Guided Tour of Pegasos, a Jim Brown SeaRunner 37

Well it's stopped raining cats and dingos but it's still pretty miserable here on the "sunshine" coast.  

We took the dingy to the shore and from there a bus to a ritzy shopping mall where I found what I need to be able to access my photos.

That's our little runabout in the foreground and Pegasos anchored in Mooloolaba Bay behind us. 

Here's me driving the same runabout a few days back, delivering Jon and Clarissa to the shore. They're the previous owners of Pegasos who joined us on our first sail. It's the end of an era for them and they're quite sad here. They had owned and loved Pegasos for nearly seven years. It had been their only home for five of those years. 

Anyway, now that I have pics here goes the grand tour .... Non-boating types might get bored.


As you can see, Pegasos is a Trimaran, more specifically a Jim Brown designed SeaRunner Trimaran.

Note the big anchor sticking out the front. It's a Rocna 45, the latest and greatest in modern anchor design, a fancy and pricey New Zealand invention. As we are going to be anchored almost every night I'm thrilled to have this big brute hanging on the nose.


These boats have an enthusiastic cult following. There aren't many cruising Trimarans. Most modern sailing trimarans are stripped-out lightweight racing boats. Most modern cruising multi-hulls are catamarans, which generally offer more living comfort but at a cost of poorer sailing performance and less comfortable motion. But my budget doesn't extend to modern boats of any kind.
 
In the 1960's many yachts, especially experimental cruising multi-hull yachts, were home-built by
hippies and mavericks as the ultimate vehicle for dropping out and seeing the word. Many of these were badly made of cheap flat ply-wood panels and poor quality resins and have sunk or rotted away by now.


Towards the end of this period in Southern California, Jim Brown, a brilliant designer with World War II aircraft construction experience applied the then very new high quality WEST system of  using epoxy resins in fiberglass and composite structures and attempted to produce a design for the perfect vessel for a couple or single family for long term cruising. The SeaRunner trimarans were born.  Many enthusiasts believe that he did indeed create the ideal design. I haven't the experience or knowledge to really have a valid opinion on this, but I do like my boat.


People hardly ever build SeaRunners anymore. With the same effort and expense it is possible to build other boats that would command a higher market price today. I'm not going into the reasons for that. The bottom line is that SeaRunners are still really good boats and most of them are quite old.
 
Pegasos was built in 1979 in Southern California. And it was named Pegasos. And I'm keeping the name, with funny spelling variant.


Here's a side view...

The two side floats are called Amas. They are kept light and are largely empty. Well that's the theory.
In reality they provide heaps of storage space that soon fills with junk. The central float is called the Vaka. These names are Polynesian. The Vaka is the living space.

It's a cutter, (which means it has one mast, with two sails in front of the mast and another sail, the mainsail on the boom attached to the back of the mast.) It also means the mast is a bit further back than normal.  It also has a center cockpit, (the outside area under the brown awning where one steers and controls the sails is not right at the back of the boat but at the base of the mast).  This is not the most common arrangement, but it's not exactly obscure. It's an arrangement suitable for cruising with a small crew. With a center cockpit cutter the base of the mast is in the cockpit, which makes it much easier and safer to get to the mast and attend to tasks like lifting, dropping and reefing sails.


The Vaka, the central part is 37 foot long, divided into 9 segments, each segment is 3 foot long.


The foremost 3-foot segment holds the anchor on top and the electric-hydraulic mechanism of the anchor winch below. It is internally separated from the rest of the boat so that if we crash into something hard then only a small part of the boat will flood.

In this picture all the cockpit covers are rigged to make a tent-like enclosure, great for privacy at marinas and protection from bad weather. Also noticeable is the open hatch up front. This is over the toilet and shower area which occupies the second 3-foot segment. Washing is a bit basic, subject for another blog. The toilet is OK. It has an electric flush with macerator and the option of diverting waste to either a holding tank or directly overboard. The original Jim Brown recommendation is for a bucket. My crew would mutiny!        

The third 3-foot segment, now with standing headroom, is a dressing room with hand basin and a bench opposite and cupboards for clothing and toiletries. The toilet is behind the blue curtain.

The 4th 3-foot segment is the main bedroom. Behind the colourful  curtain is the dressing room.
On the left (port) is the main double bed. On the right (starboard) is a single bed. This view is from the central cockpit looking down and forwards.

Looking towards the starboard single bed

Looking towards the port side main double bed.

Note the steps in the foreground left leading up to the central cockpit.

The foot of the bed extends underneath the cockpit seats. This space is a bit tight. SeaRunners being such cult items are not simply sold from one owner to the next but are solemnly  passed on to successive caretakers. Part of this ritual is that one hands over the original drawings, formal old-style blue prints from the 1970's. Among the notes in these technical engineering drawings that pertain to the main double bed is Jim Brown's wry comment that "cruising couples are agile".  Indeed.

Moving aft and up into the cockpit....  Marcelle and Clarissa (feet only). 

In this photo all the covers are down, making the cockpit open and outdoors.

The steering wheel can be removed to make more space when at anchor. And when sailing, as we are here, the autopilot can be engaged to do the steering and no-one need hold the wheel.


Below, Clarissa in the same spot where Marcelle was in the previous picture. The opening in front of her leads into the bedroom area.

Jon and Clarissa in the cockpit. The cockpit occupies segments 5 and 6.

Jon giving me SeaRunner sailing lessons. Notice how much space there is to move around. 

Under the floor of the cockpit is the lifting centerboard,  a 3-cylinder 29Hp Yanmar Diesel engine, batteries and water storage. 


Jon was trained as a primary school teacher but even still I think he found it quite exhausting teaching me. Here he is taking a break in the far corner of the boat. There really is plenty of space on this deck.

Moving aft .... Here's Marcelle exiting from the kitchen and living space.

Behind her, on her right (starboard) is another bed, a spare double. Normally covered with junk but here specially tidied for the photo. Again the foot end of the bed extends underneath the cockpit seats.

Opposite this bed on the port side is the navigation table. Believe it or not but this has also been specially tidied for the photo.

 

Among the items visible here are the controller for the solar panels and wind generator, switches for lights and instruments, music system, a wifi router with cell-phone data link to the internet, battery selector
HF radio (which I'll never use), drinking water reserve and controls for the aircon. Yup we have aircon! And a petrol generator to power the thing.

The spare double bed (the head part anyway) and the nav table occupy the sixth 3-foot segment.

Looking towards the back (aft) from there is the kitchen and dining area. 

Segment 7, on the port side is the gas stove and oven.

On the starboard side is the kitchen sink.

In the last two 3-foot segments, numbers 8 and 9, is the dining table. This is looking forward from the dining area towards the cockpit.

Behind the dining table is a window with a great view out the back of the boat.  This was taken just a few hours ago while seated at the dining table. On top is one of the three solar panels. And behind is the still overcast skies of the "sunshine coast".