Boat Review: Spindrift 22

An early Jim Taylor design from which an entire series of trailerables evolved.

Invited aboard a friend’s “new” trailerable, we struggled to find a place to sit in the surprisingly small cockpit where we wouldn’t either interfere with the helmsman, or upset the boat’s balance. Sitting forward blocked the skipper’s access to sail controls, and moving our weight aft caused the boat to squat, leaving a plow-like wake astern. Eventually we somewhat reluctantly conceded that standing in the open companionway made the most sense.

Photos Debra Colvin

“Roomy, isn’t she?” The skipper inquired cheerfully. “Nearly 5' 6" of standing headroom!” We smiled. Oh really? We’d have expected more from a boat with the approximate windage of a Greyhound bus.

As boats sailed past us—and they all did—our jumbo trailerable would wallow drunkenly in the ensuing wake, losing almost all forward momentum. She didn’t point well, and hard on the wind she didn’t heel so much as list—we’d hold our breath as she slowly staggered back to her feet.

“She does go better cracked off a bit,” our friend allowed, easing the sheet as a kayaker passed us to port. When tacking he thought absolutely nothing of back-winding the jib. “Sometimes she just likes a little help,” he said with a slightly nervous grin.

It’s boats like our friend’s, where concessions to spacious cabins and “easy trailering” have so thoroughly fouled sailing performance, that have rightfully given the word “trailersailer” some less than complimentary connotations.

It was back in the mid 1980s—after much of the damage to the reputation of the class had already been done—when yacht designer Jim Taylor set out to sail a fine line, attempting to draw a comfortable family sloop that offered acceptable, if not admirable, sailing performance for a company called Spectrum.

“The goal was to produce a trailerable boat that sailed well,” he said. “There were a lot of boats produced at the time that were not fun because they performed so poorly, and they gave the ‘trailersailer’ type a bad name.”

The Spectrum 22 was launched, but Spectrum the company soon sank, another casualty of the tumultuous production boat-building business. The Spectrum molds were purchased by startup Rebel Industries, who’d also scooped up Wellcraft, producer of the Starwind line of sailboats.

“Rebel Industries never seemed to have a clear vision for what they wanted to be, or where they wanted to go,” says Taylor. “They bought existing tooling from Spectrum and Wellcraft, and produced a confusing variety of boats under both the Spindrift and Starwind trade names.”

Rebel did an expensive re-tooling of the Spectrum 22’s interior and released the boat as the Spindrift 22. (Not to be confused with the Starwind 22 or the Spindrift 223.)

“The new interior for the Spindrift 22 cost them a lot of money to tool, and it may or may not have improved the market appeal of the boat,” says Taylor. “The hull, deck, and appendages were all from the Spectrum 22 tooling. They never paid anything for the rights to use the design.”

The new Spindrift proved reasonably popular, but probably fewer than 50 of this model were ever produced. By comparison, the Starwind/Spindrift 19—another Jim Taylor design—numbered more than 400.

Taylor is probably best known in our small-boat circle for designing the entire Precision Boatworks line of trailerable sailboats. The Spindrift 22 looks very much like the Precision 21 and 23, and we asked Taylor to what extent the Precision boats represent an evolution of the thinking that went into the Spectrum/Spindrift 22.

“My designs for the whole Precision line, starting with the P-18, are a very direct evolution from their Spectrum 22 and Wellcraft/Starwind 19 predecessors. The focus on lively performance and family fun is unchanged, and shoal draft via a similar keel/centerboard underbody is common to most of the models. Sleeker styling, fractional rigs, and practical interiors that could be assembled efficiently are among the improvements incorporated into the later designs,” he says. “In lots of ways, the Spectrum/Spindrift 22 was a prototype for the Precision line, which is still immensely popular and selling actively today, for all the right reasons; they are good sailboats that perform well, and they are reliably well built by a solid company that has outlasted literally hundreds of one-time competitors.”

Taylor’s most recent small boat was his design #130, a fin-keeled 28-foot daysailer, but his drawing board currently features a cold-molded 49-footer.

“The big boat will be spectacular,” he says, “but I will always have a soft spot for small boats.”

We were fortunate to be able to sail with skipper Dennis O’Hanlon on his well-found 1984-model Spindrift 22, on Arizona’s Lake Havasu.

PERFORMANCE:

“The boat seems to have a large sail plan for its size. It does move in light air. It supports a genoa. We have a 150% and in light air it helps a lot.” Edward Heller, EZ Ryder 1986

“This is a light-air boat and performance is spectacular.” Ken Hall, The Office 1981

From the moment we ran up the main and unfurled the genny it was apparent the Spindrift was a capable sailer. She heeled down to the turn in her bilge and then moved steadily to hull speed.