Picture this: We’re anchored Swedish-style, bow up against the rocks, stern anchor pulled tight on the starboard quarter, pine trees gently rustling in the light summer breeze, parked up in the outer Stockholm archipelago. Our 4-year-old son, Axel, is climbing up and down the bow ladder, onto and off of the rocks, on repeat. Mia is in her wetsuit and goggles, swimming laps behind the boat in the 62-degree water, training for an open water swim later in the summer. I’m relaxing in the cockpit, taking it all in, one eye on Mia and the other on Axel, daydreaming about the beautiful downwind sail we had earlier that day to get here, Mia and me taking turns driving the boat while Axel “made coffee” on the companionway steps.
Now picture this: We’re bashing upwind in a steep Baltic chop and 30 knots of breeze, two reefs in the main plus our No. 3 jib and way overpowered. The boat leaps off the square waves and slams down in the next trough. Three crew are below trying to sleep while three others, including myself, are in the cockpit getting pummeled and trying to lay a mark some 7 miles to windward, only 20 miles into the 350-mile Gotland Runt race in horrendous weather.
Both of these scenes took place on the same boat and in the same week, only a few days apart, aboard our family boat here in Sweden. Spica is a Norlin 34 Special, built in 1977 specifically for the Gotland Runt offshore race. She was drawn by legendary Swedish designer Peter Norlin who I like to think of as the Olin Stephens of Scandinavia. Norlin was famous for drawing beautifully proportional boats. “Rena linjer, ren segling”—clean lines, clean sailing. I’d never heard of Norlin before coming to Sweden but kept noticing very pretty boats with a distinctive N logo on the cove stripe, and lo and behold, they were all Norlins.
Spica was built in Visby (on the island of Gotland actually) in the heyday of the racer-cruiser era and before the IOR rule infamously ruined it with the wide-beam, skinny-stern, squirrely-helmed boats of the later ’70s and ’80s. Back then cruising and racing boats were less specialized; you could happily do both without much compromise on either. But those were simpler times.
By modern standards, Spica would be a pretty lousy cruising boat and a slow racing boat. Mia and I can’t stand up inside her. There is no swim platform or stall shower. She won’t get up on plane on a fast reach like a similarly sized modern J/109, and if you’ve ever seen her bombing downwind under spinnaker you’ll get a real appreciation for what hull speed actually means when you take a look at her huge bow wave.
But get this—we bought Spica in 2020 for $19,000! We probably spent that much again on new racing sails, but her engine was new (50 hours on the Yanmar 20-hp when we took ownership) and gosh, is she pretty. We happen to live in the perfect place to enjoy small-boat sailing. In fact, at 34 feet, Spica is pretty big compared to the other cruising boats plying the waters around the Stockholm archipelago, so I have to be careful talking with other Swedes about our “small” boat in the 59º North fleet.
Mia and I have cruised up and down the coast here in our backyard, and Axel loves the boat—which he calls his boat—swim platform or not. We raced Gotland Runt in 2021 for the first time, finishing seventh in our class, rating well against much more modern boats and still able to be competitive. This year the weather got the better of us, and shortly after the scene I described above I pulled the plug and we turned downwind and back towards Sandhamn, hitting 11.8 knots for brief moments surfing down those same square Baltic waves that we’d been bashing against. And while the other retired race boats sent their crews packing, we went cruising instead!
I suppose you can race a modern cruising boat, and cruise a modern racing boat, but not in the same way. The Hallberg-Rassy 34 is the epitome of a small modern cruising boat, many people’s dream boat here in Scandinavia, and while the specs appear similar to Spica, and her Germán Frers hull might even rate better than the Norlin, she just wouldn’t look right on the racecourse. Spica looks the part with her clean lines, flush foredeck, and racing-style cockpit, with all sail controls close to hand. And yet she’s not out of place in cruising mode either, anchored on the rocks with a 4-year-old playing at the bow. I’m sorry, but a Farr 40 just wouldn’t do it for me in that context.
Despite our failed Gotland Runt experience this year, I’m more convinced than ever that Spica is the perfect blend of fast, exciting race boat and easy-to-sail, fun family boat. Sometimes you can have it all.
October 2024
