Her hull is hand-laid mat in isophthalic resin, the topsides and deck cored with end-grain balsa, the hull-to-deck joint through-bolted and bonded. The ballast is encapsulated in a long keel cut away forward, and the rudder hangs inboard on pintles off the keel’s foot; the first few hulls carried iron, the rest lead. She is a masthead cutter on a deck-stepped mast.
The 34 is a production boat of 1991 on a drawing of 1979. Owners in Yachting Monthly call her easy to sail single-handed, the boat they would choose to be in during a blow, and not very close-winded; the magazine’s reviewer calls her a boat of “modest speed but powerful demeanour”.
The Vancouver 34 in the race is Hannah of Cowes, a cutter bought in 2016, entered for 2022 and withdrawn, and started in 2026 with her wheel replaced by a tiller, a watertight bulkhead forward and a metal king-post bolted to keel and deck.
One boat, one race, 62 days in: what the race has measured is thin, and this page fills as she sails.
Her one start: racing, 8th on day 62.
One started: racing now.
In 8 kt of wind and more, where she and the other designs have twenty legs or more each, she was ahead in every such wind and angle: most ahead on a close reach in 8–12 kt, +5%, and least ahead running in 12–16 kt, +1%.
| Wind | upwind 0–60° | close reach 60–90° | reaching 90–130° | broad reach 130–160° | running 160–180° | Legs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 102 | ||||||
| 87 | ||||||
| – | 74 | |||||
| – | 52 | |||||
| – | – | – | 17 | |||
| – | – | – | 13 |
What the record and the figures support, point by point, and what they weigh against her.
Displacement 6,350 kg, 14th of 17 of the designs that have raced; sail area 74.0 m² as the race’s page prints it, 1st of 17; sail area to displacement 21.9, 1st of 17.
Listings Port’s sheet prints a smaller sail area, 600 square feet, and from it a sail area to displacement of 16.5.
Her owners: she stands up to her canvas in heavy weather. Yachting Monthly’s reviewer: seven knots and more in fifteen to eighteen knots of true wind at fifty degrees off it.
Like for like her boats measured +2% against the other designs in the same wind and angle.
Northshore built the Classic until 2012, and the Vancouver Yachts Association, formed in 1986, has over two hundred members. In September 2026 Apollo Duck listed five Vancouver 34s for sale in Britain, from about fifty-five to seventy thousand pounds.
“Easy to sail singlehanded”, with single-line reefing; “a steady motion through rough seas”; “the one I’d choose to be in during a blow”; “very safe in all seastates we’ve experienced”: her owners, in Yachting Monthly.
The Notice of Race asks for a design drawn before 1988 (J.1.1); the 34 is a stretch of 1991 on a drawing of 1979. The race director said on air on 14 Sep 2026 that she was approved in 2014 for a friend who then never bought the boat, that as a really modern boat she probably should not be in the race, and that she stayed on the list because she was already in the Notice of Race.
A marine surveyor in Yachting Monthly: Northshore’s production quality “did vary quite a lot”; check the saloon windows for leaks; like any well-used bluewater yacht, the engine, the standing rigging and the teak decks will likely need replacing unless already done; and engine access is limited.
An owner on the YBW forums: the first Vancouver 34, hull number 64 of 1991, and the few after it carried cast iron in the keel, and lead from hull 67 or 68 onwards. The risk is water reaching the iron, whose rust swells and breaks the fibreglass around it, which that owner had never heard of on a Vancouver. The race’s page prints neither her draft nor her ballast.
Dubious close-quarter handling, not very close-winded, slow to tack, and a mainsheet out of reach from the helm: her owners’ own list.
Yachting Monthly’s reviewer finds her “not the easiest to single-hand”: the primary winches a little far forward of the helm, the mainsheet track on the bridge deck and the staysail sheets on the coachroof, “so a good autopilot is essential”.
- Yachting Monthly, “Me & My Boat: Vancouver 34 Classic”, Duncan Kent, 13 Jul 2020 (the design, the construction, the owners, the reviewer and a surveyor)
- Darglow Engineering’s history of Vancouver Yachts, Mare Fabulas on Robert B. Harris, and the Vancouver Yachts Association
- The YBW forums, “Solid GRP and encapsulated lead ballast”, posts of 4 and 5 Aug 2020 (the change from iron to lead, from an owner)
- The race’s skipper page for Guido Cantini, and Yachting Monthly, “Guido Cantini’s 10-year race”, 13 Mar 2026 (the refit)
- The race’s tracker broadcast of day 8, 14 Sep 2026 (the race director on the design’s approval)
- Notice of Race 2026: J.1.1 (designed before 1988) and J.1.2 (the approved designs)
- Listings Port’s sheet for the Vancouver 34 Classic (a second sail area), and Apollo Duck’s British listings of the Vancouver 34, September 2026 (the used market)
- The figures: the race's skipper page (Guido Cantini), the only one for the design (10.44 m, 8.38 m, 3.2 m, 6,350 kg, 74 m²); draft and ballast from sailboatdata's sheet for the Classic, read through Boatsector (4.75 ft, 1.45 m; 6,000 lb, 2,722 kg), the race's page printing neither; the years and number built from Yachting Monthly (2020). Sailboatdata's sheet and Listings Port print 600 sq ft (55.74 m²) of sail against the race's 74 m², which would put her sail area to displacement at 16.5 rather than 21.9; sailboatdata's sheet gives the years as 1991 to 2005 and the number built as 122.
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.