The Whitby 42''s were venerable passage makers for that time. They offered reasonably comfortable motion and a very nice accomodations plan. I believe that they were only made in Canada in 1973. The Canadian Whitby''s tend to be a little cruder build quality and have less ventilation than the Florida built boats.
In terms of sailing ability, the Whitby''s are quite slow compared to similar purpose boats like the Peterson 44''s but are certainly better sailing boats than a boat like the Morgan OI 41''s. While useless as sailboats in lighter conditions, the Whitby 42''s sail reasonably well on a reach and are reportedly pretty easy boats to handle. They do not do well upwind or dead downwind where their high wetted surface and the interation of their multimast
rig really hurts their abilities.
My father owns a Brewer 12.8 which is an updated, higher stability, cutter rigged, centerboard equipped version of the Whitby 42. I looked at a number of Whitby''s when he was looking for his boat. Many of the earlier Whitby''s that I looked at nearly 10 years ago now are really beat to death. The two mid-70''s and early 80''s boats that I looked at were very tired. Obviously the amount of wear depends on where and how the boats were used but the Canadian boats in particular looked really tired. Many of these boats have a lot of hard sea miles and that just plain wears out a boat.
Regards,
Jeff
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