Oceanus Named an Honorary Columbia 50

Columbia 50, Hermie, homeport Rowayton, Connecticut, shows her racing style in 2010. In that year she won the NYYC Cygnet Cup with three firsts and two seconds as well as the "Lobster Run" from Stonington, Connecticut to Boothbay Harbor, Maine with a family crew.

I'm going to cast aside any false modesty and just tell you that Oceanus is an honorary Columbia 50. I was surprised, pleased and proud when Kevin Reilly made Oceanus part of the Columbia 50 Owners Group. I've written before about Kevin and his wonderful web site celebrating Columbia 50s.

There's a lot to like about Columbia 50s and Kevin should know -- he's owned two of them. Cruising World recently named the Columbia 50 one of the best production sailboats of all time. The boat certainly inspires a dedicated group of owners who lavish attention (and boat bucks) on the old girls. The boats Kevin features on his site are sailed often, well maintained and upgraded.

Little sister, Columbia 43.

Big sister, Columbia 50.

Columbia 43s and 50s are more alike than most sailors think. Besides the obvious -- same designer, flush deck and small gun-turret deck house -- they share many other features. Tripp designed several cabin layouts for the 50, the most popular of which is nearly identical to the 43 cabin arrangement. They both have balanced spade rudders and large fin keel. The beam and draft is about the same and there is only about a foot difference in the waterline length.

	Columbia 50	Columbia 43 Mark 1
LOA	50 feet	43.25 feet
LWL	33.25 feet	32 feet
Beam	12.03 feet	12.33 feet
Draft	6.52 feet	6.92 feet
Displacement	32,000 pounds	18,900 pounds
Ballast	14,600 pounds	9,500 pounds
Ballast to Displacement Ratio	45.63%	50.26%
Sail Area	979 square feet	806 square feet
Sail Area to Displacement Ratio	15.61	18.24
Displacement/Length	388.62	257.46
Number Built	62	153 (all three Marks)
PHRF Handicap	102	102
Designer	William Tripp, Jr.	William Tripp, Jr.

The biggest difference is not the length, but in how much these two sisters weigh. A 50 is half again as heavy as a 43. The 43, at the time it was built, was considered an ultra-light racer. Now she would be a heavyweight compared to today's ultra lights. In her day, however, she was a game changer and a very competitive boat.

Both boats have an impressive racing record.

Simoon shows her racing style in 1967.

The Columbia 50 hit the race scene about 1967. That year Simoon, won her class of 24 in the Transpac and come in second overall. She was also first in class in the Newport to Ensenada Yacht Race, which was the largest ocean sailboat race in the world.

In 1973, a Columbia 43, Encore, won the Transpac Class B. A few years earlier, another 43, Blue Norther, was first overall in the ocean racing class in the Newport-Ensenada race.

Both 50s and 43s are actively raced today. On his website, Kevin documents several great examples of Columbia 50s that are still actively raced as the fleet enters its 50th year.

Stumppy J, a Columbia 43 Mark III, heads for the finish line in the 2013 Transpac.

Columbia 43s are still competitive on the race course as well, exemplified by Stumppy J, a Columbia 43 Mark III, making a good showing in the 2013 Transpac. In the same race, the 83-year-old yacht Dorade, was the overall winner on corrected time. Older yachts being seriously campaigned in big-time ocean races is an exciting trend for classic sailboat lovers. The new Columbia Yacht Corporation is helping the trend by offering a completely refurbished Columbia 50 with a new boat warranty. Let's hope their next project will be a Columbia 43!

The pictures on Kevin's web site are serious eye candy, as the two I borrowed for this article attest. I spend a lot of time just looking at them. It's an honor for Oceanus to be among them. My ideal cruising buddy boat would be a friendly couple or family in a Columbia 50. Sitting in Oceanus's cockpit and gazing across a beautiful anchorage at a sleek Columbia 50... views don't get much better than that.

Columbia 43 stands-in for Hinckley 48 in Revenge TV show

A Tripp-designed Hinckley 48 was used as the sailboat Amanda on ABC's Revenge TV show.

My wife and I are hooked on the ABC TV show "Revenge." (Netflix has the full first season and Hulu has the second season.) I know, it's a prime-time soap, but the boat in it is really beautiful. In the first season the sailboat, "Amanda," was a Hinckley 48 designed by Bill Tripp. A beautiful boat, no question about it. It's a big sister to my Columbia 43.

