The main Whitby sailboat sites are;
Whitby Brewer Sailboat Association
This is the main site for Whitby / Brewer owners and hopefully potential owners. The new structure is excellent but content appears slow in coming.
Ted Brewer - Whitby 42 designer
The designer and a great source of information and plans.
Doug Stephenson's Whitby Brokerage
Doug Stephenson Brokerage Website (Doug is a broker and recognized expert on Whitby/Brewer vessels). If you are serious about a Whitby you should contact Doug.
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Bernard C. Boykin edited approx 20 newsletters starting in 1991 (I believe). These are an outstanding resource and contain a wealth of information and if you are investigation a Whitby 42 you should try and locate them. Most original owners should have copies. I have scanned copies of these in PDF format, for my own use, but cannot post them here for fear of offending (once again) the Owners Association.
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Boat Reviews;
If you are in the market for a Whitby 42 or any used sailboat pick up a copy of John Kretschmer's "Used Boat Notebook" which has a review of 40 used sailboats including the Whitby 42. (Get the 2002 edition which has the Whitby not the 2007 edition, or get both.) I like John's reviews as he has vast sailing experience and know's what he is talking about.
Any google search will throw up Jack Hornor's review on the Whitby 42. His main criticism of the Whitby 42 was
"that the deck-to-hull joint of most Whitby 42s is fastened with pop-rivets, fiberglass and resin. Some 42s were built with the deck-to-hull joint completely through bolted--my preferred method. Whitby offered this as an option at an extra cost. I will admit many Whitby 42s have made significant offshore passages, and I am not aware of any catastrophic structural failures. "
This is one item that needs urgent clarification from the Owners Association. It would be realitvely easy to try and ascertain how many Whitbys' actually had bolted tru hull-to-deck joints. I know mine certainly were.
In any event if would just take a 5 min. inspection to check if the hull-to-deck joint was bolted or not. I would be slow to buy a Whitby that was not bolted.
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Cruising World - Classic Plastic - May 1998.
This is a good review Click Here which highlighted the major issues with the boat.
These issues include;
1. The center line fuel tank.
2. The mizzen mast support.
3. The rudder.
More about these later.
An earlier and very detailed review is contained in; "Choice Yacht Designs" by Richard Henderson- Oct 1979. This book is out of print but copies are available on Amazon.com.
The review contains this very nice Whitby 42 exploded sketch.
Copyright "Choice Yacht Designs" by Richard Henderson
2 comments:
I'd be curious how they did the "fiberglass and resin" in the joint. Simply using a mish-mash of glass and resin doesn't seem very strong. A proper glass and resin joint would include a layup of cloth spanning the two pieces on the underside, which on a joint like the Whitby (or Westsail) would be quite a pain to do.
In anycase, thru bolts is good insurance and relatively easy to do.
I believe that this is one of those stories than gets legs the more often it is repeated. It is possible that there are some Whitbys out there that are not bolted but I believe that rivets were used to hold the flange while whatever bedding compound used, set up. I can't believe that too many owners would have refused the bolting option. This is something that the Owners Association needs to put to bed and it is one of the most common criticism of the boat.
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