Sweden Yachts 36 Review - Part1: Above Deck

I had a nice mail from a guy who reads this blog. He was considering purchasing an SY36 and he asked if there was any insight I could share after a few seasons of ownership. I thought I should write an honest owner's review. I think it will likely follow 4 parts:

1. Above Deck
2. Down Below
3. On the water (Sail and Power)
4. Conclusion

Part 1: Above Deck

The first thing you notice about the 36 (and indeed any Sweden of this vintage) is her stunning good looks. I know that every owner appreciates the beauty of their boat, but I really do think she has beautiful lines: It's the way that the coach roof sweeps down to join the side decks giving her the appearance of an arrowhead. 

Also I've always loved the shape of IOR inspired boats - it's that pinched transom. We frequently have passers by admire her and I've been asked several times if she's a 

Swan.

Sweden's were built with amazingly thick deck - even after 25 years we've still got 10mm left. Pretty amazing when you consider the 6mm that builders of AWBs (average white boats) appear to be spec'ing these days. Ours will need some maintenance soon: We'll probably re-caulk and lightly sand the deck in the next year or so.

The main sheet is lead back to a self tailing Lewmar winch to the port side of the companionway. This works pretty well for cruising, but might not be as great for an inshore race crew scenario.

The traveller is another story. It's mounted on a sturdy stainless steel bridge, just forward of the companionway. The 4:1 arrangement is reasonably high friction and can be tough to operate even when not under load. It's secured by clam cleats either side of the companionway. Unfortunately these are really inadequate and often dump the traveller at inopportune times. Jendor's have now been replaced with Spinlock PXR Cam Cleats, which eliminates this problem.

The main halyard has a two-speed winch, which unfortunately is not self-tailing making it less than ideal for short handed cruising. We'll be replacing this in the next refit with a self tailer. There are also a pair of secondary winches for the spinnaker or whatever mounted here too. One slight issue with the array of winches mounted either side of the companion way is that when the sprayhood is deployed some of the winches cannot be operated without employing that back and forth short crank waggling motion. The SY38 and 390 have mitigated this by mounting secondary winches on the cockpit coaming.

The main is slab reefed with a winch mounted on the mast. This arrangement works really well. I could see how some might want to 'upgrade' to single line reefing or maybe just run the reefing lines back to the cockpit: Either of which would be a trivial upgrade.

All of the lines running forward are held fast with, by modern standards, relatively primative clutches. We plan to upgrade these at the next major refit.

Moving aft, the boat is helmed by a large 36" edson wheel, which is large enough to allow helming from the side deck, yet small enough to be comfortable when seated behind the wheel. The space could accomodate up to a 44 incher, but I think the 36 may be the sweet spot.

Moving still further aft the back stay is adjustable via a winch handle operated mechanism. This works fine, however we have had one of our expensive winch handles lost to the deep, by a less than vigilant guest.

Under the helmsman's seat, there is the only deck locker. At first glance it appears to be a bit stingy, but in reality it's capacious. At over six foot deep, I could stand in it with the lid closed. In practice it's as much as you need. The picture really doesn't do it justice.

The port side of locker contains the heater and the starboard the gas locker (pictured). 

Interestingly the replacement boat, the 370 has a sugarscoop stepped boarding platform, which I imagine would leave the boat almost without any locker space. It would however address one of my minor niggles with the boat, which is that although the transom is really pretty, it's certainly slightly less practical for family cruising than the more modern integrated boarding platforms seen on the 370 and other mass production AWBs seen these days.

After three seasons with her, I do feel that the only real doubt that I have is the shallowness / highness of the cockpit. There's a pretty good reason for this, (which I'll come onto later), but it can lead to a feeling a little exposed when healed over. This could be somewhat psychologically mitigated with dodgers on the side rails. The other related, but essential upgrade, that we didn't find in our model, was any clipping in point in the cockpit. I suspect that the pevious owner simply attached himself to the steering pedastol which would make me a little nervous. We have now mounted a decent size pad eye in the cockpit floor.

