# Any happy or unhappy tartan 30 owners



## TSOJOURNER (Dec 16, 1999)

I'm still looking. I'm off to look at a1975 tartan 30 today and would appreciate the good and the bad about the boat. Thanks


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## Tartan30#526Howl (Dec 9, 2004)

Frankly, I don't think it's possible to buy more boat for less money than a well-cared for Tartan 30.

Plusses as follows:
Accessible to sailors on a tight budget
Stiff
Well balanced
Tons of fun to sail
Sturdily built - possibly even somewhat overbuilt
Outstanding access to engine and stuffing box
Easy for one or two people to sail
Lead, bolted keel (not encapsulated, like some of their era)
They're handsome
Plenty of Tartan owners out there, and there are good support nets through owner associations and listservs
As with any boat, there are some weaknesses, at least measured by today's standards. This list may seem longer than the plusses, but you should know about them - and besides, most of these reflect the design practices of that era, and things have moved along since then. I remain a fan of these boats.
No bridge deck - a low sill into the companionway. You'll want a securely placed hatchboard in place if you're in lumpy following seas
Cockpit drainage is inadequate should you get pooped (see above)
The way the portlights are installed in the main salon just plain stinks.
They are prone to chainplate leaks, especially starboard side.
They're all at least 30 years old. How's that engine, really?
The prop is about 6' forward of the skeg-hung rudder, which makes maneuvering in reverse downright exciting.
Speaking of rudders, they're prone to water intrusion and eventual delam. It's repairable/replaceable.
They were designed to sleep six, and they will. God help you if all six want to stand up at the same time.
Best they don't want to eat, either. Storage space is at a premium.
22 gallon water tanks sound bigger than they really are.
The head compartment is designed for no one larger than an Ewok.
Hey, every boat is a tradeoff. Far as I'm concerned the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Find a good one and you'll be pleased with it.


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## ramminjammin (Sep 17, 2007)

*how was the tartan ?*

I bought a 1975 tartan 30 last October. Hull number 298

I have just gone over it to launch for this season

The hull is solid. The keel/ hull joint needed to be resealed. the chain plates are leaking. I peeled paint away from about 10% of the hull where it easily flaked off, not one blister to be found, the glass is solid !
leaky chain plates are normal, they seem solid and are an easy fix.
The deck and all the fiberglass on the top is solid.

The boat is solid to sail very stable. I am inexperienced , I had this boat doing 21 knots sailing her from Grand Manan to Nova Scotia when I bought her last fall ! And the second fastest GPS speed on a different day was 19 Knots !!!

you wont be disappoibnted if the boat is solid


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## sailingdog (Mar 19, 2006)

Exactly how do you get a 30' displacement keelboat to do 21 knots, when here hull speed is somewhere around 8 knots???


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## JohnRPollard (Mar 26, 2007)

sailingdog said:


> Exactly how do you get a 30' displacement keelboat to do 21 knots, when here hull speed is somewhere around 8 knots???


SOG, surfing, with a serious following current in the Bay of Fundy????  

Or maybe he was trailering it....


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## blueranger (Jun 30, 2006)

*I saw one like this...*



ramminjammin said:


> I bought a 1975 tartan 30 last October. Hull number 298
> 
> The boat is solid to sail very stable. I am inexperienced , I had this boat doing 21 knots sailing her from Grand Manan to Nova Scotia  when I bought her last fall ! And the second fastest GPS speed on a different day was 19 Knots !!!


Twin Merc 250hp kickers???


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## kwaltersmi (Aug 14, 2006)

Didn't BlowinSouth just buy a T30? He's probably up to date on the pluses and minuses.


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## JohnRPollard (Mar 26, 2007)

kwaltersmi said:


> Didn't BlowinSouth just buy a T30? He's probably up to date on the pluses and minuses.


Was it a T30? I missed that, I guess.

Ramminjammin,

Just as a follow-up to my earlier post, please don't take offense. Just kidding around a bit.  

However, it does strain credulity that any production 30 footer could hit 20 knots, so some of us are certainly intrigued by this mystery. The most obvious explanation is that your GPS receiver is malfunctioning, or you are somehow misreading the information it is displaying. I'm not trying to insult your seamanship, and to prove it I'll mention an embarrassing story of my own.

