Allied Seabreeze 35

The Allied Seabreeze 35 is a 34 ft 6 in keel/centerboard cruiser-racer of the Finisterre type, drawn by Frank MacLear and Robert Harris in 1962 and built by the Allied Boat Company at Catskill, New York, from 1963 to 1972; 135 were completed. It was sold as a masthead sloop or yawl, and under the CCA rule of the day most owners chose the yawl. On a 24 ft waterline it carries 10 ft 3 in of beam, 13,600 lb of displacement and 4,000 lb of lead glassed into a long, straight keel, drawing 3 ft 10 in with the board up and 7 ft with it down. Heavy fibreglass construction, a keel-attached rudder and six full-length berths gave it a reputation as a strong, seakindly shoal-draft boat, and an active owners' association still tracks almost every hull.

Thor Ramsing, the money behind the new Allied Boat Company, won Class A of the 1960 SORC in his centerboarder Solution and decided a production 35-footer on similar lines would sell. He commissioned MacLear & Harris, then design associates of the New York brokers Northrop & Johnson, who had both worked at Sparkman & Stephens while Finisterre was on the boards. The lines were finished in December 1962, the first two hulls were built in 1963 and the boat was shown at the New York Boat Show that winter at about $20,000; by 1968 a sloop less sails cost $25,350. The Citation revision arrived with hull 107 in 1970, and the last three hulls, 133 to 135, were delivered in 1972, just before the Coast Guard's hull-identification rule took effect. Allied went on to the Edmunds-designed Princess and Mistress, changed owners four times after 1975 and stopped building in 1981.

The hull is a classic CCA centerboarder: long overhangs, a fine entry with a clean run, and beam carried well aft over a long, straight ballast keel, which the builder pointed out was unusual in a centerboarder and made the boat steady on the helm. The board nests entirely inside the keel, so the trunk does not intrude on the cabin, and the hoisting pennant runs beneath the sole to a worm-drive winch in the cockpit. The rudder hangs on the trailing edge of the keel on a 1½ in solid Tobin bronze stock secured by a heavy heel casting. Construction is a one-piece fibreglass hull with an integrally moulded trunk and the 4,000 lb lead casting glassed inside, joined to a one-piece sandwich-cored deck, trunk cabin and cockpit; the aluminium mast is stepped on deck over a plywood bulkhead. Early boats had bronze deck hardware and a 400 lb bronze board; from about hull 70 in 1967 the board became a 115 lb aluminium plate and the hardware anodised aluminium.

Owners sail with the board down at about 60 degrees to windward, where the boat points well, and crank it up off the wind to cut wetted surface; easing the board partly up is also the standard cure for weather helm when the boat is overpressed, and the yawl's mizzen gives a second means of trimming balance. Arthur Beiser noted that centerboarders of the type can be hard-mouthed when heeled, and MacLear himself told the owners' association that any centerboarder needs earlier sail reduction than a full-keel boat. Kept on its feet the Seabreeze is fast and comfortable: members reported lying ahull for eight hours in 20 ft seas and 40 kn gusting 55, then sailing on under a working jib alone, and describe the motion at sea as stable and predictable. Under power almost every boat makes about 6 kn regardless of engine.

Six full-length berths without uppers was the selling point: a two-berth forward cabin, the head to starboard with a moulded vanity and shower, and a main cabin with either the standard facing pilot berths above extension transoms or a no-cost dinette that seats eight and lowers into a double. Headroom is 6 ft 3 in in the main cabin and 6 ft forward. The galley is aft by the companionway with a gimballed three-burner stove with oven and an insulated icebox, and there is a proper chart table opposite; because there are no quarter berths the boat keeps two deep cockpit sail lockers, through which the engine under the cockpit sole is reached. Tankage is 45 gal of water in an integral tank and 30 gal of petrol in a Monel tank under the cockpit; the 1970 Citation stretched the main cabin by a foot and lengthened the cockpit at the cost of the lazarette.

The factory listed the sloop first and charged extra for the yawl, but most boats were ordered as yawls and are sold as 'Seabreeze 35 yawls' today, so the yawl is treated as the base configuration and the sloop as a rig option; sail-data sites that list a 'Seabreeze 35' with 535 sq ft are describing the sloop. The Citation of 1970–1972 (hulls 107 to 135) is recorded as a factory option rather than a separate model: it changed the interior, cockpit, rudder shape and board material but not the hull, rig or dimensions, and buyers search for it by the Seabreeze name. Running changes worth knowing are aluminium port frames from about hull 50 (1966), the aluminium centerboard from about hull 70 (1967) and an aluminium stemhead fitting from about hull 100 (1969). There was never a Mk II.

Chainplates are the boat's structural weak point. The originals are a lower-grade stainless bonded into the hull and glassed over, the backstay plate is lagged into an oak knee sealed inside the lazarette, and none can be inspected easily; deck leaks leave the plates wet in oxygen-starved crevices, and the association has logged several failures, nearly all lower shrouds breaking at deck level, one of which brought down the deck-stepped mast. The aluminium centerboard fitted from about hull 70 corrodes where it meets stainless pins and cables, and its aluminium lifting tube and turning block can corrode through, so it needs isolating bushings, aluminium-safe antifouling and periodic sandblasting and epoxy. The bronze board on earlier boats is nearly maintenance-free, though its long wire pennant still needs replacing on schedule. The 1996 survey found blistering rare and minor, but eight to ten boats with small areas of deck delamination on the flat foredeck and around aft-deck openings. Original Gray and Palmer petrol engines have mostly been replaced.

Prices have been flat for decades: the 1996 owners' survey found boats changing hands for $25,000 to $55,000, with $35,000 typical for a clean example, and Cruising World quoted $30,000 to $50,000 in 1997. Inspect the chainplates first (rust weeps or any movement mean replacement in 316 or bronze), then the centerboard, pennant and pivot pin and, on aluminium-board boats, the lifting tube and turning block, then the deck around the foredeck and hatches and the age of the standing rigging and swage fittings. A diesel repower, new chainplates and re-rigging are the upgrades worth paying for; a tired galley or upholstery is cheap to fix. Establish the hull number (the plaques were removable, but the number is pencilled on the raw plywood behind drawers and doors) and whether the boat is an original or a Citation, since interiors and cockpits differ, and confirm the rig: yawls are the majority and carry a modest premium. Beware of boats that have gained weight from refrigeration, tankage and electronics, which Cruising World noted has slowed a once nimble design.

The Allied Seabreeze Owners Association grew from a meeting of about a dozen owners at the Atlantic City Sailboat Show around 1993, organised by Gene Reardon, who spent the next decade tracing most of the fleet; by June 1996 it had 101 members and could account for all but 34 of the 135 hulls, with five known losses including one on a reef in the South Pacific. Its website hosts the original MacLear & Harris drawings, the period brochures and price lists, sail data, rigging and centerboard articles and an online hull database, and it is the first stop for provenance on any boat.