She is a masthead sloop, with a “big genoa and long boom” in the SA Yacht Blog’s words, lead ballast in a full keel that rises sharply aft, and a transom stern; the early boats had plywood decks under glass, the later ones solid glass throughout. On the Boat Design forums an owner finds she sails fast, straight and rock steady, and another sailor there calls her a super little sea-boat, if a little hobby-horsey in a lumpy sea.
One hull has raced: Coconut, of 1980, which had already been round the world before Mark Sinclair bought her. In 2018 she stopped at Adelaide, her home port, short of water and slowed by barnacles, and sailed on three years to the day later to complete the course by way of Cape Horn in May 2022. In 2022 she started again and retired at Lanzarote for family reasons.
One boat, two starts, one sailor: what the race has measured of her is Mark Sinclair’s alone.
Of the two past starts, one passed the Cape of Good Hope, none went round Cape Horn and none finished.
One started: ended early.
A slow start against southwesterly headwinds in the Bay of Biscay put Coconut about a week behind the pace needed to reach Cape Town for a family rendezvous, the son’s wedding, and the skipper had been away from home for the best part of a year with health follow-up pending. Mark Sinclair retired at the Lanzarote film drop on 23 Sep 2022 rather than sail on in Chichester class, planning to sail Coconut back to Australia.
One started: ended early.
Short of fresh water and slowed by heavy barnacle fouling on the hull, with the season for Cape Horn running out, Mark Sinclair put in to the home port of Adelaide on 5 Dec 2018 and was listed as retired a week later. Under the Notice of Race the skipper could carry on in Chichester class, and did: Coconut left Adelaide on 5 Dec 2021 and finished at Les Sables-d’Olonne on 27 May 2022.
In 8 kt of wind and more, where she and the other designs have twenty legs or more each, she was behind in every such wind and angle: least behind running in 8–12 kt, −9%, and most behind upwind in 8–12 kt, −38%.
| Wind | upwind 0–60° | close reach 60–90° | reaching 90–130° | broad reach 130–160° | running 160–180° | Legs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 200 | ||||||
| 231 | ||||||
| 306 | ||||||
| 189 | ||||||
| 98 | ||||||
| – | – | – | – | 22 |
What the record and the figures support, point by point, and what they weigh against her.
“She sails fast, straight, and rock steady”, says an owner on the Boat Design forums; “a super little sea-boat” with “agricultural-gauge rigging”, says another sailor there; “a very seakindly design”, “a true ‘get you home boat’”, in the SA Yacht Blog, whose author had not sailed one.
In May 2022, some nine hundred miles west of Les Sables-d’Olonne on the last stretch of her 2018 course, Coconut was knocked down more than once, hove-to under trysail in a force nine gale, and went on to finish.
Displacement 5,897 kg, 17th of 17 of the designs that have raced; ballast 54% of displacement, 1st of 17.
Coconut kept her original Aries vane, refurbished for the race, the race’s skipper page says; Windpilot, itself a maker of vanes, reported in July 2019 that her self-steering had come through the 2018 race intact.
“The rudders is badly made and often fail”, says an owner on the Boat Design forums, “but no big deal to improve”; the SA Yacht Blog wonders whether the rudder is “adequate for downwind control, especially with the long boom”.
Fifty gallons of water on sailboatdata’s sheet, 189 litres, under the race’s minimum of 260 litres of drinking water (Notice of Race K.2.1); a shortage of fresh water was one of the reasons Coconut stopped in 2018. On the early hulls the decks were plywood under the glass, and prone to rot.
Waterline 7.92 m, 13th of 17; sail area 48.3 m², 16th of 17; hull speed 6.8 kt, 13th of 17.
Like for like her boats measured −21% against the other designs in the same wind and angle.
In September 2026 one was listed for sale, a hull for restoration with Boatshed on the Isle of Wight, and Apollo Duck listed none. How many were built is not known: in 2016 the race was asking for “some kind of confirmation that at least twenty were built”, the SA Yacht Blog reported, and the design is on the approved list of the 2026 Notice of Race (J.1.2), whose rules ask for a series of twenty but let the organiser consider a design that does not meet them all (J.1.1).
