The Hurley story The Midshipman


SILHOUETTE Price from £1,200


The Midshipman is a 4.3m (14ft) day-sailer based on the Silhouette. She was designed by Robert Tucker for Imray & Wilson, then a well-known London yacht chandler, and was intended as a beamy, stable sailing cruiser to take family parties on day sailing trips. There is almost no information about the


Midshipman in the Hurley archive: it’s likely that only a small number were built as she was probably overshadowed by larger, more popular designs. She was, however, exhibited at the London


Boat Show around 1960, and can occasionally still be found on the second-hand market.


the Atlantic – but the accommodation and headroom was limited.


Hurley did not just mould the hulls for The enormously popular Silhouette. More than 2,500 were built


The Felicity was designed as a larger, more comfortable replacement for the Silhouette


FELICITY


ALACRITY 19 Price from £1,460


Russell Marine but completed the whole yacht, ready to take to sea – in fact, the boat was marketed as a Hurley for a year in 1969. Russell Marine built them alone after about 1972 and marketed them as the Alacrity Weekender. Overall, some 1,200 Alacritys were built by both Hurley and Russell Marine.


Price from £1,000


Felicity The Felicity came next, designed by Ian Anderson in 1961 as a larger replacement for the Silhouette with more comfort. Anderson’s brief was to produce a cruiser for four with accommodation in one full-size double berth and two


quarter-berths. She had to have a compact but practical galley, a roomy, protected cockpit and bilge keels designed for fi rst-rate performance under sail. Finally, she was to be manoeuvrable under both inboard or outboard power. The result was a 6.1m (20ft), four-berth


sloop in marine ply, with a spruce mast which could be stepped on deck to allow it to be lowered for inland waterway cruises. An excellent all-round boat, the Felicity quickly proved ideal for inshore, coastal or estuary passages. The keels consisted of one 193kg (424lb)


At least one Alacrity 19 has crossed the Atlantic Practical Boat Owner 539 September 2011 • www.pbo.co.uk


cast iron centreline stub keel and two 70kg (154lb) mild steel plate bilge keels. Although the fi rst models were made in marine ply, the boat was later available in glassfi bre with a single-fi n keel. About 150 Felicitys were eventually built.


➜ 33 Hurley New_fjp.indd 33 3/8/11 12:44:32


David Harding


David Harding


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