Dear Joan,

Thank you for your kind letter. I hope other members also find my article of interest

To answer your queries, yacht paint is well known in the building and decorating trades as being one of the great confidence tricks of this century. Modern house paints are made of the same synthetic polymers as yacht paints and give an equally good performance. In all painting, the preparation is the most important part.

As regards the centreboard, I looked at all possibilities long and hard before reaching my decision. As you say, the centreboard in Eric’s design is indeed flush with the floor. However the floor is higher than I wanted: high floor high seats = high centre of gravity. Eric had obviously designed it this way to be a compromise between sitting out on the slatted seats and sitting out on the side decks — something I wanted to avoid.

As you know, the primary purpose of the centreboard is to grip the water to avoid leeway when sailing close hauled — grip being dependent upon depth rather than length. Junk sails are not normally as efficient as Bermudians at sailing to windward, and neither do they produce as much heeling effect (which shows up as leeway). In any case, both Anne and I dislike wet bumpy rides, and try to find a ‘soldier’s wind’ when we can — we sail for pleasure after all. Although it might upset the purists, we tend to use the ‘iron tops’l’ when we have to go to windward. A junk sail is very flat, and when sheeted in hard gives a good stability and damping under power to windward.

With all these points in mind, I decided to make do with a long straight keel and the extra room and lower centre of gravity available by sitting that much lower in the boat. That was the reason I put all that lead into the keel, which is obviously lowering the centre of gravity even more.

I hope this explains my seemingly strange departure from the original design. In fact, the Drascombe Scaffie, which has a standing lug sail, is very similar. Peter Ingram

Technical Advisor comments: However low down one gets the weight of the ballast, it is far less effective at resisting heel in the case of a dinghy designed to be sailed upright, as is the Roamer, than weight moved out to windward. The ballast is mainly there to help bring it upright in the event of a knock-down, the standard boat being designed to recover from 120º and was tested to at least 110º of heel. The normal seating is not a compromise: it allows one to transfer oneself without effort to the comfortable side deck, giving the boat power to carry sail against a head sea. The pleasure of watching one’s Roamer shoulder its way powerfully to windward in force 4+, with the spray blowing away to leeward, and all in perfect silence apart from the crunch of the waves, is something that Peter Ingram will have to forego — albeit willingly, apparently.