I noticed that the boat changed slightly in the second season. OK, it changed a lot. To give credit to the ABC producers, at least they tried to make them look similar. So they chose another Tripp design, a Columbia 43. Here's a post from the Cruising World's Forum:

Re: ABC Revenge tv show...sailboat "Amanda"
There have been two very beautiful boats used in this series. The first was in fact a Hinckley.
The other boat used is a 43' Columbia moored at the 1700 finger in Marina Del Rey. It is called the Blue Norther and can be seen most Saturdays on the water of Santa Monica Bay. I sail as part of her crew almost every Saturday. The cast and crew of this series are great. The art department is amazing. They have matched the color of both the hull and the gold leaf lettering exactly. Occasionally we will sail with the Amanda decal on the starboard bow and Blue Norther lettering on the port bow.
(end quote)

Using a Hinckley, any Hinckley, as a boat that Jack Porter, a poor barkeep, could afford was really a stretch. The explanation was he "fixed it up." The Hinckley 48 was a gigantic leap. They are rare and expensive; there were only eight of them made. When you find them for sale they are usually somewhere north of $300k. The Columbia 43, on the other hand, is neither expensive nor rare. But, as the owners of Blue Norther proved, they can be a very beautiful boat; even something that billionaire Nolan Ryan would want to buy.

The hailing port on Oceanus is Marina Del Rey. I wonder if the two boats raced together? Did the owners know each other? Do the current owners wonder what happened to Blue Norther's sistership?

Oceanus

On one of my frequent dock walks at Newport's South Beach Marina I came across this sign on the bow pulpit of a Columbia 43.

Ten thousand dollars? Could that be right? The inside must be a nightmare. Outside, the boat looked to be in reasonable shape, although the deck and cockpit were littered with anchors, four old batteries, two crab traps and two blue 55-gallon drums.

I called the number on the sign and Keith, an old salt I knew from previous walks, answered the phone. He was acting as the agent for the owner and agreed to show me the boat.

Inside the boat was not what I expected. The owner completely cut out the old interior with a sawsall and fiberglassed in new plywood bulkheads and furniture. To my mind, the layout was brilliant--perfect for a cruising couple. With a flush deck and 12 feet 4 inches of beam, the hull volume in a Columbia 43 is huge. The owner put every inch to use in creating a comfortable and efficient interior. Of all the boats my wife and I looked at over the last two years, this interior was by far the most livable. A big bonus for me is that most of the boat has enough headroom for my 6-foot-4-inch frame.

Keith knew the owner and vouched for his craftsmanship, especially the fiberglass work. "I was going to have him do some work for me before he got sick," Keith said. He told me that the owner was selling the boat because he got cancer.

I told Keith I was interested, but that I needed to show the boat to my wife.

A couple of days later I was back with my friend Doryman to get his opinion. Although not to his taste exactly, he thought it was a well-made boat, both the original hull and the work done so far by the owner. Doryman gave the boat a thumbs up. Of course, Doryman takes to boat projects like a duck to water; the bigger the project the better he likes it.

I took a video of the interior so I could show Virginia, who was living four hours away at the time. The next weekend I showed her the video and she liked it. I also researched the Columbia 43 and its designer, Bill Tripp, and wrote a couple of short articles for a blog I write for to help me crystallize my thinking and allay the questions about the boat.

On a Sunday afternoon Virginia and I spent two hours on Oceanus looking, sitting, lying in the bunks and dreaming. A couple of days later I called Keith and told him I wanted the boat. He said he would take the sign down that day.

Columbia 43: A little history

The Columbia 43 is a big, muscular boat made for long ocean races. The boat is largely forgotten now because its birth coincided with the death of the rating rule it was designed to race under.

With a long, flush deck and a low gun-turret house, the boat is easily recognizable as coming from the drafting board of William H. Tripp, Jr., one of the great designers of the Cruising Club of America racing era. Trip designed the Columbia 43 as part of a suite of racing and cruising boats for Columbia that included two of the largest production boats of the 1960s, the Columbia 50 and the Columbia 57. In fact, the first model of the Columbia 43 had a Columbia 50's deck house.

Columbia 43 hull number 1 with the deck house off a Columbia 50.

The Columbia 43 is a fast boat. In its early years, a 43 finished first-in-class in the Transpac race from San Pedro, Calif., to Honolulu, Hawaii. As the International Offshore Rating rule took over the racing scene, the Columbia 43 was left behind in favor of boats that would rate better under the new rule. With the popularity of sailboat racing under PHRF, the Columbia 43 is again a contender for the silver.

A Mark III recognizable by her small rectangular ports.

Columbia also came out with a Mark III model that was even more competitive as a racer. It had a keel with a shorter chord and lead ballast, a modified rudder, and six additional feet of mast height. Columbia also abandoned it's trademark long, low window on the side of the house for this model and substituted two, rectangular ports on each side giving it a mean, pillbox look.

Tripp's name is synonymous with CCA racers that have centerboards, so, naturally, there is a centerboard version of the boat as well. It has an additional 1,300 pounds of ballast and a minimum draft two feet less than the keel version.

