Why a Rival?

The story really starts the year before if not even earlier. Our boat history over a dozen years has been a Westerly Centaur 26, a Vancouver 36, a Southerly 42 and most recently a Cornish Crabber 26. All good boats and all good at a variety of tasks.

Last year (2018) I took the Crabber around the coast of Britain. What I learned was that this is a great boat for a circumnavigation - small enough with a lifting keel to get in any harbour or anchorage and big enough for fair weather sailing around the UK. For most of the time it was just me and one other plus dog, or just me and a dog so the Crabber was comfortable. It was also very easy to sail single-handed or short-handed.

However, by the time I got back I wanted to go further. Maybe to the Caribbean again or at least the Mediterranean. For this we would need something bigger. But bigger means more expensive and the budget was limited. Bigger also meant the likelihood of needing more crew so there was a limit if I wanted to continue to have an option to sail single-handed when necessary. So big, but cheap boats were also out.

We had crossed the Atlantic in Alice in Red, the Vancouver 36 which we purchased in Florida and sailed back to Bristol in 2013. So this would be big enough for the adventures ahead and I was pretty confident that I would have been able to sail Alice on my own. Funnily enough I had encountered Alice in Suffolk Yacht Harbour as we sailed around and made a serious offer to her new owner to buy her back as she looked a little unloved. His response was that she may have looked unloved but he had started a very serious upgrade and was not tempted in the least by offers of cash being waved in front of him.

So rebuffed, I started looking at similar sorts of boats. Vancouvers, Rustlers, Rivals, Nicholsons, Barbican's and the inevitable top quality Swedish yachts. The Scandinavians were ruled out pretty early due to expense. Nice boats, but the ability to maintain their prices has a downside - even 25-30-year-old boats were expensive and would probably need a good upgrade on top. Rustlers had joined the Swedes as the top end of any budget, probably due to their participation and success in the Golden Globe single-handed circumnavigation race. Most of the boats for sale have tiller steering and the mainsheet crosses the cockpit, both features Dawn and I are not particularly keen on.

As there were only 11 Vancouver 36s ever built it was not surprising to find that they are as rare as hen's teeth on the used market and are pricey when they do appear. The Vancouver 34 is more common but shares the tiller/mainsheet design with the Rustler. Good ones were also pricey as was the less common V34 Pilot which has the mainsheet on the coachroof. We had seen a Nicholson 35 and the interior is very much of its time and relatively cramped for the size of boat.

Which left the Rival 36. Offered with both tiller and wheel steering and with several keel and rig options, the Rival's basic design was very similar to the Vancouver and the interior was almost identical to that of the Rustler and Vancouver. And there were a few for sale at what seemed quite reasonable prices what you were getting.