History
There never was a small yacht better named than the folkboat ... truly the people's boat, able to go coastal cruising or deep sea wandering. Tord Sunden's Nordic Folkboat is a sailing legend. She was one of the few items of exceptional merit to emerge from the horror years of 1939-1945 when much of the world was experiencing the convulsions of war.

Sunden's home country was Sweden, which had declared neutrality in World War II. In the early 1940s the Swedes organized an international competition for a new common Scandinavian class of sailboats. The organizers were looking for an efficient, fast, seaworthy, one-design racing boat that could also be used for family cruising during weekends and holidays.

Nearly 60 designs were entered for the competition, but none were accepted outright. Tord Sunden, an amateur yacht designer at the time, was chosen by the organizing committee to pull together the most promising aspects of the top four designs submitted. The result was the nautical equivalent of the German Volkswagen, the people's car. She was named the people's boat, the Folkboat. But little did the organizers of the competition imagine how successful she would be. Eighty orders poured in from all over Sweden before the final plans were even completed.

Today, 60 or so years after the first Nordic Folkboat was launched, there are thousands of Folkboats afloat: wooden ones and fiberglass ones. The majority are in Europe, with Sweden leading the pack, followed by Denmark, Germany, Finland, and the United Kingdom. There are about 120 in San Francisco, where the San Francisco Bay Folkboat Association administers the fleet, and where the Folkboat's wonderful heavy-weather performance is much admired.

Performance
Any class that is still going strong after more than 50 years obviously has something good going for it. The Folkboat has several excellent features, not the least of which is her performance. For a full-keel boat, she is surprisingly fast and close-winded. Her PHRF rating is 228 for boats with outboard engines and 234 for boats with inboards. On top of that, she's easy to handle. She can do 25 knots with the rails down and her tiller being held dead fore-and-aft. No weather helm there.

The Folkboat is indeed revered for her ability to carry sail in strong winds, and no doubt her extra-heavy keel is largely responsible for this. The ballast ratio is an extraordinary 54 percent, which means the iron keel alone weighs more than all the rest of the boat. Little wonder that Folkboats were, and still are, so popular in the blustery San Francisco Bay area.

"The only complaint I ever heard was that they just didn't hold enough beer for a long voyage. I know that might sound a little funny, but once you have sailed on one, it becomes the measure of all other boats you ever sail. I bet you won't find many that handle as well." -Frank Costello

Her performance as a seaboat is legendary, of course. It wasn't just a coincidence that two of the six boats in the first Singlehanded Transatlantic Race, in 1960, were Folkboats. Valentine Howells raced in the conventional Folkboat Eira, while Colonel H. G. ("Blondie") Hasler sailed a modified Folkboat, the famous Jester, which had a standard hull but a flush deck with a central control point and a Chinese lug rig.

The long keel gives the Folkboat good directional stability, and this, together with her zesty performance and her easy motion, makes her a sensible choice for a singlehanded voyager.

Those Who Own Folkboats
This is a boat people fall in love with so passionately that it's difficult to get an owner to say a word against a Folkboat. Her classic beauty alone is enough to still all criticism.

Yet the physical exploits of her devotees give us valuable insights into her abilities when the sole arbiter is the sea itself. Blondie Hasler's wooden Jester is a good example of this, she crossed the Atlantic 14 times.

In 1975, a 55-year-old Australian grandmother named Ann Gash sailed around the world singlehanded in a Folkboat called Ilimo. She chose the east-to-west route via the Panama Canal, but had the boat shipped for part of the way, from Ghana to England.

In 1963, Adrian Hayter circumnavigated the world alone, sailing halfway from England to New Zealand in Sheila II, a 32-footer. But he completed the New Zealand to England leg in a Folkboat called Valkyr.

Mike Bale also sailed from England to New Zealand in a Folkboat called Jellicle, and had a crew for part of the way.

More recently, a British Folkboat called Storm Petrel was completing an unusual circumnavigation in 1998 with solo sailor Tony Curphey aboard. It was unusual because Tony's wife, Suzanne, was also making a singlehanded circumnavigation aboard her own boat, a 30-foot Seadog ketch called Glory. They had originally set out separately, not knowing each other, but they met in New Zealand and got married in the Solomon Islands.

Tony's Folkboat often beat Suzanne's Seadog into port on subsequent legs of their tandem voyage and regularly clocked up 130 miles a day in the trade winds. Their plan, once they had completed their solo circumnavigations, was to sell their boats, buy a bigger one, and carry on cruising, but together this time.