I was once crossing Chesapeake Bay in some really nasty weather with one of my brothers and my father. After a fast beam reach across the Bay, we had to head up as we rounded a bell buoy waypoint for a long beat to weather. It was blowing and raining sideways, miserable conditions.

After hardening up, reefing down, and getting sails trimmed, we took stock of our progress. We were dismayed to learn that our VMG was only 1.8 knots on the GPS. I then did everything I knew of to improve the boat's sail trim, including adjusting leads, reefing the genny to reduce heal, tweaking lines everywhere, etc etc. As I made these adjustments, my brother called out our slightly improved boat speed "1.9 -- 2.0 -- 2.1 -- 2.2" The boat felt fast to me, but the GPS was saying otherwise. Imagine my frustration and concern, knowing that we had a 10 mile beat to weather and it was already late-afternoon on a late autumn day, with miserable conditions.

Finally, as my brother continued to call out our ever-so-slightly increasing speed, it dawned on me. I went back to the GPS display and discovered that it was showing the steadily increasing distance from the previous waypoint we had rounded, not boatspeed!!!  Our actual VMG was well over 6 knots!!

Moral of the story: Sometimes we misread the information being presented.


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## T37Chef (Oct 9, 2006)

You may also want to post your question here: Welcome to the Tartan Owners website


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## sailingdog (Mar 19, 2006)

A production 30' multihull might well easily hit 21 knots...especially surfing... but I just don't see how a 30' keelboat could do that...without being dangerously out of control. Once you start pushing past hull speed on most boats, the control of the boat starts to deteriorate pretty badly. Doing 21 knots on a 30' multihull would be pushing it pretty hard in any case. Even Gui's 42' racing boat is hard pressed to do 20 knots I'd imagine, and I know he regularly sails her at 12-14 knots.


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## TrueBlue (Oct 11, 2004)

Blueranger was spot-on and if you check out his profile photo, you'd see how ramminjammin's boat does over 20 knots . . .


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## sailingdog (Mar 19, 2006)

TB-

Slow day at the office???


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## TrueBlue (Oct 11, 2004)

No SD, just goofing around on my lunch break . . . plus, turkey on wheat gets boring after awhile.


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## T37Chef (Oct 9, 2006)

wheres the trolling motor?


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## tharper (Nov 16, 2007)

I'm also looking at the Tartan 30, Pearson 30, S2 9.2 and the C&C 30. Can anyone offer comparisons of these for Caribbean cruising (Islands, Mex etc...) which would be best suited? Are there any differences between the production years of the Tartan 30 that I should look out for? Any years better than others?


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## JimsCAL (May 23, 2007)

tharper, these are all "smaller" coastal cruising boats and none would be my choice for what you propose. That said I would rate the S2 the least desirable and the Tartan the most desirable. Note there are 3 versions of the C&C 30. The Mark 1 was a solid stiff boat and I would rate that one be right up there with the Tartan. Any of these are getting well up in years and would need extensive fitting out before any extensive cruising.


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## ramminjammin (Sep 17, 2007)

*lol*

well i just found this old post and was amused by the responses
I have ofteh thought about that 21 knot and 19 knot
I am wondering if my gps was displaying kilometers per hour, and that would make 14 knots more believable
wish i had saved that data to verify
lol


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## T37Chef (Oct 9, 2006)

Maybe you had it on DTW or BTW? LOL


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## ramminjammin (Sep 17, 2007)

*i am sticking to my original numbers*

well I am now sticking to my original numbers
I am attaching a screen shot of the Garmin numbers from my latest voyage : MAX SPEED 14.7 kt !!!!!!!!!!
on Friday July 17 , from Middle LaHave to Halifax Nova Scotia
Compared to the Grand Manan trip the tide action here is much lower, and the swells were about 1/3 the height and much less period. The swells were 10 feet on friday , we had a small spinnaker up on a broad reach , here are the verified numbers :


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## mitiempo (Sep 19, 2008)

I think I'd take the gps back. By the way this boat is just about to blow through 21 knots:


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## T37Chef (Oct 9, 2006)

Isnt that mathematically impossible unless you were doing as the photo above...I am not calling you a lair, just saying that even if the boat did 14+ knots at one point the AVG is much more telling


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## arf145 (Jul 25, 2007)

GPS speed jumps around quite a bit--I always assumed that this was because your absolute position is only known to within 10 meters, and the error varies. If your device grabs two measure that vary toward each other, voila, you just got a burst of speed. And if it captures that as your Max, there you go.

