What Boat Next?

[Matt Newland]

Hello,
It occurred to me that this forum would be a good place to start a discussion about what boat we should be developing next.

Our popular 20ft BayRaider is still consuming huge amounts of my time as we refine the production and satisfy orders, but I am considering a year or two from now.

At the moment we are thinking along the lines of a range of Raider boats, from the SeaRaider at one end to perhaps a PondRaider at the other (Better name needed please!).

We have very approximate plans for a 17.5-18ft version, provisionally named LochRaider, and a 15-16ft version, as suggested by Brian Pearson in a different thread on this forum, would also be potentially very popular.

What about a cabin boat version?
What should be the key requirements for any of these boats?
What do you consider as the competition?
What would make you buy one!?
Is there another type of boat that we should be considering as we look to the future?
All thoughts/comments/dreams welcome...

Best wishes,
Matt Newland

[Sailor]

Interesting question.

I think a cruiser (cabin) version of the BayRaider would be nice.

I know you already have the 19" Cardigan Bay Lugger, which is a very nice cabin boat. But this water ballast system that you have in the open BayRaider, I think that would be an extremely attractive feature for a cabin coastal sailer too, because of the additional safety it provides. No other small cabin trailer sailer currently on the market has that extra safety.

Would I want one for myself? Not sure, I think I prefer the all-open dayboats.

But since you asked...

Sailor

[Claus Riepe]

Sailor:
I very much agree with the proposal of a cabin sailer. But, wouldn't the 22' SeaRaider be a better substrate? - The competition, Drascombe Coaster and the new Drifter, are both 22 feet boats.

Claus

[Brian Pearson]

15 -16 ft version for me. A one man raid boat which has versatile uses due to the water ballast. Should be possible to have good performance unballasted and good safety margins with ballast.

1) Spec for singlehanded sailing, with room for friend/grand-child/nervous wife. Because it can be sailed single-handedly it will be safe with non-experienced crew on-board.

2) Fits garage to build and store

2) In epoxy ply will be light enough to move alone.

3) I will obtain a dinghy space at my sailing club in about two years time and maximum size is 16', so timing perfect for me. Do not want to leave a boat on a mooring - too much hassle.

4) There seem to be many people who sail who have partners who are not keen. The Bayraider is for families who all sail together, this boat is for all the others.

5) 15/16 ft can be supplied as a kit as per Storm 17 and at an affordable price.

[Richard Ian Cowie]

I would be very interested in purchasing in kit form a small cabin cruiser which could be based upon the Bay Raider or Sea Raider. The water ballast and the addition of twin keels could give plenty of accomodation space with good stability.

I presently own a Drascombe Lugger which has the advantage of being easy to handle on and off a trailer but I feel the sailing performance could be improved.

I would see this boat as a direct competitor to the Coaster. The Drifter 22 is a very nice boat but is probably too large and heavy to be taken off and on a trailer too many times. A Coaster is my next choice of boat but I am always looking for something better.

Ian

[Tony]

A new Swallowboats cruiser? 
How about a Bayraider  or  Searaider  with a swing keel?
·   The Searaider’s ability to fill and empty the300kg of water ballast on the move using self bailers is a great idea, making her easily tuned for maximum performance or maximum stability - and you don’t have to tow the ballast around on a trailer.
·   The downside is that the tanks take up a lot of space needed for headroom and storage lockers. 
·   Lead ballast at keel level takes up much less room but increases handling difficulties on shore.  (I can just about cope with the 92kg of lead on the Cardigan Bay Lugger - removing it for easy trailing makes you quite warm after a cold sail!- but I wouldn’t fancy doing the same with 300kg on a raid boat. If you live in a mining area that’s like shifting 12 bags of coal, enough to last the winter!)
·   Moving the ballast further below the waterline gives it a greater righting moment per kg. (but all that leverage needs strong construction. Not a problem for Swallow boats.) In effect, you get the same stability for less mass. 
 
Here’s an example:-
The Mitchell Yachts 15’  Explorer (http://www.mitchellyachts.co.uk/) has a 100lb bulb at 5ft and two 80lb shafts at 2.5ft generating 1,000ftlbs of righting force at 45 degrees of heel.
No offence to Mukti Mitchell, environmentalist and all round good bloke, but his Explorer looks a bit 'agricultural' compared to the Bayraider. Can’t fault the keel, though. The boat works to windward and is almost aggressively self righting.
 
What do you think, Matt?

[Peter Ellis]

Tony

The Cardigan Bay Lugger looks a great little boat for my sort of sailing/trailing. As much of my sailing is single-handed, I would not be looking for a larger boat, and something around 18-19 feet would fit in my 20 foot garage nicely.

In order to maintain easy launching/recovery and beaching, I would not advocate adding permanent ballast. I do think however that the addition of the water ballast system would be a major advantage to the design.

The use of the twin centreboards hidden under the seats, rather than a single central centreboard, seems to be a good way of maximising the space in a small cabin boat. How does the performance of the twin boards compare?

