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-eight 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.
Latest race reports
All reports →Three of us on the line at last
First time in years that more than two Hot Foots made the same start.
Light air, long night, good result
Two boats went, both finished, one of them beat a lot of much bigger money.
Hull 19 is out of the weeds
Found under a tarp, bought for very little, faired and sailing in ten weeks.
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.