The Hinckley Company has launched its latest sailboat design, the Hinckley Sou’wester 53, with some help from two respected Maine boatbuilders.
When Duncan Hennes of Rye, New York, was looking for a large cruising sailboat, he couldn’t find what he was looking for, so he approached naval architect and friend Bill Tripp III of Norwalk, Connecticut.
Hennes wanted a cruising boat with a large, deck level pilothouse. Some years back, Tripp had designed the Bermuda 50 for Hinckley and he knew the design could be lengthened and turned into what Hennes wanted.
Because Hinckley did not have the capacity to build the boat on Hennes’ timeline, they offered to build the hull and have Maine’s Brooklin Boat Yard (BBY) in Brooklin finish it. Because BBY could not build the e-glass and carbon fiber composite deck and pilothouse structure, they turned to Maine’s Front Street Shipyard (FSS) in Belfast.
Hinckley delivered the hull, FSS delivered the deck and pilothouse and BBY did the rest of the work, including all mechanicals and finish work.
The boat, named Alchemy, has a single-level layout and a pilothouse with 360-degree views. Below decks are a double stateroom with separate head, a spacious owners’ stateroom with private head and shower and a double stateroom aft.
The Sou’wester 53 is 52 feet 4 inches long overall, has a beam of 14 feet 3 inches, a draft of 8 feet 3 inches and displaces 30,000 pounds.
Alchemy was launched in late August and during sea trials she achieved 8½ knots in 10 knots of breeze.
You can learn more about the boat in this Ellsworth American article or on the Hinckley website.