A transom stern, rather than a double-ender, might provide additional stern boyancy for guests in the cockpit, in addition to giving some chance of climbing back in the boat after a swim (deliberate or otherwise).

Peter

[Guy Briselden]

I think given the BayRaider concept of being a more modern, "faster, more fun and safer" version of the Drascombe Lugger (the quotes were what Iain Oughtred said when I cold called him to ask what he thought of Swallowboats efforts!), that there is a market to do the same on the small cabin boat and perhaps rather than Drascombe the model to improve on should be the Cornish Crabbers - something like the Crabber 22. A trailable, seaworthy, small family cruising boat, but rather more performance oriented than the Crabbers with more modern design/construction. Given C.Crabbers prices you should even be able to make a decent profit on it!

[Hugh Blank]

Hello,
It occurred to me that this forum would be a good place to start a discussion about what boat we should be developing next.

Our popular 20ft BayRaider is still consuming huge amounts of my time as we refine the production and satisfy orders, but I am considering a year or two from now.

At the moment we are thinking along the lines of a range of Raider boats, from the SeaRaider at one end to perhaps a PondRaider at the other (Better name needed please!).

We have very approximate plans for a 17.5-18ft version, provisionally named LochRaider, and a 15-16ft version, as suggested by Brian Pearson in a different thread on this forum, would also be potentially very popular.

What about a cabin boat version?
What should be the key requirements for any of these boats?
What do you consider as the competition?
What would make you buy one!?
Is there another type of boat that we should be considering as we look to the future?
All thoughts/comments/dreams welcome...

Best wishes,
Matt Newland

[Hugh Blank]

I agree with Brian Pearson's comments. I've decided a BayRaider is probably a bit long for the room I'll have available. I think a water ballasted 16 footer would be brilliant. Cheers.

[Richard Scott]

I kind of agree with Guy.

But the 'Cornish' team have got a lot of stuff right that seems to have caught a particular market's attention.
*traditional looks without traditional maintenance
*stable family/couple oriented platform with no pretense of high performance
*high quality with no compromise to price within the smaller boat market as defined above

Although I don't know this as a fact, I would not be surprised if they were the first to do these 3 things, and have established a reputation and high resale value as a result.

It is a mistake to think, "if I can sell a similar boat cheaper I will capture their market".

So best not to go toe-to-toe, I would think...

When I think of BayRaiders (and I must confess to thinking of them far more than I reasonably should) I think of Memory 19's, North Quay 19's, Drascombe's, and perhaps surprisingly the Hawk 20. They all provide adventurous, trailerable sailing.

What would an adventurous, performance-oriented, yet traditional looking alternative to the Cornish boats look like? Even if you never made one it would be great to see your design for one.

[Claus R.]

From the contributions so far it appears that the waterballast system is indeed the key feature for new boats.

Then, there is a divide between a smaller ca. 16' open boat vs. a cruiser (cabin) version of an existing 20' - 22' boat.

Swallowboats already have quite a few smaller open boats, which may not have waterballast, but which are nevertheless very stable and sailing very well. (We just had a direct comparison between the Storm 17 and both Raiders in the Morbihan, and the Storm pulled through in all conditions including a choppy F7 without fail.)

So, my thought would be that a new cabin boat would improve the overall spread of the range of Swallowboats best.
 
22' would be my favourite length, because you want a bit of comfort insid a cabin AND still have enough cockpit length left for the full crew to sit in the open, and a dog.

The SeaRaider really isn't a good substrate, it is purpose designed for speed so it has too little beam to offer real cabin comfort.

Having seen and sailed the BayRaider last week, I think she has everything for an excellent cabin version too, except maybe 2 extra feet in length. So, may I suggest to think about a Bayraider Cruiser, which would have 2 extra feet of length built into the hull? She would compare remarkably well against the Drifter 22 and the Cornish boats, which all suffer from trailering overweight, you cannot even step their masts singlehanded.

Claus

[Brian Pearson]

Hi Claus, thought of you all while it was so windy last week. Could you please say some more about Storm "pulling through" the Raiders. With Matt expressing possibe interest in a Storm GRP kit perhaps if she is reasonably fast then Swallow do not need a 16 Raider type. I had though the Raider family would outperform the Storm family, quite resonably since I think because of their different design criteria.

Thanks, Brian

[Claus R.]

Brian,
I had not wanted to say that the Storm 17 did outperform the Raiders last week, but that she went bravely through all the same awkward conditions very well, and performed very nicely, considering she is 3' shorter than the BR and 5' shorter than SR, and had a crew of four fully grown ups. The BR had 2 and the SR had 3 crew.

I would really say the S 17 is so good there does not need to be a Raider 16 as well, at least not immediately as the next boat to be brought out by Swallow.

Claus

[Richard Scott]

So...

Looks like a 22', cabined, water ballasted, performance oriented, BayRaider bigger sibling with lots of manageable sail is next on the drawing board!