A Lot to the Little
Say hello to the Seascape 18, our newest advertiser…
With European Yacht of the year nomination and numerous events ranging from raid trough Croatian Kornati national park to Match racing we are confident to say that after one year of her presence on the market, Seascape18 is here to stay.
She is 18 ft one design racer/inshore cruiser/day sailor, developed from the minitransat roots and designed by Sam Manuard who among others designed the winner of 2005 minitransat. It is part of the new generation of sailboats that range from ours Seascape18, through, Minitransats, Open60, VO70 up to new 100ft Leopard, with wide, hard chined hulls offering lots of stability for a generous sailplan. While about equal in performance as her main competition she offers few advantages:
- It was designed for recreational sailors so the boat is simple in layout with all controls simplified and cleaned to essentials. With twin rudders and stable hull form, the boat is forgiving to weekend sailors and beginners. However saying that, we can’t overlook the appeal of the boat’s power/weight ratio to a gang of experienced sailors, who can use some fresh wind to push this little baby to some nice speeds, with current boat’s speed record already exceeding 20kt.
- The development team consisted from French mini designer & guru Sam Manuard, Groupama and Sergio Tachini ORMA 60 project manager, now turned Seascape dealer for France Francois Coutant, Croatian RC44 skipper, Olympic 470 sailor and match racer Tomislav Basic and veteran Minitransat team Adria-4ocean.
- Mast is carbon spreader-less custom made tube in order to simplify masting/dismasting, transport & maintenance. The entire rig is build by Southern spars development partner Compotech and weights only 14kg, allowing single person to mast/dismast the boat quickly and comfortably.
- Beside modern square top main and 100% jib, Seascape flies relatively big asymmetric at 32m2 from the retractable 1,5m long carbon bowsprit. The spinnaker is retrieved into the snuffer bag simply attached to the deck. A nice F18 like feature enjoyed by everybody who tried it.
- Keel weights 125kg, which together with a powerful hull offers enough stability that even a weekend sailor can feel comfortable, while it is, like rudders, completely retractable. This makes the boat de-facto beachable and dead easy to launch/recover. With a sail ready boat weighting 470kg, dry sailing was actually practiced quite a lot on the 3 prototypes we built for the testing.
- She was designed to offer the crew of two a tent (interior of the boat) and a beach (big cockpit with removable toerails). To get more info check our website, blog, videos or latest newsletter
