seafarer Polais 26''

[hermans]

Can anyone tell me about this boat? May have a good buy on one. My wife and I are sailing sea kayakers. We want to jump up to a boat that will take us to the Florida Keys and Bahamas.

[Jeff_H]

The Polaris was constucted in Holland for Seafarer in the early to mid-1960''s. I believe they replaced the earlier Rhodes designed Meridian. They were intended to be CCA racing rule racer/cruisers in their day, a rule that promoted comparatively short waterlines and huge genoas. These were nicely built and beautifully finished little boats for that era.

For their time, they were pretty slow but sailed reasonably well. Of course by modern standards they are extremely slow. They were roomy for the time, but are quite cramped by modern standards. Deck hardware was good for the day but would be undersized, and crude by modern standards and much of it would be close to the end of its useable life span.

These were fin keel with attached rudder boats with a large amount of cutaway. As a result they neither have the advantages of either a full keel or a fin keel while having all of the disadvantages.

Still and all these were nice little boats. They keys have pretty good winds, except perhaps in summer, and this would be an OK boat for down there if it is in good shape.

Jeff