Another T-10?

With the season fast approaching, the club has just acquired a new toy for the boys (and for the girls too, of course). Speaking of beautiful ladies, on the right is a photo looking up under the poopdeck of our newest keelboat, Siege. It is a Tartan-10 donated by Glen Gordon, an avid sailor and racer down in Waukegan, IL. Word is that the donation isn't official yet but will be soon. Even when formalized, boat donations often don't stick around Hoofers for long, either being sold off cheap to preferred club members or stored on the farm until they can be taken as a tax write-off.

The Tartan-10 is a bit of a funky design. It has a fractional rig with a small chute, the cabin top is flush with the deck (and thus disorienting for drunk people), and the cabin has zero headroom. That is to say, it ain't no cruiser. But then, alcohol is now verboten (pronounced: for boatin') anyway, right? On the plus side, the T-10 has a wide transom making it very stable downwind. Some consider the feel of a T-10 to be more like a J-24 than a typical large keelboat. It is lightweight (~7000 lbs) though not an ultralight.

One or two T-10's have been donated in the past and were not kept by the club, having been deemed less than ideal for the keelboat program. However, given the recent losses of several Hoofer keelboats, we can probably use another one. Even when we do keep donated boats, they often don't last very long. Most end their lives as victims of sailing incompetence or otherwise damaged beyond repair (e.g. Decoy, Toy Boat, Maria...). It's a miracle that Soma is still sailing, or hopefully will be. But hey, if a big guy like Glen can sail a T-10 for years without falling through the cabin top, maybe we can too!