West Wight Potter 19

The West Wight Potter 19 is an 18'9" hard-chine trailerable pocket cruiser with a vertically lifting steel keel, four berths and standing-headroom-free but surprisingly roomy accommodation. Herb Stewart designed it in 1971 as the HMS 18, scaling up the British Potter 14 he was building under licence in Inglewood, California. Revived as the Potter 19 in the early 1980s and built since 1992 by International Marine, it has been in production for most of five decades and is one of the best-known American micro-cruisers.

Stanley Smith designed and built the plywood Potter 14 on the Isle of Wight in 1960; Herb Stewart bought a boat and the US rights in 1966, founded HMS Marine and built it in fiberglass. In 1971 Stewart designed the larger HMS 18 for family cruising with four berths, a galley, a deeper cockpit and a hot-dip-galvanised lifting keel instead of a centreboard. HMS 18 production stopped in 1975 (resin prices), Stewart sold to Joe Edwards in 1978, and Edwards relaunched the boat around 1981–82 as the Potter 19 with hull numbers restarting at 200. The company was sold to Larry Holt in 1992 and renamed International Marine, which introduced galvanised keels again in 1996–97 and a new hull mould in 1997; Dave Dressler bought it in 2001.

A flat-bottomed, hard-chine, low-deadrise V hull with generous freeboard, a spooned raked stem and a vertical transom, built in solid fiberglass with a balsa-cored deck and cabin top. The 370 lb steel keel lifts vertically in a trunk; the rudder is transom-hung and tiller-steered. The fractional sloop carries an 83 ft² main and 52 ft² working jib on a 22 ft deck-stepped mast. Closed-cell foam under the berths gives positive flotation.

Wikipedia and Sailing Magazine (2008) both say more than 1,600 have been launched, but no source gives an exact hull count, so no production total is recorded. Owner records put the last HMS 18 at hull #71 and note that Potter 19 numbering restarted at 200, so hull number minus roughly 130 approximates the true count for Edwards-era and later boats. The boat was still in production in 2017; no discontinuation date is sourced.

Four berths (a 6'6" V-berth forward and two quarterberths), a sink to port and single-burner stove to starboard, a portable head, and about 5 ft of cabin height under the doghouse. Sources quote 54–55 in of headroom at the companionway.

There is one hull with a continuous evolution rather than generations: HMS 18 (1971–75, plywood-cored deck, ungalvanised keel), Edwards-era Potter 19 (early 1980s–1992, balsa core, cost-reduced fit-out), and International Marine boats (1992 on, galvanised keel from 1996–97, new computer-faired mould in 1997, improved keel cap from about hull #950). These are recorded as production runs, not separate models, because the market uses one name and dimensions did not change. 'HMS 18' is kept as an alias.

Good Old Boat reports slight pumping of the cabin sole in heavy weather, oil-canning of the flat topsides, gelcoat crazing at stress points, and overheated tyres and bearings on the small-wheeled trailer. Sailing Magazine notes structural problems with the keel trunk on some mid-1980s boats. Early keels were ungalvanised steel and rust.

Good Old Boat (2008) quoted under $3,000 for a mid-1980s boat and about $16,000 new; Sailing Magazine put used boats at $5,000 for the oldest to about $12,000 for late models. Prefer post-1997 International Marine boats for the new mould and galvanised keel; check the keel trunk, the keel and its winch cable, and the balsa deck around fittings. A 5 hp long-shaft outboard is standard.