THE LATITUDE 38 INTERVIEW
TY KNUDSEN
PART II
38: Let’s talk about your boats and
I didn’t even fix it for about 3 or 4
le gear you’ve had. Starting with the oats, you’ve had a Westsail 32 and a i/estsail 43. Did you or do you like one etter than the other? Ty: Well, I like a double-ended boat, nd I do like a heavy boat. I seem to be rone to hitting things: icebergs, 'hales, and rocks, so 1 like a good, :rong, heavy boat. We just put a fitting I this boat down at the waterline and jt /as an inch-and-a-quarter thick, maybe nd inch-and-a-half. I hit a log in Alaska, a tree, that had to e 90-feet long and 5 or 6 feet in iameter. I was doing about 5 or 6 knots nd smashed into it with the bow, and /as stopped dead. I was wrapped.up /ith the darn thing for 10 minutes, with asty weather pushing the log into me II the time. It was too heavy to push way, and I couldn’t work away from it. : just banged and banged and banged gainst the boat, but there was no erious damage. Another time I sailed straight into a ock at about 6 knots — it wasn’t harted or anything — well, it was harted but it was supposed to be leeper than it was. That took out about 1/8’s of an inch of fiberglass from the lull. It was nothing to worry about, and
months. 38: So you like a heavy boat. You have quite a bit of sail area, don’t you? Ty: Yeah, that’s the one problem with this boat. I could handle Misty, the Westsail 32, in any kind of wind. Never any problems if I had to muscle a sail up or down. This 43 is different. I have to anticipate the weather a bit. That’s why I put the roller furling on the headsail. I’m not a fan of poller furling headsails, but I found when it’s cooking up north, in 35 or 40 knots of wind, and you’ve got a headsail to change, its lots and lots of work. So, I’m trying to make it a little easier. * Both Misty and my 43 have tall rigs. Misty would average 125-miles a day going down to Mexico and about 100-miles a day coming back, and I didn’t think that was bad. This boat, the 43, well, here’s a chart . . .Ileft Seattle at 3 p.m. so that was 150-mile day, then 175-mile day, then 145-mile day, then 150-mile day, so it was about 5J/2 days for about 900 miles, something like that. I had a crew, so it was nice. When I came down from Alaska to Seattle, I was by myself and hit three storms. It took 14 days, from Alaska to Washington. After three of those things
I was really tired, and I thought if I hit another storm that I would really be bushed. So I got a couple of friends to sail down the coast from Washington to San Francisco with me; there were no storms and we zipped right down with no trouble.
38: What does this boat displace? Ty: As she hits she displaces about 38,000. Out of the factory they displace about 34,000, but mine’s loaded down