The boat was well laid out for racing with a galley to port and a U-shaped dinette to starboard, a step down takes you to the main saloon with facing settees that convert to four single bunks. Forward of that is a small head to starboard with a large standing chart table and a V-birth in the forepeak, The arrangement is somewhat less desirable as a cruising boat for a couple, but it is still workable. The boat also carried 50 gallons of fuel and 50 gallons of water, about half of what you would want on a cruising boat that size.

Columbia built 153 of the 43s: about a third at its yard in Portsmouth, Va., and the rest in the Costa Mesa, Calif., yard. A smaller number (about six) of the Mark IIIs were built. The longevity of heavy fiberglass construction means most are still sailing.

At least one Columbia 43 has circumnavigated the globe. Other boats ended up scattered across the world in the Mediterranean, Caribbean and the islands of the Pacific as well as in every coastal state. A 43 in Aruba takes out 22 passengers for day sails; a job it's done every day for more than 30 years under two generations of owners. The large deck and 10-foot cockpit comfortably handles all 22 passengers. A tough boat indeed.

Columbia 43 by the numbers

Columbia 43

Numbers can tell you a lot about a sailboat and how she will perform. Here's the Columbia 43 by the numbers:

• Length: 43 feet 3 inches
• Beam: 12 feet 4 inches
• Draft: 6 feet 11 inches
• Waterline Length: 32 feet 8 inches
• Displacement: 22,200 pounds (one source says 18,900 pounds)
• Ballast: 9,500 pounds
• Sail Area: 806 square feet
• Sail Area/Displacement: 18.24
• Ballast/Displacement: 50.26 percent
• Displacement/Length: 257.49
• Theoretical Hull Speed: 7.5 knots 
• Vertical Clearance: 58 feet 4 inches
• Built between 1969 and 1974
• Number built: 153
• PHRF number: 102 (Columbia 43 Mark III have a PHRF number of 96)

Columbia 43 sailing on the Columbia River.

Bill Trip: Columbia 43 designer

Dancer is a Tripp-designed, 55-foot flush deck aluminum cutter built in 1965 by Abeking & Rasmussen.

Copyright by Brandon Ford, 2016.

In the last two decades of the Cruising Club of America (CCA) rating rule, William H. Tripp Jr. became known for winning and weatherly sailboats, including the Columbia 43.

He also designed, what many sailors and yacht designers consider, some of the most beautiful boats ever built in fiberglass. They continue to captivate sailors and command high prices in the used boat market today. In 2014 Cruising World Magazine's readers and editors chose Tripp's Columbia 50 and Hinkley Bermuda 40 as two of the "40 Best Sailboats Ever Made."

The Hinkley Bermuda 40, designed by Tripp, had the longest production run in U.S. history. She is as seaworthy as she is beautiful.

Tripp was a self-taught designer who came up through the ranks working for other designers. He worked with Phil Rhodes and then Sparkman & Stevens before hanging out his own shingle.

His designs were informed by many years of racing Star-class sailboats and other sailboats while growing up. The seaworthiness of his designs owes something to his experience serving in the Coast Guard during World War II. Trip was assigned to the Offshore Patrol out of Greenport, Long Island.

"This very special branch of the service created some enduring legends ...with its all-weather, all-season operations on the lookout for subs approaching our shores in the early days of the war," wrote Bill Robinson in The Great American Yacht Designers.* "With conventional antisubmarine vessels in short supply, sailing yachts were used as lookout posts.... There was no better school for finding out how the hull of a sailing vessel acts in a sea, and Bill found the firsthand encounter a valuable experience."

The Mercer 44 is one of Tripp's most enduring classics even though only 14 were built.

Tripp was a prolific designer. In addition to providing custom racing and cruising designs for many clients, he designed production boats for Seafarer, Hinckley, Pearson, Columbia and others. An early advocate of fiberglass, he became known for flush-deck race boats with his distinctive gun-turret dog houses.

As a teenager in the 1960s, Seattle-based yacht designer Bob Perry considered Tripp his favorite designer. "Tripp’s boats had a very distinctive look, with proud sweeping spoon bows, bold sheer springs, long concave counters terminating in almost vertical transoms, and sexy and svelte cabin trunks," Perry wrote in the November/December 2011 issue of Good Old Boat Magazine.** "You would never mistake a Tripp design for an S&S design. They just seemed to my young eye to have a strength and boldness, kind of an 'in your face' quality. Plus, his boats were consistent race winners."

Burgoo, the Tripp-designed Pearson 37-foot Invicta centerboard yawl, won the Bermuda race in 1964. At that time it was the smallest fiberglass boat to ever win the race. "[I]t had all the Tripp trademark design features and it was a very sexy-looking little boat," Perry wrote. "In fact, and I could be wrong, this may be the first Tripp design to have the “gun turret” cabin trunk."

