Light boat.
Cheap boat.
Fast boat.
Hotfoot Boats built four of them on Vancouver Island, and the 27 was the one that made a fleet. Most of those boats are still out there. We are finding them, one at a time, and putting them back on the same start line.
Four boats, one idea
Every class gets its own registryThe trailerable one. Sprit, asymmetric kite and hiking racks before anybody else was doing that on a twenty footer.
The first one. Doug Hemphill's answer to the J/24, cold moulded in wood with a weighted daggerboard.
The one that worked. Light, cheap, quick, and there are enough of them left to make a fleet.
The big sister. Same thinking as the 27, stretched, and built while the shop was at its best.
Light enough to plane. Light enough to tow behind a normal truck.
Four friends and a tiller. Nobody has to hire a driver.
Same hull, same rig, same sails. The fast one is the one sailed best.
We can't rebuild a fleet we can't find
Twenty-three boats were built. Nobody knows how many are left, who has them, or what shape they are in.
So we are writing it down. Sail number, hull number, where she sits, what she has for sails, and what her owner thinks is fast and slow about her.
Put enough of that together and the whole fleet gets quicker. Then we get five or six on one start line and find out who was right.
“What do you think is fast about your boat?”
“And what do you think is slow about it?”
Honest answers to those two are worth more to this fleet than any rating certificate.
Upcoming events
Meet the fleet on the waterThermopylae
Royal Victoria Yacht Club
No excuses for no one design fleet here...
Event details →Cow Bay 2027
Cowichan Bay
This will be the first time in a little while that there will be a one-design fleet of Hotfoot 27s (if we get our $h1t together). Best buoy racing around, let's goooooo......
Event details →Latest race reports
All reports →
Horizon at Cow Bay 2026: 2 days, Seven Races, Too Much Fun
Cow Bay was Horizon’s first regatta away from home and our first chance to line up against other Hotfoot 27s. After two days and seven races in PHRF Division 4, we came away with second place, plenty of confidence in the boat—and a reasonab
Hay Tor: a tale of resurrection
Boxing Day 2022, Hay Tor was T-boned by a 30-footer and lost her keel — a total write-off by the insurance math. A Royal Victoria Yacht Club crew put roughly 600 hours into her instead, and had her back on the start line for Swiftsure's Inshore Race the following June.
Own one? Sailed one? Know where one is?
Five minutes on the form and the boat is on the list for good. You do not have to be racing. It does not even have to be in the water.