- SA Yacht Blog, “Lello 34”, February 2016 (the designer, the yard, the intent, the rig, the rudder, the race’s call for twenty hulls)
- The Boat Design forums, “Seeking information on Bryan Lello offshore designs” (the owners and sailors), and sailboatdata’s sheet (the figures, the water, the decks)
- The race’s skipper page for Mark Sinclair, goldengloberace.com, and Sailing Magazine (South Africa), “Golden Globe Race: the RSA connection”
- Yachting World, “The 1,426 day race”; Yachting Monthly, “Captain Coconut Mark Sinclair sets out to finish his 2018 GGR”, “Mark Sinclair closes in on the finish of the 2018 Golden Globe Race” and “Mark Sinclair last finisher in the 2018 Golden Globe Race”
- Windpilot, “Windvane report”, July 2019 (a maker of vanes, on the vanes of the 2018 race)
- Boatshed Isle of Wight, Lello 34 listing, ref 340312, and Apollo Duck, “All Lello 34 Sailing Yachts for sale”, both September 2026
- Notice of Race 2026: J.1.1 (a series of twenty), J.1.2 (the approved designs) and K.2.1 (the drinking water)
- The figures: the race's skipper page (Mark Sinclair) for the length overall (34.08 ft, 10.39 m); the rest from sailboatdata's sheet, read through Boatsector (26.00 ft, 9.29 ft, 5.75 ft, 13,000 lb, 7,000 lb of lead, 520 sq ft, with their metres), since the race's page prints the Nicholson 32's waterline, beam, draft, displacement and sail area; no designer's or builder's sheet was found. Sailboatdata's sheet prints 33.58 ft (10.24 m) overall; the SA Yacht Blog (2016) prints 33 ft 7 in overall and a 25 ft waterline against sailboatdata's 26 ft. How many were built is not known.
Why her races ended:
- goldengloberace.com, skipper page Mark Sinclair
- goldengloberace.com, GGR Timeline 2022 (23 Sep 2022: officially retires from the race at Lanzarote)
- Yachting Monthly, GGR skipper Mark Sinclair retires: 13 left in the race (23 Sep 2022)
- Wikipedia, 2022 Golden Globe Race (retired near Lanzarote citing family reasons)
- goldengloberace.com, Mark Sinclair, back to Les Sables-d’Olonne after 174 days at sea, finishes his Golden Globe Race 2018
- Yachting Monthly, Captain Coconut Mark Sinclair sets out to finish his 2018 GGR
- Yachting World, The 1,426 day race: Golden Globe sailor Mark Sinclair completes circumnavigation
- Wikipedia, 2018 Golden Globe Race (5 Dec 2018 haul-out for barnacle and mussel growth, fresh-water issues, Cape Horn season; retired 12 Dec 2018)
The same hull in two races:
What the figures mean. Waterline: the longer, the faster a heavy hull can go. Hull speed: 1.34 × √waterline in feet, the old rule of thumb. Displacement to length: above 300 is heavy; every design here is but the OE 32. Sail area to displacement: under 16 is under-canvassed by modern lights. The middle line is the median of the designs that have the figure: seventeen, or fewer where a source does not give it. Lengths are printed to the centimetre and areas to a tenth of a square metre, whatever the source’s own precision, and the ratios are worked from the figures as printed here.
How she is measured. Every 4-hour leg with a model wind on which the boat was moving (0.2 kt and more): this race’s since the start, and each boat’s whole race in 2018 and 2022, to her finish or her retirement (what a boat sailed after she retired is not counted). A leg’s wind is the model wind at its two ends, averaged as vectors, so its speed is that of the mean wind (a few legs of 2018 and 2022 carry the wind at one end only). The past races have no ocean current, so all three are measured alike: speed over the ground, and the wind’s angle off the course made good. Like for like sets each leg against the other designs’ legs of the same race in the same 3 kt of wind and 15° of angle; the heat map and the polar set her median in each wind and angle, over all her legs there, against the other designs’ medians in the races she sailed, each race weighted by her legs in it. Every figure is a median, and each measures the boat as she was sailed: the sailor, her sails and the state of her hull are in it, a hull under barnacles too. More on the Method page.