Van der Stadt 34 - tracking

What a great forum.

I am planning to buy a Van der Stadt 34 - steel, with a deep fin keel and a free standing spade rudder. I've been told that the version with the shallow - longer keel, and with a skeg before the rudder, will track much better. Can anyone tell me whether there is a substantial difference here, or whether this is really tinkering? I had a sail on her a few days ago and there seemed to be a lot of weather helm in the 20 kt breeze, but that might be put down to poor sail trim. A second reef in the main may have helped. I would like to eventually install windvane self-steering and I want to single-hand. So tracking is fairly important to me, but I don't want to be spooked off an otherwise good-looking boat at a reasonable price.

Thanks,
Chicky

 

There may be examples of deep fin keel boats with spade rudders that track well with wind vane steering. But I am skeptical about just picking one and having it work out well. Most examples I've heard of either need someone at the helm almost constantly or an active autopilot setup. They tend to do best upwind.
Why buy a boat that is going to wear you out physically? That's not a good reason to go sailing in my book.

 

Go to Sailnet.com forums and look up a member "tdw"... he has one of these in the land of Oz and might be willing to fill you in.

 

Van de Stadt 34

Hi

Did you buy the VDS 34?

I bought one 6 years go

She is a fantastic boat but is very heavy on the tiller.

Any feedback on this issue would be appreciated

Regards

Guy

 

Thanks Guy,

Don’t tell me there are two Van de Stadt 34 owners in the world called Guy??!!

Anyway, yes I did buy the VdS 34 and have happily sailed it for the past seven years. And yes it still has a tendency to a heavy weather helm but I have learned how to deal with it and she sails very sweetly now. The only significant underwater modification I made was to replace the fixed blade prop with a Gori folding prop. That had a dramatic effect on speed and seemed to help with weather helm. But the main issue is to keep the sail area down and limit heel as much as reasonably possible. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of difference whether I’ve got too much main up or too much jib up, if the boat is overpowered I’ll have weather helm. It also seems true that the weather helm comes on quite quickly so reefing quickly and substantially seems to be the answer. As a result I’ve just added a Selden single-line reefing boom which I am still experimenting with.

But the short answer is that she is a wonderfully well behaved boat in all the conditions I’ve sailed her in and although she is steel and is not perfectly smooth and sleek under water she can more or less keep up with fibreglass boats of her size and points pretty well too. Key is just keeping sail area right for the conditions.

All the best, it would be good to hear more about how you go.

Cheers, Guy (aka Chicky)

 

Van de Stadt 34

Hi Guy, yes there at a least 2 of us with 34s!

We are based in SE London, UK on the Thames!

Would appear that we bought the boats at approx. the same time

"Fairtrade" is also steel manufacture

Reducing sail area does help, but she is still very heavy on the tiller.

When sailing and using our monitor windvane self steering, this is not a problem, however when motor sailing or just motoring our Raymarine ST2000 is at the limit, any swell and it just gives up.

We are trying to identify where the problem comes from

How does your boat behave when motoring?

Cheers

Guy

 

Rudder mounting

Hi Guy

Another question for re your VDS 34

Is your rudder a balanced rudder or skeg mounted

We have a balanced rudder

Cheers

Guy