Ondine, a 57-foot aluminum yawl designed by Tripp, is arguably the most successful racing yacht in history. 

In the same race, the Class A winner was another Tripp design, Ondine, a 57-foot aluminum yawl built in 1960 and owned by Sumner A "Huey" Long. Ondine was one of the most successful racing yachts in history, according to Robinson. "With her wide beam and low center of gravity, she was designed for great sail-carrying ability and passage performance and became one of the most successful yachts in history in this respect, under an owner eager to campaign her in all oceans of the world.... she placed on the prize list of over 60 percent of the contests she entered and garnered many top trophies," Robinson wrote.

"Bill was the first to put portlights in the topsides as well as opening ports in cockpit sides to improve air circulation and communication below," said Ted Jones,*** who worked with Tripp before becoming a boating magazine editor. "He popularized flush decks on small boats (Galaxy, Medalist, Invicta, Mercer 44), and set high standards in hull and rigging scantlings that have been proven over time. He designed boats to stay together under the most difficult circumstances. I cannot recall one of his designs ever being dismasted or suffering structural damage at sea."

Columbia President Dick Valdes and designer
 Bill Tripp look at plans circa 1965.

By the mid-1960s, Columbia, America's leading builder of fiberglass yachts at the time, approached Tripp to design a fifty footer. He produced a true classic in the Columbia 50. When the Columbia 50 was built in 1965 it was the largest production fiberglass boat ever built by a large margin. It was the first and maybe the best loved of the Columbia boats Tripp designed.

In the next six years, he produced thirteen Columbia yachts, including the Columbia 26 MkII, Columbia 34, Columbia 39, Columbia 43, Columbia 45, Columbia 50, and the Columbia 57. The boats are vintage Tripp, but with the innovation of fin keels and spade rudders.

The C-50 attracted a strong following and still has an active owners association. For years they raced as a one-design class in California, in addition to racing in handicap events. "The Columbia 50 was a big elegant-looking boat with the same bubble house and long flush deck (of many other Tripp designs)," Perry wrote. "It was a very good-looking boat and it was fast. Seattle’s racing scene was dominated for years by a Columbia 50 called Six Pack while the smallest class was dominated by a Columbia 26 called Miller’s High Life."

Grundoon, a Columbia 50, in the 2012 Newport-Bermuda Race.

In 1969, Columbia was the world's largest fiberglass sailboat manufacturer and Tripp designed a 57 footer, which became the largest production fiberglass boat. It displayed several of Tripp's trademark features: an unusually-long and effective waterline, high-aspect ratio sail plan, dual-surface steering system with a keel-mounted trim tab as well as a balanced spade rudder aft. Speed was derived partially from an absolute minimum of wetted surface area, and from the high prismatic coefficient hull design.

Encore, a Columbia 43, on her way to winning her class in Transpac. She was eighth overall in the fleet that year.

In the same year, Columbia came out with the 43, which was an immediate racing success. Columbia wanted a great race boat when it commissioned Tripp to design what became the Columbia 43. Specifically, the company bosses wanted a boat that could win the Transpac race, which starts in Long Beach, Calif., and ends in Honolulu, Hi. That's exactly what they got. In 1971, Encore, won her class in Transpac, and was eighth overall in the fleet.

The design also dominated other big yacht races, like in the Ocean Racing Class of the Newport to Ensenada Yacht Race. In 1970 it was the world's largest ocean race at the time with 539 boats competing. Blue Norther, Columbia 43 hull number seven, was the overall winner.

In 1971, the racing community adopted the International Offshore Rule (IOR). Tripp fought hard against the change, but designed a 30 and 52-foot IOR boat for Columbia and was looking forward to developing more of his ideas on the new rule. A few months later, a drunk driver lost control of his car, hurtled over the divider on the Connecticut Turnpike and smashed into Tripp's Jaguar, killing him instantly. He was 51.

Tripp's legacy endures in his beautiful boats - many of which are still sailing today. His son, William H. Tripp, III is also a yacht designer with many large and beautiful yachts to his credit, including an update of his dad's famous Bermuda 40. Hinkley commissioned Tripp III to design the Bermuda 50, which was launched in 2015.

The newest Hinkley sailboat is the Bermuda 50 designed by Bill Tripp III.

Sources:
*The Great American Yacht Designers by Bill Robinson, Alfred A. Knopf, 1974
**The Legacy of Bill Tripp By Robert Perry, Good Old Boat Magazine, November/December 2011 pages 14-17
*** Bill Tripp's Boats by Ted Jones, Professional BoatBuilder, February/March 2007, pages 56 - 77