There are undoubtedly many other Folkboats that have sailed around the world and around Cape Horn, singlehanded and crewed, whose names have not been recorded in the annals of small boat sailing. There was a time, 50 years ago, when such voyages were rare, and records were kept of individual exploits. Now that they are more commonplace, nobody seems to be keeping the tally, which is a great pity. Perhaps the Internet will one day find a place for the Roll of Honor of small boat circumnavigations; if it does, the Folkboat will surely feature prominently.

Basic Design
The Folkboat is a design marvel with much thought for efficiency. The results of this well designed boat make for a much more seaworthy vessel. The first boats were, of course, built of wood. Their hulls were clinker-built, or of lapstrake construction, with each strake overlapping the upper edge of its neighbor below. This makes the boat strong and light. It also adds greatly to her good looks by repeating and emphasizing the sweet lines of her sheer.

The cockpit is a compromise between the needs of racers and cruisers. The Folkboat has a deep cockpit that is more sheltered and more comfortable while featuring a self-bailing cockpit. A self-bailing cockpit will not endanger the ship if it fills with water. The rudder hangs outboard of the transom, a simple, strong and easily accessible arrangement. The tiller sweeps across the aft deck, but doesn't interfere much with the crew in the cockpit.

The Folkboat has a rounded underbody with fairly slack bilges, a combination that makes for slight initial tenderness but more than compensates for it with comfort at sea. After that initial tilt, she stiffens up considerably, so much so that she is able to race in winds strong enough to keep other classes in port. The topsides and the cabintop are low, offering little resistance to the wind and making no concessions to creature comfort below. The foredeck is uncluttered. There is only a hatch and a mooring cleat to stub your toes on and she's convenient to work on.

The transom, which was given a handsome rake so it would better match the moderate overhang of the bow, and thus the aft end of the full keel also was clipped away to line up with it. That, together with the generous cutaway up forward, greatly reduced the wetted area of the keel without affecting its efficiency. Early critics thought the raked rudder would make steering difficult under some circumstances, but time and experience proved them wrong.

Accommodations
It doesn't take long to describe the Folkboat's accommodations, although they can vary from builder to builder. The cabin is small, however it's capable of having all the convenances of home. The V-berth has two berths more than 6 feet long, and the main cabin has two settee berths which are even longer. Some boats have an enclosed head compartment, and others are supplied with a portable head. There's a rudimentary galley, and there may even be a small chart table. There's usually a hanging locker somewhere, and a few lockers and shelves scattered around the place. Nowhere is there sufficient room to swing a cat. The interior is bright and airy, though, especially with the companionway sliding hatch open, and seems very welcoming and protected in contrast to the exposed conditions of the cockpit.

The Rigging
The Nordic Folkboat is a Bermudian sloop with a wooden mast and a conspicuous fractional rig the forestay joins the mast about two-thirds of the way up from the deck. This makes for a small working jib and a large mainsail. It is, perhaps, not as efficient as a rig with a larger jib, seeing that the jib does most of the work when going to windward, but it certainly makes for happier cockpit crews when the load on the jib sheets is small.

Folkboats not subject to the one-design racing rules usually have modern masthead rigs and aluminum spars. Many of the boats in the United States are rigged that way. If you're more, interested in crossing oceans than in racing around the buoys, the aluminum masthead rig might be preferable because it makes provision for double lower shrouds in place of the single after lower shroud that is standard on wooden masts.

The mast is stepped on deck but appears to be well supported by a massive deck beam and seems not to compress the cabintop as so many others do. Presumably, after more than 50 years of racing and ocean cruising, the builders of Folkboats have got it right.

Right from the beginning, Nordic Folkboat owners agreed to race without spinnakers, to make thing easier for family sailors and shorthanded crews. But those gung-ho Finns couldn't stand it. Even though they couldn't compete internationally with spinnakers, they raced with them among themselves.

"We simply think that sailing with a spinnaker is more fun, and that it makes sailing more colorful," explained a member of the Finnish Folkboat Association.

Conclusion
A Folkboat represents good value for a boat capable of carrying one or two people around the world. Besides that, if you have any finer feelings at all, you'll have to agree that she's one of the most beautiful boats ever made to go to sea. Just looking at her riding to anchor in her own reflection in a tropical lagoon will make your heart leap with delight.

Happy Sailing!

Back to my first boat index

Copyright 2008, Robert Hansen
rhstudio.com | Email: rh@rhstudio.com