How seaworthy is a Corinthian19?

[ragha108]

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum and looking forward to it

I have been sailing with a Corinthian19 in Toms River NJ and along the Barnegat Bay. This is my first sailboat and have learned a lot with her so far. I have asked locals whether I should chance going out one of the inlets with her in order to experience some real ocean sailing.

Most people have said she is too small for ocean/coastal cruising but I have read of folks crossing oceans in smaller boats so that gets me thinking. Of course just because a few people do it doesn't mean it is safe and there is also the factor of risk tolerance which each individual has its own.

Is it a question of how deep the keel is in reference to how big the swell might be? Is it the fact that a Corinthian is not a self bailing vessel? I have installed a bilge pump that works well, but again I am new at this and don't know if that would count. Having an open companion way that doesn't keep water out when close is certainly an issue but again I would think one would avoid going out on days with higher seas.

I have seen there are a few members who either own or have owned a Corinthian. Have you gone out to sea or know of someone who has?

Ricardo

[CapnK]

Ricardo -

Not an easy question, and one should be ready to hear many differing viewpoints... :)

Mine is this: As far as the sailing ability of the boat - if she is anything like any other Alberg, she's gonna sail just fine. Size doesn't affect that much, especially the draft of the keel. Some offshore folks with serious cred, in particular like Roger Taylor of 'Ming Ming' fame, say that a shallower keel is better, in that though you are likely to get tossed on your beam ends in a small boat, an end result of rolling (ie; getting "tripped up") is less with a shallower keel.
Kinda makes sense to me, and it obviously works for him and his 24' bilge keeler. :)

Re: bilge pumps - I'd like to have at least 2, in case one fails. I've read that the military Special Forces guys have a saying that goes "One is None, and Two is One." Meaning that you should have at least one backup solution for something which may turn out to be mission critical. A deep auto/electric pump, one set shallower for if that one fails, and a manual backing them up, kinda seems that would be the ultimate failsafe.
If all 3 systems failed - well, I guess that may just be a 'sign' that your time is Now. ;D

A relatively easy aid to seaworthiness that could help the above is to make sure you have big cockpit drains so that if you do get swamped, the boat can empty herself easily without downflooding into your cabin.

And you can always turn around before you get too far out. Right? No harm in the trying, and making a wise decision that maybe today was not The Day, so as to come back on another when things are better for the attempt. :)

Risk tolerance and abatement are both key factors. Sounds like to me you are taking this seriously, and that is a Good Thing. With that attitude and good preparation, I'd think you were most of the way there towards making your idea become a reality.

Like you, I imagine, I'm interested in hearing what others have to say. :)

[Norman]

First of all, welcome to Sail Far.  There are many friendly sailors here, and good advice.  Most of them are much wiser than I.

My ocean experience is mostly on sailing surfboards, in both the Atlantic and off Hawaiian Islands.  On the other hand, I have raced on small boats in winds to 40 knots, within a mile of the weather reporting station, and on the Chesapeake Bay in winds above 20 knots.


Can a skilled sailor sail your Corinthian in the ocean off Barnegat Bay?  Certainly.
Can you?  That is the question, and the following are the deciding factors.

Have you sailed in the bay when you had a reefed main and no jib, but still rolled to 30 degrees, repeatedly, and could sail on any tack?  Have you had waves breaking over the bow while beating to windward, and running all the way aft to the cockpit sides?

Can you run downwind in 3 foot waves, and not weave wildly, even as the boat rolls side to side?

If the answer is yes to all those, you have the skills needed.

Now preparing the Corinthian.  The cockpit floor is at sea level, so if water comes in, you should have a pump, preferably electric, as single handing you need to concentrate on controlling the heading, and hand pumping is a major distraction, and cannot be ignored.

The cabin should also have an electric pump, and its output should be at the top of the cabin side, even though that puts the water on deck.  That reduces the possibility of water coming IN through the pump plumbing.

The companionway boards should be in place and the sliding hatch closed and latched before sailing for an inlet, to assure that minimal water will go below if you do take a big wave into the cockpit.  Once out there, if the waves are moderate, the boards may be removed to go below, but re installed when back on deck.  That is cheap insurance against surprise waves, they do occur.

Skilled sailors never quit watching the sky in ALL directions.  The forecast is general, for an area, but the sky is providing information for right there, and now.  Learn to take a look all the way around, frequently.  Any buildup for a thunder storm is reason to run for shore and a marina.  Such storms travel in any direction, not the direction the wind is pushing them, and your boat is too small to enjoy having one cross over you.

