Wanderer 3

 This is my recently completed model of Wanderer 3 which is a famous boat that circumnavigated the globe in the early 1950’s. I got her glued up and carved out of layers of pine last winter, and just launched her a few weeks ago after doing everything else to get her ready to be wet. 

I’m extremely pleased with how she turned out, she sails perfectly, is very well balanced, and the electronics down below in the cabin stay nice and dry and comfortable, much like the real crew did on their fascinating journey through countless pacific atolls and so many other places. I read the fascinating book “Around the world in Wanderer 3” by Eric Hiscock and got inspired to make the model. An interesting thing about the design, to me, is that you can more or less scale it to any size and you will have a good free sailing boat with directional stability. This makes sense because the real boat had a vane steering system on a later voyage I believe. Perhaps a working scale vane gear could go on my model as well. I did ad a deeper false keel because I’m so addicted to being able to sail these boats to windward in strong wind. The rudder is larger than scale to make sure she can turn down-wind

In a strong wind without “cavitatting” her rudder and losing control.