1/4 tonners + the cup

Originally posted by padigram Originally posted by detente Does any crew who have put a campaign together wish to publish the costs they have spent and then each to their own can judge the costs as to whether it is expensive or not!   We bought our (one off) Quarter tonner for £4k (after months of searching for the right boat) then spent a year rebuilding her, new deck, cockpit, coachroof, new (second hand) rig, new deck gear. The materials cost was around £5k plus sails. We did all of the work ourselves Running costs - depends on where you moor & how much you race. The bottom line is you can go out and spend upwards of £20k on a sorted boat or as little as £2-3k on a fixer upper. PBO is running a series of articles at the moment following the rejuvenation of Minestrone by her owner. We love the QT fleet, great racing at a very high standard and a fleet full of people who will advise, help and support any new entrants to the class.

Having been dismasted , I took the opportunity to update the deck gear, stanchions and push/pulpit's on my old quartertonner anong with a new rig from Proctors with discontinuous rigging and some sails from North's. I reckon that the final bill was getting on for £10,000 and that was back in 1997 so I hate to think what the costs are today...........

I'd seen some nice quarters, but could not justify the extra expense.

This statement just about sums up the quater tonners taking it to silly levels/expense!

I still believe that IRC could be adapted to provide level rating racing. It is now within most designers capacity to guesstimate the probable rating of a boat. Providing that they fall within a stipulated band width, couldn't IRC offer a service which expresses the necessary alterations (only in sail area of corrector weights) to hit the exact rating. This would not necessarily destroy the "black-box" concept of IRC

This would not  provide cheap racing (on the contrary) but would allow cruiser racing to return to the best format yet found for attracting interest from owners, designers and the public.

Gordon