Your first adventure out into the ocean should be with a wind parallel to the coast, so you are on a reach both going out, and back in.  The waves in the ocean will be bigger, but longer, crest to crest, so an easier motion.  They often have two "trains" of waves, the first, wind driven, and shorter length, the other coming in from the open ocean, and longer period, from winds over the horizon.

Onshore wind will have a little more velocity after the inlet, but the waves will be much larger, as they have been building over a long distance.

Off shore wind will have the smallest waves, as the wind will be beating down the sea waves, and the wind will be nearly the same as in the bay

Remember that sun on the beach will produce rising air, and onshore wind when the prevailing wind is off shore.

Check the tide FLOW tables, and run the inlets near slack tide, and when the flow is in the direction you plan to  be going.  Remember, tide can hold you out there  for an extended time, so if the conditions out there are not to  your liking, turn around and return while near slack tide, or wait just a little, as you just went out on the end of the outgoing, so the beginning of the incoming is just minutes away.

Have a GPS with charts, to be sure that you can find the inlet channels returning, as you might not decide to return at the same one you went out.  The best laid plans........

I wish that I were close to you, I would volunteer to go out sailing into the ocean in your Corinthian 19.

Norman

[ragha108]

This is solid advice from both of you. I really appreciated.

It is true then what I read often in books "The Boat will make it, the crew time will tell"

This is my first season/year sailing. I have pushed myself to see what I can handle. However the worst conditions I have sailed her on are 15 knots with gust close to 20. Didn't have a reef on.

I was actually not anticipating this much wind, but I had crosses a bridge and was anchored at a cove about 2 hours away on the bay. Winds had increased in the afternoon for sure by the time I left and on top of that I had to go upwind so I learned the importance of quick tacks when it came time to tack. She was healing over 30 degrees most of that ride back. It was also a challenge to time the angle and speed to go below that bridge. With such healings my battery got disconnected and lost access to all my instruments including my depth sounder, but I managed. No waves came into the cockpit that I can remember, but again it is a protected body of water.

After such experience, I made some adjustments so my battery doesn't move anymore and I can have access to my instruments. It was nerve wrecking but it was exciting!

I am confident and comfortable in all points of sail as well as tacking and gybing. I have modified all lines aft to cockpit for ease of handling

The previous owner had setup a bilge pump that takes the water out through a hole on the aft port side above the water line. Any water that potentially enters in the cabin can find its way to the bilge through a hole which has a lid which I don't know the name of it lol!

Will I still need a pump in the cabin or am I better off having 2 pumps on the bilge both going to the same hose somehow?

Since the cockpit floor is at sea level, will I need have to figure out a way to create a cockpit drain for self-bailing or having 2 bilge pumps suffice?

Winds do usually blow from the South so it will not be difficult to pick a day with low swells and winds blowing South at hopefully less than 20 knots

I would like to put myself into another crazy day at the bay and practice reefing and heaving to. I feel like those two maneuvers I must have down before attempting to go out to sea. The season is closing on me soon and my herniated disk is being giving me issues the past few weeks so time will tell if the Gods will allow me to have this experience before hauling her out for the Winter.

Thanks again! I have been reading a lot of posts. This is great forum/community indeed!

[Jim_ME]

Most people have said she is too small for ocean/coastal cruising but I have read of folks crossing oceans in smaller boats so that gets me thinking. Of course just because a few people do it doesn't mean it is safe and there is also the factor of risk tolerance which each individual has its own.

Let me also welcome you aboard, Ricardo.

When others describe (dismiss) a boat as small, that can be quite a vague term. There is a BIG difference between a small open boat and a small enclosed boat.

I have a Bristol Corinthian, that I have yet to sail. I got the boat thinking that it would be great for a large sheltered bay like Casco Bay here in Maine, where I used to have a mooring. When I had the mooring there and also way Down East, I sailed a Cape Dory Typhoon that owned for 12 years. Since I had a mooring on Casco Bay there has been a big influx of people and now there are longish waiting lists everywhere in the bay where there never had been...

I don't believe that the Corinthian's companionway bulkhead is water tight, the bilge under the cockpit and lower cabin may be connected, and the companionway has hinged doors with large louvered openings, not drop-in washboards, which are fairly water tight and held securely at each end by groves along the opening jambs, such as the Typhoon has.

Eventually, even if you are careful, if you go coastal cruising in your Corinthian, you are going to take a wave and that cockpit and cabin could get flooded. This is a huge volume, especially as a proportion of the boat size. Once that happens there will be an enormous amount of weight within the hull and the boat will not handle well. Worse still is that she will now be low in the water, without much freeboard, and extremely vulnerable to taking another wave aboard. With all that extra weight, the hull will not be able to respond with the same buoyancy as when it took the first wave. It's a bleak downward spiral and I don't think that any amount of bilge pumps you are likely to have will be much help in this scenario.

