Ron Amy Spindrift 43

[kymbie]

My husband and I have recently purchased a Ron Amy designed Spindrift 43 (1984). Unfortunately the last owner did not have any of the original information in relation to the design of the boat or the installed systems - all of which appear to be original.

The boat was built in Taiwan, but the yard went out of business in 1988. Does anyone know of anywhere where this type of information can be obtained?

We will be starting the restoration project on this beautiful boat soon and any information we can gather regarding its design, construction, systems etc.. would be a huge help

Thanks for any suggestions (well the polite ones anyway...)
Kym

[Faster]

A quick google got me this; you may have seen it already. The google search also indicated this boat has been discussed before on Sailnet so perhaps you can search the forums for more.

Some History on the Spindrift 43

and Formosa 44
The Spindrift 43' has two sister ships. All three are designed by Ron Amy. Also, all three (Spindrift 43, Formosa44, and Hampton 43) have a canoe ended transom. The Spindrift 43' was exclusively contracted to the Formosa Boat Builders in 1982 by the Spindrift Dealer in Newport Beach. These were build under the strict Quality Control of the Spindrift Dealer and the buyer had the option of customizing the interior cabin.
When the Spindrift Dealership went out of business, once again the Formosa Yard began building the Formosa 44' under the contract with Mr. Amy. The Formosa yard continued to built the Formosa 44' with the same quality and good craftsmanship as the Spindrift 43'. We had the opportunity to see both the Spindrifts and the Formosa 44' built in the Formosa Yard. In our opinion, both of these boats had the same excellence in both hull, deck, and craftsmanship. The second sister ship to the Spindrift 43' is the Hampton 43' built in China.

The Formosa Yard, with Mr. Amy's permission, sold the hull design to the Hampton Dealership. In our opinion the hull is probably built with the same quality as the Formosa and the Spindrift. This we believe because Mr. Amy would most likely not agree to anything else because he is known for the excellent quality of all his hull designs. However, the above deck and interior craftsmanship, in our opinion, was of poor quality. To be fair, we only saw and checked out the first few boats produced. It is very possible that they improved the quality. We would suggest that you check this out for yourself. We have sailed and examined several Spindrifts and Formosa boats in our fifteen years of cruising and everyone of them sailed very well and had excellent quality and craftsmanship. One more boat I will mention with a hull designed by Ron Amy is the Young Son. This boat is very similar and a quality boat, but has slightly a different hull, smaller beam, and shorter draft and shallower bilge. The interior craftsmanship is not as good as the Spindrift but is adequate.

[kymbie]

Thanks Faster, I've actually exchanged emails with the people who's website that extract came from, very nice and really helpful on the history of the boat and the yard. I've also searched on sailnet and read the previous posts in fact one of them even relates to the boat we have just bought! What we really need is some of the more technical details of the boat, of course failing that trial and error (hopefully less of the error) will hopefully get us through the restoration. At least we will know what we have when we finish.

[Bountiful]

The post on the Ron Amy designed Spindrift information is one of my web pages that I created to commemerate our 15 years cruising her to 37 countries and islands. She got us through all kinds of storms including a few hurricanes. If you have any questions on the Spindrift 43' (ours was a pilot house), I would be very happy to answer them the best that I can. She was a wonderful boat and a true ocean going vessel! My husband and I sailed her and she was a great handling boat.

Sincerely,
Bountiful's First Mate,
Patti