There was no trampoline, there was solid wood where a trampoline would be found. The center of the tramp area had a piano hinge so the boat would fold up in the center to make it 8 feet wide to trailer. This boat was considered fragile and wood boats tend to not last a long time in the club, so this donation wasn't sailed except by a few chiefs just to test it to make sure there was nothing wrong with it. More info 
The Supercat was 12 feet wide. Most cats are 8 feet wide so they can be trailered without dis-assembling them or buying an expensive tilt trailer. Each of he Supercat's crossbeams are of two different diameters such that one half slips inside the other to make the boat 8 feet wide to trailer. The hull and deck is an elliptical shape. This is to minimize drag when the front of the boat is underwater and reduce the chance of pitchpoling. It was 450 pounds with 275 ft² of sail area. There was a tall rig version made with 300 ft².