As T37 said, the average would be the better number.


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## ramminjammin (Sep 17, 2007)

lol


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## ramminjammin (Sep 17, 2007)

Is it a coiencidence that when i saw the 19 kt,  i just happened to be sliding down a 30 foot swell towing a dingy that was on plane and threatening to take out the stern.
I always thought you could take gps speedo readings to the bank
anyway , the mystery continues, also the 19 and 21 were recorded on the gps i borrowed from the guy who sold me the boat, a different one.
The reading of 19, I recall , i was actually loking at the gps screen continuous speed readout and not the readout where it records the max speed hit. I was sliding down the face of the wave thinking, " this has to be close to that 21 it recorded earlier" , and seeing 19 on the screen.I am wondering if any other coastal sailors have experienced the same type of numbers ?
This Tartan is a competition model , designed and fitted out for Marblehaed racing
I am not sure what is going on , we were in fantastic sailing conditions , mostly steady 20 knots of wind , then some higher gusts. We were crusing at 8 knots on the flat so i dont think it is too unrealistic to pick up 7 more coming down a swell in a gust of 20 knots ?

I hope we hit those speeds for real !

the avg speed for the trip , includes motoring out of the LaHave River and then out to the coast, also motoring through the Halifax harbor to Bedford
I was seeing a steady speed of 8 knots on the screen under the small spinaker ! so as i said before put in a gust and sliding down a swell ?

i'll make sure i turn on my back up gps next time


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## bubb2 (Nov 9, 2002)

I have a Garmin 76 also. The one with the altimeter! I get as much of a chuckle when it reads that I am -43 feet under sea level as I do reading about your 19kts.


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## camaraderie (May 22, 2002)

You can take GPS readings to the bank. They are a measure of the boatspeed OVER the GROUND and given enough current, enough of a wave to surf down in a semi-displacement manner...any speed over the ground is possible. 
The speed through the water in a displacement boat is another matter entirely and is limited to 1.34* the square root of the waterline length...in this case, about 6.7kts.

Given the tidal currents in Rammin's neck of the woods, I think the 15kts is quite possible as I've been in currents myself that took me from 5kts to 14kts in a matter of seconds and even Tartan 30's can surf a bit!


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## Delirious (Dec 16, 2001)

You beat me. I was going to suggest a tidal bore or river current of eight or ten knots. 

I have a Pearson 31-2 with a rig and hull similar to a 80's era Tartan 31. Though neither is a true displacement hull at about 18 knots through the water, say being towed by a missile frigate, the suction on the hull would be so great and the wave trough established so deep either would be sucked below the deck line and submerge.


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## mitiempo (Sep 19, 2008)

I don't doubt that ramminjammin hit 21 knots OVER THE GROUND, he gave the impression that he sailed that fast. In B.C. there are several places such as Seymour Narrows where the currents can reach 14 knots and this is possible to achieve. Hardly an accurate description of the Tartan 30's capabilities though. Based on my looking at Tartans from that era I think they are a good solid boat that of course has the same issues any 25 year old fibreglass boat does- leaking chainplates, soft deck possibly. and outdated equipment. It usually comes down to price and how capable and willing the prospective owner is at repairs.
Currently refitting a CS27
Brian


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## ramminjammin (Sep 17, 2007)

The explanations above make sense , thanks, over the ground speed , it is then; sort of like the theory of relativity ;when you shoot a bullet at an oncoming train.

I was sailing at 8 knots and the ocean god took me up to 21 , what a thrill !!!


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## sailingdog (Mar 19, 2006)

I would be curious to see the max STW from the sailing instruments from that run... I seriously doubt it is anywhere close to 21 knots.


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## Hammerdown (May 22, 2021)

sailingdog said:


> Exactly how do you get a 30' displacement keelboat to do 21 knots, when here hull speed is somewhere around 8 knots???


I own a 1971 30 , once coming by Alcatraz in 17 knot winds and the motor running full blast My speed on Navionics read 11 knots. Idk my best before that was 8.6. twenty or any close is impossible. FYI. I I absolutely love sailing my boat.


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