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What a Long Strange Trip it’s been (Title compliments of Jerry Garcia)
8 years ago, we at Spinnaker Sailing were looking for a performance boat to replace our fleet of ever-aging Santana 22’s as the Basic KeelboatSailing trainer for our San Francisco based sailing school. Garett Greenhalgh and I trekked across the Bay to Berkeley and met Jerome Sammarcelli who was the Open 5.7 rep. We were a 28 year old company back then and wanted to steer the company towards a new boat, one that would provide as solid an instructional platform as the venerable Santana, but of more contemporary design and much younger age. Our youngest Santana was circa 1975! After sailing it, we knew the Open 5.7 wasn’t that boat but it did pave a road towards an odd path for a sailing school, sportboat Promotion.
We kept looking and found Trent Watkins through Sailing Anarchy (U20guy). Trent was actively racing andpromoting the U20 class out of Richmond YC. We went for a sail and were hooked. It was a great boat for the Bay. We thought about ways to
make the U20 work for instruction, but no matter what we just couldn’t work through the backstay-less boat for sailing instruction. We hooked up with the builder and
helped the class grow. Never managed to get one into sailing education but we had hell of a lot of fun sailing them all over the country. We worked hard to convert the class to the Carbon rig as the alloy rig had some issues in big breeze. The U20 still is a favorite of ours. The normal stumbles ensued with the new builder, the class, etc. and we migrated over to a class that really had no foundation in California but a fun boat with a strong UK based builder, Rondar and the Viper 640. We sailed it first at Lake Norman, NC and fell in love. It was a great ride but we had no intention of teaching on the boat, in the classic sense. Great fun building the fleet out West though.
We continued to look at boats that might work for sailing instruction, including the SB20 (laser) and the then-new Melges 20. Neither fell into the sweet spot for style and usability for teaching, not to mention, the very high price of both.
5 years (or so) ago Tom Schock of Schock Boats, the original builder of the Santana 22, sold the company to a Viper owner, Sascha Vuvicek. We
quickly became great friends with this gregarious entrepreneur and began working on some designs that might be a viable successor the the S22. We mulled quite a few options. Schock went on to build the U20 after the demise of the previous contract with another builder. Sascha brought up the Andrews 21 (Governors cup 21) as a possibility that we were immediately attracted too. We checked the boat out and tried to figure out a way that would allow a sailing school to pay what looked upwards of
$35,000 boat for a trainer. This boat was a very viable option, albeit too expensive for most schools who could easily buy a used Santana 22 or J24 for under $5000. A year ago we looked at mimicking the success of the IC24’s that were converted from old J24’s. We thought we could take a Santana 22, remove the deck and add a new deck with a long cockpit and virtually no interior (never used anyways). This was the plan until Sascha ended up selling most of the company to the long-time production manager and the company moved to another location.
A month ago Sascha pinged us with the Balboa YC fleet sale. They were selling all of their Andrew’s 21’s making way for the newly designed Andrew’s 22 to propel the Governors Cup to the next level on the Match Racing circuit. This was finally an opportunity to get a boat, at the right price, that we could move our instruction program into the 21st century. Designed and build in 2003, they were a solid 21 footer with great heritage. We sailed one and knew this was what we were hoping for all along. We bought all 12. Have to shout out to Larry Law and Walter Johnson of Balboa YC for helping us work through this acquisition. Class guys all the way. Thank you!
We only need 6 so if you know of anyone looking to build an instant turnkey fleet of one-design boats for instruction or match/fleet/team racing, let me know. We’ve got an ad on the classifieds with all of our contact info. Our number is 415-543-7333.
We will be chartering these little beauties out too. Call us!
It’s great to, at the end of this road, to be working on installing these fine little trainers into our fleet. Now to finish hauling them up to NorCal, get bottoms on them and put them to work. I just hope that we don’t have moving issues on boats 2-5 that we did with boat 1. It jumped off the hitch and provide a pyrotechnical
display across 9 lanes of traffic on the 405 headed North as we ground the trailer support to smithereens while towing it wildly at the end of the safety chain!
Drew Harper (aka schoonerman)
