Santa Cruz back in action

We look at the star of the Earls Court boat show - Key Yachting's Santa Cruz 37

Unquestionable star of the Sail, Power and Watersports Show, currently running at Earls Court, is the new Santa Cruz 37, being displayed next to the pool by Paul Heys’ posse at Key Yachting.

If that brand of boat somehow sounds familiar, then cast your mind back to the Transpacs of the 1970s and 80s when the Santa Cruz 70 was the scourge of the biennial sleigh ride west to Hawaii. During his tenure with the company, designer and founder, Bill Lee marketed a range of boats from the mighty 70 down to a 27 footer. Their 66 footer Merlin became a Transpac legend when in 1977 she scored what the race terms its ‘barn door’ prize (line honours) holding the record for 20 years. At around the same time as Open 60s were developing in Europe and on the west coast of the States, boats such as Merlin were the first of a new genre of downwind flier, known as ULDBs (ultra light displacement boats) or ‘sleds’ on the west coast. Santa Cruzes remain popular in the Transpac – this year Paul Cayard and his family took part in a Santa Cruz 50.

Since the 1990s Santa Cruz, the company, has gone through a few awkward transitions. Bill Lee sold it, they got involved with a power boat, the Coastal Flyer 61, until just over a year ago when the company changed hands once again, bought by Tom Slade.

“Tom thought it was a waste for the US sailing scene to have Santa Cruz disappear from the market,” recounts Jan Droppers, who looks after the company’s interests in Europe and already has dealerships established in Benelux and Italy as well as the UK, with Spain soon to follow. “So he bought Santa Cruz and started to invest again in the brand.”




Upon buying the company Slade wiped the slate clean and employed the talented young west coast designer Tim Kernan to start conjuring up a new range. Kernan, who previously worked for Robert Perry and was a consultant to Morelli & Melvin, set up on his own in 2003 and today has a portfolio of race boats that spans his 14ft Stealth dinghy to the 68ft sled Peligroso.

The first of the range for Santa Cruz, the 37, is being exhibited for the first time in Europe at Earls Court, after its debut in Annapolis earlier this year.

While Santa Cruzes were originally built on the west coast, Tom Slade relocated the company to a former US military hanger on a disused airstrip near Jacksonville, Florida (where he lives). To build the boat he got in a principally Aussie team of former Sydney Yachts employees.

Slade clearly recognises the values of the Santa Cruz brand as being for fast, innovative performance boats and asked for this to be recreated with the 37. Thus, aside from the Martin 49, the 37 is one of the first production cruiser racers to be built in carbon fibre, albeit with a foam core, rather than Nomex as typically would be used in a one-off race boat.

As a result her all-up weight is a shade under 4 tonnes. Paul Heys, the well known J/Boat distributor puts it in context: “4 tonnes would be the same as a J/105 with a heating system and an autopilot or a J/109 without a deck! It is a pretty light 37 footer.”

The 37’s hull shape is modern. It doesn’t have a chine, but has full, slightly square aft sections with topsides that are approaching the vertical.

Like the J/Boats, she is fitted with a retractable bowsprit that recedes into a self-contained deck locker at the bow. However an option fitted on the version at Earls Court is an additional fixed bowsprit that can be used for the tack of a Code 0 type sail.

Another unique feature of the boat, but one not fitted on the Earls Court version, is a retractable keel. The boat typically draws 7.5ft (2.29m), about a foot less than a Farr 40, and this is obviously an attractive feature for those regularly sailing in the shallow waters of the east coast of the States.

However there are significant other benefits for European owners of being able to haul the keel up into the boat when required. “On shipping you pay by the cube so if you have a fixed fin keel you are paying for a lot of air,” states Hays. So the British owner of the Earls Court boat plans to take her down under to compete in the Rolex Sydney Hobart and reducing draft to 3ft will substantially lower shipping costs.

Heys explains how the keel lifts: “The keel is encased in the table, so you remove the table top and that accesses a drinks locker. You lift out the drinks locker and then you have access to the keel bolts. On a boat with a lift keel option there is a hydraulic ram under the cabin sole. That leads to a Vectran strop which goes to a crane on the main bulkhead and there’s a lifting eye on the top of the keel. So you spin off the top of the two hold down nuts, and run your hydraulic-electric pump and that will lift the keel up.”

The rudder is also a nice design, similar to the arrangement on the Henderson 30 sportboat, (where the rudder can also be inclined fore and aft) and on Jonny Malbon’s Artemis Open 60, which has two of them: the rudder is like a daggerboard, housed within a case mounted inside a cylindrical drum, the entire drum able to rotate. The rudder itself is buoyant so raising it is simply a case of detaching the strop that holds it down.



The top of the rudder is easily accessible from a hatch between the twin steering wheels. Aft of this is a dedicated locker for the liferaft. The backstay has a multi-purchase system with control lines leading forward to the main trimmer’s position, immediately ahead of the main sheet track. Foot chokes are not currently fitted for the main trimmer, but will be after the show. There are two other hatches in the cockpit sole, the aft one for stowage, the forward one providing access to the top of the engine compartment.

All the deck gear is Harken. The mast is a carbon fibre Selden affair fitted with twin sets of aluminium spreaders and held up by rod rigging. The Earls Court boat is fitted with a carbon fibre boom, although the standard fit is alloy. Jib tracks are mounted fore and aft. As we have mentioned, up front the fixed bowsprit is optional, but the retracting one standard and there is also the option of having roller furling instead of the headfoil the Earls Court boat has.

Accessed by a relatively narrow hatchway, down below is very cruisey with a complete interior fit-out. Most of the woodwork is a pleasant variation on teak – more grainy bamboo - while there are interior mouldings overhead and for the cabin sole. The layout is fairly standard with galley to port, chart table with an enormous seat to starboard, saloon area forward of this, main bulkhead and then the head (with an electric toilet as standard) offset to port and the forward cabin (the only enclosed cabin) accessable from the starboard side, opening up into a full width forward berth. Aft, there are double bunks either side of the engine compartment but on the Earls Court boat these also have pipecots fitted, which are again an option.

Price-wise a boat speced like the Earl Court one can be acquired, on the water including VAT, racing sails and electronics, for £320,000. Again Hays puts this into J/Boat terms: “It is in between the J/122, the 40footer and the J/133, which is the 43 footer but that is the price you pay for carbon construction.”

One of the interesting questions will be – how will the Santa Cruz 37 race? She is likely to be nailed under IRC as she is so light (one of the not so great aspects of IRC is that it seems to be promoting heavy boats…) According to Hays the Earls Court boat doesn’t have a rating yet as it has still to have metallic grey topside paint applied and there are various other items still to fit. “We anticipate the rating is going to be between 1.135 and 1.140. There is a boat in San Francisco sailing to 1.140 and appears to be sailing nicely to its rating.” This equates to a similar rating as boats such as the Ker 39 and Mills 40. “Upwind we seem to be going pretty much the same speed as those guys - 7.5-7.6 knots - and downwind we run away and hide from them in almost all conditions,” states Heys.

At present in the States, owners are already said to be looking at forming a class and developing a one design rule. While only three Santa Cruz 37s have been built to date, impressive for these sorry economic times is that the company has already secured orders for 15 boats.

Santa Cruz are planning on introducing one new model every year and next up for 2009 is a 43 footer, along similar lines to the 37.

Many more photos on the following pages...