So, given the choice between a Corinthian and a Typhoon in areas with these potential conditions, I would choose the Typhoon. I would go so far as to say, over the long haul the Typhoon is safe and the Corinthian is not. So counter to what the passers by might think, in this smackdown the smaller boat is the more seaworthy one.

I remember sailing out to Green Island/Petit Manan Light from Pigeon Hill Bay years ago in my Ty with my younger sister on a fast and comfortable beam reach. Picked up the guest mooring. Went ashore. Walked around. Admired the Puffins and the huge granite lighthouse, while the afternoon breeze picked up and of course shifted to right on the nose.

We beat back with a reefed main and working jib. Luckily the waves were coming from shore and there was not a very long fetch for them to build up that much.

Three miles is a long way and when we left the vicinity of the island it felt like being out to sea with an ocean horizon almost 360 degrees. The wind kept gradually increasing...

There is sometimes a certain point where what had been a exciting sail reaches a "WHOA" moment. On this occasion I realized that we were rail down on each tack, and we really needed to get back to the mainland. The wind was now blowing steady high teens with gusts into the low to mid 20s. It dawned on me that we were the only boat out there. Just us and a lot of whitecaps. So I began to be concerned about what if the wind continues to build as well as the waves. What if I should have a rig part failure or a sail blow out? Can the 3.5 HP outboard even push the boat into these conditions? What exactly is my Plan B? Could I go back out to the island and pick up the guest mooring? If so, better make sure we get on it. The next Island in that direction downwind could be Bermuda. I must have looked concerned and my sister began to also look a bit worried...

I had gone out to Petit Manan Light/Green Island many times and sailed back in comfortable conditions, but this trip was different. Conditions can and do get a lot worse out there than this afternoon was. However, there aren't many people out there on Typhoons or Corinthians. It seemed like several hours, but was probably about two hours of beating before we reached the entrance of the bay and things were back within the normal comfort zone.

Even the Typhoon's enclosed self-bailing cockpit has a relatively high volume for the total volume of the hull. You can build smaller seaworthy-type boats, but people remain the same size, so the cockpits have to as well. From experiences like the above one, I began to consider building a removable bridge deck perhaps with a board attached to its forward edge so that I could drop that into the slot that would normally be occupied by the lower board and then to have a couple bolts with wing nuts to attach to the vertical face of the cockpit footwell below the seats. This bridge deck could extend as far aft as needed. Could even have two versions where one was the same length as the seats are wide, and another that was twice as long to reduce the volume of the cockpit well. One of the issues was that the cockpit drain scuppers are in the forward corners of the well, so there would need to be spaces, perhaps along the corners of the bridge deck bottom to allow room for the water to reach the scuppers. Maybe it would be wise to have the aft panel extend past this channel and have holes drilled in it to screen out any debris that might get into the water where they would be accessible and easy to clean off. Without them, the debris might go in under the bridge deck and clog up the scuppers where they would not be as accessible...

Another issue is that the original cockpit drains are either 1/2" or maybe 3/4" and so the cockpit would take a very long time to drain if swamped. If much open water sailing was planned, it would be a good idea to upgrade these to 1-1/2" offshore type drains.

Instead, I sold the Typhoon 19 and bought an Alberg Sea Sprite 23 (for less than the Typhoon sold for) which already had a built-in bridge deck and the 1-1/2" cockpit drains, and a cockpit volume about the same as the Typhoon, but nearly double the boat hull volume. (The Sea Sprite was also made in a Daysailer model which was very much like a 3500-lb  Corinthian, also with a non-self bailing cockpit). This turned out to completely solve the cockpit problems and was a larger, more roomy and seaworthy boat, but that same largeness made it more difficult to trailer, launch and especially rig compared to either the Typhoon or Corinthian. The standard Sea Sprite's small cabin trunk ends just aft of the mast step so that even if you installed a low mast tabernacle (hinged) base, the mast could not pivot down aft, since it would hit the forward part of the trunk. Ironically enough, the less common Sea Sprite daysailer version has a longer cabin trunk that extends farther forward and the mast is stepped on top of that trunk, eliminating this interference problem.

The larger boat, despite its improvements, was enough more effort to use that I haven't really used it much--so the whole upgrade experience has been like a nautical version of Whack-A-Mole... Once on a mooring the Sea Sprite would be fine, and it also has comfortable sitting headroom below, which both the Typhoon and Corinthian lack. The SS is just not nearly as convenient a trailer sailor as the Typhoon, if you don't have a mooring or slip to keep her on/in.

