A Real Bluewater Boat

From the archives, here’s an article from designer Jerry Montgomery

A while back I did a column on the differences between “our” kind of boats and real bluewater boats. As I’m sure most of you know, Potter and Montgomery 15s (and many other small boats) have sailed to Hawaii, but they’re not really designed or built to do that. The column I did was inspired by a couple of e-mails I’d gotten, both about the same time, from people who wanted my opinion on converting a Montgomery 17, or a Sage 17, into boats that would safely do ocean passages. So I got inspired and did a column on my thoughts on the subject. I won’t cover that ground again, but mostly what I wanted to communicate was that simply making an existing boat stronger won’t do the job unless you are comfortable with letting luck be part of the equation. To take Lady Luck to the smallest denominator, a small boat’s got to be heavier and massively strong, with a hull and deck designed for the purpose.

Montgomery 17