Gull, Graduate, Wanderer or Enterprise

Thank you for all your answers we have decided to keep looking out for a Gull. For the short term in the summer we will probably use a club Wayfarer possibly with Firefly sails or reefed. Also I am going to take a club Hartley 12 out on my own to see how that might be. One of the Hartley 12s was turtled within 5 minutes of launching yesterday, fortunately he drifted onto the reeds after 20 minutes of trying to get back in it (he didn’t have a wetsuit on) so I will test it a lot before risking my daughter in it. 

Originally posted by 423zero Enterprise would probably do it, cheap as chips leaving enough money for a few mods, I have seen 6 footers crewing them, boom will slide up mast with a smaller sail.

Lighter to pull ashore, too, with the trade off of less stability.

A left field option might be a Snipe. Fairly rare in the UK, they do feature a notably high boom. But a significant drawback is they are a largish old school boat and pretty damn heavy.

An option for you, if racing is not a key aim, would be to get several inches cut off the bottom of the sail of an otherwise suitable boat, and have the gooseneck moved up the mast to match, creating a higher boom. It would depend, unfortunately, on the fine detail of the mast construction whether this was a fairly simple operation or so complicated as to be impractical.

Just went looking through Apollo Duck for inspiration, and its surprisingly hard to pick out a boat that would fit the bill.

Edited by JimC - 14 Jul 20 at 8:11pm

I taught my kids to sail in an Ent with Firefly sails (blagged off a Firefly sailor mate). Depending what your daughter did her level 1 an Ent may or may not be too tippy* for her but it should be easy enough to get a trial sail in one. 

Edited by Sam.Spoons - 14 Jul 20 at 2:19pm

Thank you our club already uses Wayfarers with Firefly sails for training in strong winds but I hadn’t thought of that for my daughter and I in normal wind. If only Wayfarers weren’t so heavy.