I have seen two Alberg Corinthians that had enclosed self-bailing cockpits very similar to the Typhoon, except taller since the hull is larger. Yes, only 1 foot LOA, but 2700 Lbs compared to the Typhoon's 2000 lbs displacement. I've posted photos of one of these below. I would have thought that this version of the Corinthian would have been as much more popular as the the typical Typhoon "Weekender" is compared to the Typhoon Daysailer model--which is quite rare.

I'm sure that converting a Corinthian from the open cockpit to the enclosed self-bailing would not be that difficult a job. [I know that Frank and his Crew of Sailboat-Worker Elves at their Workshop up near the North Pole could do that--possibly knock out two or more--in a long weekend!  ;D] So that may be one option.       

If your goal is to sail out through inlets and go coastal cruising, that would be my advice... Ruthlessly sell that Corinthian (or park it in the rear of your yard, as I would do...) and get yerself a bigger Alberg Sea Sprite or Cape Dory 25 [Alberg Wannabe] or Alberg Pearson Ariel 26 or Bristol 27..or...Triton 28 or ALBERG 30...WHOA!  :-\

[Edited to correct typos, etc.]
 
 

[Jim_ME]

I have located some photos of a Typhoon Daysailer model to post for comparison--this boat is a 1982 (one of the last years of production, I believe) .

They are easy to spot with their smaller trunk which does not have the small round portlights that the Weekender model has.

This boat does appear to have a complete water-tight bulkhead at the forward end of the space under the trunk that looks like it may have or could easily be fitted with a door or access panel that would prevent water from filling the storage area under the foredeck if the cockpit was ever swamped with water.

And although the cockpit cannot self bailing, since the design opts for seats tall enough to be more comfortable this puts the cockpit sole below the boats waterline, I see that the wooden slats that you see are not the entire seats within a cockpit that is otherwise open to the inside of the hull. The slats give that traditional appearance, but there are solid fiberglass seats below that appear to be watertight. These definitely reduce the volume of the cockpit. I don't know if this is a feature that was added in the later Typhoon Daysailers, or is common to all years?

Fitting a typical open cockpit wooden seat Corinthian with such inner water-tight seats, and a fully watertight companionway bulkhead would be an option to keep the taller seats [and non-self-bailing cockpit] and yet reduce the cockpit volume significantly, and may be an acceptable compromise?       

[Jim_ME]

Here is another Ty Daysailer model, a 1974. Plus the Daysailer model profile/sail plan drawing...

There is no photo into the cockpit, so the question about whether the FG inner seats were also a feature for this build year or not remains a mystery for now.

One other interesting feature that is shown from this rigged Typhoon is that the mast extends through the trunk and is stepped on the cockpit/storage area sole (or on the keel ballast below). A simple and structurally rugged way to go. It also allows the mast to be stepped and will be supported by the trunk before any stays are attached to their chain plates. [There is little concern about the mast intruding into the cabin layout since it is only a stowage space.]

This boat is named "Popeye", which made me chuckle. I saw another Typhoon that was named "TYTANIC", capturing its small-but-mighty nature, while possibly daring to temp fate a bit, as well...  Pity the iceberg unfortunate enough to be struck by a Typhoon...  ;)   

[Godot]

I've taken dayboats out into the ocean. I lived. You probably would too. Probably. I've done a lot of stupid stuff in my life, so perhaps my example isn't the best. But, if you keep an eye on the weather, and stick the nose out, being prepared for a hasty retreat, odds are pretty good you will come back on the same boat you left with. People have done crazier things.

I've never sailed a Corinthian, so take that into consideration before listening to me. Your concern about the boat being non-self bailing with an open companionway is spot on.  I wouldn't want to trust a bilge pump. I'd be concerned about reserve buoyancy. Keel boats can and do sink.

It's been said that seaworthiness is part vessel, part skipper. It doesn't sound like you have a lot of experience, so that means even very sea worthy boats get nicked down a lot. And the boat has some serious shortcomings for big water. This is not stacking the deck in your favor. Being out on the ocean on a calm day would likely be fine, although I'm not sure that would give you the real ocean sailing experience you are looking for.

In the end, the choice is yours, of course. I would never tell someone what they should or should not do. But, unless you like living dangerously, I'd start keeping an eye out for something a little more appropriate. Often older boats with a little more to give can be had quite affordably. Or roll the dice and live (uh, hopefully) a little.