Who is this guy, and why does he have a Scottish Sailboat?
I'm an aging former Highland-Games competitor (that's me, over there on the left, throwing hammer in 2015) who has been sailing since he was a kid. Back in 2017 I got a hankering to own a Loch Long One Design sailboat. Those lovely 21-foot long open wooden sailboats race on the Clyde River in Scotland, and most of the fleet sails from the towns of Cove, Dunoon and Helensburgh. While I was researching the Loch Long One Designs, I came across the Piper One Design, and learned about them as well. Pipers also race on the Clyde in the same waters. It turns out that there's only one Loch Long One Design in North America. It's stored in a barn in New York and is a disaster. It will require a lot of money and boat building skill to bring her back, and I have neither of those things. I had no idea if any Piper One Designs were in North America, but I learned that a "modernized" Piper was being produced by Rustler Yachts, in the UK. They sell for a price which I cannot possibly afford. So I abandoned my idea of having a uniquely Scottish sailboat.
Then one day in May 2018, I was looking at Craigslist, in the "Gold County" area under "boats for sale". The "Gold Country" is in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, several hours drive from where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area. To my shock, a "Piper 24 Sailboat" was listed and sure enough, it was a Piper One Design. I soon found out that of the 57 original Pipers made in Sandbank, Scotland, seven had been shipped to North America. One has been extensively restored, and is in Texas - you can read about it Here "Piper". The others have long since disappeared, they were brought over in 1971 .How was it possible that one of those seven boats could have made it to Nevada City, California, where I would find it on Craigslist? Nobody in California but me would know what they are! Well, I couldn't say "no" and so after very little haggling, but much delay, in December of 2018 I became the new owner of the Piper One Design, Hull #35, "Alpha".
What is A Piper One Design?
The Piper One Design is a very "old school" racing keelboat derived from the successful 6-meter racing boats of David Boyds design. A six-meter sailboat is, counter-intuitively, not six meters long, but more like about 32 feet long. The Piper is "one size smaller" you might say. They are not exceptionally fast sailboats by todays standards, they will not plane, but they reward the savvy, tactically wise racer. The video on the right shows Pipers racing on the Holy Loch, in Scotland.
They also make wonderful, extremely stable day sailors.