Design number: 50 Year: 1984
When a designer receives a letter whose first line reads ‘Would you like to design my dream yacht?’, he is inclined to take notice. Those were more or less the words that Gareth Williams used in his first communication, and the dream in mind was a 30ft lifting keel cruiser-racer that would be capable of performing reasonably well in the Three Peaks race, and be able to live on a drying mooring in Aberaeron.
Sgadenyn, as she became known, was built in a small mid-Wales village by Geordie John Kerr as a WEST System boat, and the result was a relatively light displacement hull of excellent downwind potential, if a little lacking in upwind heavy air performance.
After a while Gareth’s requirements changed and the boat made Neyland Marina her home, where draft was not an issue, and in due course the keel arrangement was changed to a fixed fin with a lead bulb, with much improvement in all-round performance, in particular under the Channel Handicap System.