In terms of electronics the boat came to us with ancient, but operational depth and speed as well as an autohelm wheel drive auto pilot. We went into the purchase planning on an electronics refit in the first year or so. It was just as well we did as the speed log packed up a year into our ownership. As a side note, the older transducers were mounted in a narrower guage housing than the now ubiquitous airmar ones, so replacing the transducer involved a change of skinfitting. This was not a massive job, but at the time an unexpected diversion and one that must be left till she's out of the water. The wheel pilot is useless in all but the flattest seas and we plan to replace this with a below decks linear drive system with some more intelligence behind it.

To be continued in Part 2: Down Below

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Lewmar Extended Compact Pod for Sale

http://www.lewmar.com/products.asp?id=8490&type=77&channel=1
For sale here for £220:
http://deckbits.com/chandlers/index.php?manufacturers_id=10&sort=3a&filter_id=1643

Suitable for up to 3 Raymarine ST60 sized instruments, but does not have any holes cut, so will be fine for any manufacturer's instruments.

Price £85 + 5 P&P

It is the same model as this one sold here: http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151102

Swedish charts and pilot books for sale

Arholma-Landsort and Gotland: Your Guide To The Harbours In The Stockholm Archipelago by Lars Hassler. Current Edition. RRP £50

This is the excellent pilot book for the Stockholm archipelago. It's absolutely essential if you're planning on exploring the 24,000 islands and hundreds of secluded natural harbours. Price: £15 + £2 P&P

Landsort - Skanor by C. Soderbergh. Current Edition RRP £50
This is another of the excellent pilot books for the Swedish coastline. We bought this one, because we planned to transit the Gota Canal, but in the end got the boat delivered home, and so never used it. Price: £15 + £2 P&P

The Baltic Sea by RCC Pilotage Foundation. 2011 Edition RRP £40
We used this for our trip to the Aland islands between Finland and Sweden, though it covers the entire Baltic. Essential if you're planning to cruise the area. Price: £15 + £2 P&P

3 Charts for the Stockholm region

These are the "Boat Sport Charts" that are aimed at leisure cruisers in the Stockholm archipelago. Two are from 2009 and one is 2011 edition. RRP £60 each. Price £40 for the set + £5 P&P

If you are interested in all 3 pilot books, plus the charts, I'll pay for the postage.

Main Sail Cover for Sale

SOLD

• 4M long. 
• Made by Hood sails.
• Has elastic and hooks making it nice and easy to fit.

Only used once (when we discovered it is 30CM too short for our boat) - see piccy.

£50 inc UK Postage

Sweden Yachts 36 For Sale

This isn't our boat, but I saw it listed this week. It's interesting looking at all the little differences between this and ours.

SWEDEN YACHTS SWEDEN 36 - Listed at £68,000 GBP (31/09/2011)
"Stainless steel standing rigging renewed 2003 - 2005 Running backstays Furlex 300s roller reefing system 2008. Excellent sailing characteristics combined with comfort, high quality of finish and a classic style make the Sweden Yachts 36 a fast cruiser and a capable racer. Great accommodation with a very spacious saloon where you can easily seat 10 around the dining table, forward and aft double cabins and a well laid out, clean deck space. This boat has been well maintained and is an ideal yacht whether you want to race or cruise in comfort."

Sweden Yachts... back again?

The website recently changed to the above image. There's also the following article published on IBI News:

Sweden Yachts reconstruction on its way

By IBI Magazine/Lars-Åke Redéen

After filing for bankruptcy last year, Sweden Yachts is under reconstruction with three well-known persons in the lead. The goal is to keep production in Sweden and continue to produce high-quality boats with top handicraft.

"We will not make any official information about our plans until everything is set for the new company. For the moment we're going through a capitalising and reconstruction phase," says Lars Åhrén, marine consultant and chairman of the newly established company 'Europa till sjöss' (Europe at sea). This name will change to Sweden Yachts if everything goes according to plans.

"We will start production again with the strategy to keep our base at Stenungsund in Bohuslän on the Swedish west coast and build high quality boats with good craftsmanship."

Besides Lars Åhrén, the trio behind Sweden Yachts' future includes yacht designer Peter Norlin and Sven Enoch, former owner and managing director of the yard.

