My opinion: Top Hat 25 vs Endeavour 27

[Troppo]

Haha, thank you Bear and Mark and others for your warm welcome to me. For a moment there I wondered what I had got myself into! : ). This site is very rich with information and also, so it now appears, rich with characters. Awesome.

[Dolphin]

Well Louis, now that you've been "blooded" you should fell welcome.
It is a good forum. Keep asking questions and giving your opinions but search for previous discussions first.
Remember that some of the opinions here are good and some are not so good so as I say, take free advise for what its worth.
Bear, today its the blue pills. (Sometimes I feel like his minder).

By the way Louis, Bear is racing on an Endeavour 26 today, Sunday, the one shown on the slip at Lake Macquarie. So be prepared he will have a lot more information and he will be taking his notebook.

Greg.

[bearmcnally]

Hey Greg that blue pill was the wrong pill ! the skipper of the Endeavour 26 couldn't believe how excited I was .Would you be so kind to explain to him what happened when you see him next ?

[bornfreee]

Well Bear the keel on the Top Hat is quite a long way from a full keel the correct term would be the top hat has a long fin and if you have a look at the photos of the two boats out of the water it is surprising to see how close the two keels look, Illingworth would have thought he had designed quite a modern boat when the Top Hat came off the drawing board compared to the long keel yachts of the day .Amazing how they can still hold their own against so called faster boats, unless we compare them to light weight flyers

[storm petrel]

I think you are right on the money there Bill.

[Dolphin]

You've got to be kidding don't you? I wont use the "C" word that Bear used but they are chalk and cheese!

The Top Hat has a MUCH greater wetted surface area than an Endeavour 26/27.

Its not an ink blot test, but look at the pictures and tell me what you see? They're nothing alike gentlmen. And they sail differently too.

I think I need the white pills to calm down.

Endeavour 26

P1020722a.jpg (72.21 KiB) Viewed 9705 times

[Dolphin]

And the final one;

[bornfreee]

If you add the keel hung rudder onto the back of the Endeaver 27 as it is on the Top Hat the Top hat keel is not that much longer, though we all like to think of the Top Hat as a full keel boat in reality it is a long fin keel, The Top Hat was the start of the modern racing yacht.
Illingworth brought out a book called OFFSHORE which he talks about the Top Hat and how he was influenced by another small yacht that he charted and raced for a season, and in her day she was very fast for what she is, she didnt get that fast from having a full keel.
Sure we can split hairs and say the Top Hat keel is longer but not by much and the tophat is in the middle of being a cousin to the full keeler, and just as much a cousin to the older fin keel boats, the rudder on the top hat would be the main difference to the handling giving the tophat more wetted area, the spade rudder giving the Endeavour more of a dinghy feel, after being out in forty kt on Port Phillip bay the Endevour is more than capable of handling big seas with a little 24 sailing part of the way round the world and one i know of sailed from Sydney to Melbourne

[Troppo]

More pics of Endeavour 27 (stretched 26) for those whose professional boat design interest has been stirred. I really did like that boat but it was too far away and too many surprise repairs needing doing so I spent a heap a money on her and then sold her. However, despite my love for that old girl, I am still exceedingly impressed with the Top Hat (which is what motivated me to do the opinion piece).

[Troppo]

Ohhh nooooooo!!!!

I have been studying the various pics of the profiles and thinking about the points raised and I am starting to become very intrigued and interested in practical terms of how the two hulls perform on the water. More so the action on the waves and seaworthiness rather than for racing. And to think I used to be happy just sitting in the cockpit. Now, back to those profiles . . .

Hmm, interesting.