Sweden Yachts was founded in 1976 with the construction of Sverige for the America's Cup. Since then, the company has become one of the world's leading producers of high quality sailing yachts.

Before the bankruptcy, which involved one of the group's companies, Sweden Yachts built boats from 12m-24m (40ft-80ft).

Another argument for smaller boats

I was marina shopping at Southampton boat show this weekend. On the stand of one marina chain they were advertising a berth for a 10 meter yacht at £3700 per year. When we got the quote for our 10.9 meter yacht it was over £5100. Talking about this discrepancy revealed that it's because there's a tiered pricing structure. One rate for boats less than 10 metres and another for boats over 10 metres. This is standard practice and on the face of it is reasonable on the grounds that bigger boats tend to need deeper water and wider berths than smaller ones. 

However this presents a case for those considering buying for the first time or thinking of changing their boat that it's worth considering this difference when weighing up the options. For example: a buyer choosing between these two cruiser racers should consider the extra annual running costs even before a single mile has passed under their keels

Model	Sigma 33	Fastnet 34
Year	1985	1977
Asking Price	£22,000	£22,000
LOA:	9.88M	LOA: 10.4M
Marina Fees	£3,700 per annum	£5,100 per annum

That's a difference of £1400 every year, which you could think of in terms of taking a pay cut of £2200 per annum from your salary.

I'm clearly not advocating a buying a boat like buying a bag of veg ("I'll have 10M of of generic boat please") rather than selecting based on rich set of criteria (and emotions). I'm merely suggesting  to add it into the mix as another cost to consider.

Yacht steering wheel hide covering

When we bought our boat three years ago, the elk hide grip on the wheel was already well past its best. It was a bit green in places, some of the stitching was missing and the leather had started to harden. I've been meaning to get round to replacing it for a while, but hadn't stumbled across where to get this done.

Option 1: DIY Kit - Clyde Marine Leather
You tell them the dimensions of the wheel and they send you a kit:

"Our kits do not include the spats for covering the spokes but we can supply them at £2.50 each

I need the diameter of the wheel and the diameter of the outer rim to get the correct wheel cover size.

A measurement of the spokes diameter helps also

The kits come in a choice of silver or tan marine suede and have full instructions needle and thread."

Small - wheels up to 77cm (30") diameter	£81.50
Medium - wheels up to 111cm (44") diameterr	£87.50
Large - wheels up to 178cm (70") diameter	£98.50

This option is great if you're very price sensitive. For our 36'' wheel, the cost would be £87.50 + 6 spokes @ £2.50 = £102.50. From a price comparison standpoint I got a quote from someone else a while back and it was in the €250 ballpark, making this very competitive.

The only real detractor of this option is the question of how good a job you're going to make of it. It's such a prominent feature of your boat, that a bad fitting of the kit could really impact on your ability to enjoy a drink in the cockpit... I know it would bother my OCD. :)

Option 2: Complete service - Hawke House

I stumbled across this option at the Southampton boat show this weekend.

Hawkes house are best known for Westerly headlining kits. They offer a complete service: You give them your wheel and you get it back a couple of weeks later looking like it just left the factory:

24" Diameter	£111.60
30" Diameter	£117.60
36" Diameter	£138.00
40" Diameter	£153.60
42" Diameter	£162.00

Apparently the "turk's head" (the little white knot applied at the centre position) is extra as are the spoke coverings at £5.40 each. So again, for our 36" wheel, we'd be looking at:
 £138 + 6 spokes @ £5.40 + Turks head at £5.40 = £175.80. 

If you compare that to the kit price, there's really only £80 charge for the labour, which given the potential for mistake feels like a bargain to me.

Option 3: New Wheel

This is semi-tongue-in-cheek suggestion, but it's worth keeping an eye on. The last two years at Beulieu boat jumble I've seen people leaving with brand new wheels. This year I asked one woman how much she paid and she said "Amazing...£80... less than the cost of getting the old one recovered."

I've scoured the internet for option 3... and think I'm unlikely to beat the initial stampede as the gates open at Beulieu next year, so I'm going to go with option 2. The big issue is finding a 3 week window when I don't want to use the boat. I'll report on the finished product when it's done.

How to get an 80' mast under a 65' bridge