Hi all,
Curious about peoples thoughts on a Currawong as a first keel boat? Are there any common faults or problems to look out for? They seem to have a pretty good reputation from what I've found so far, but would love to hear the opinions from those with some experience and knowledge about them, cheers.

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Whitecloud said..
Hi all,
Curious about peoples thoughts on a Currawong as a first keel boat? Are there any common faults or problems to look out for? They seem to have a pretty good reputation from what I've found so far, but would love to hear the opinions from those with some experience and knowledge about them, cheers.

I sailed one for more than 10 years. First class yacht! This one as a matter of fact.

There are a few more videos on my channel as well.

G'day Ramona,
Yeah, so far they seem to be a great little yacht, a bit like a smaller version of the SS34. I've been trying to find any flaws there known for, but so far, nothing but praise. Obviously doesn't have the performance of a modern yacht, but not planning on racing, just want something solid that sails reasonably well to cruise the east coast.

If you are in Queensland, you are in luck. Two of them for sale, one at Mooloolaba, the other at Townsville.

yachthub.com/list/yachts-for-sale/used/sail-monohulls/currawong-30-masthead-sloop/286256

yachthub.com/list/yachts-for-sale/used/sail-monohulls/currawong-30/271568

I think the one at Townsville is the better buy of the two.

Let us know how you go in your quest.

Hi Whitecloud,

I bought Kinora, a Currawong 30, in May 2020. She is my first boat. A few comments from my experiences may help.

Negatives first:
1) it's cost a lot more than I was expecting.
2) as an old boat, most jobs involve fixing all the dodgy repairs by previous owners.
3) internal layout is not as good as a modern boat.
4) the Bukh DV20 is very noisy (but in very good condition).
5) the ring frame for the keel stepped mast will have to be replaced (should have listened to Lydia...).
6) limited fuel (40 l) and water (110 l) capacity.

Positives second:
1) she is a joy to sail, forgiving, balanced and goes well to windward.
2) original build quality is very good, no osmosis in 46 years and very solid.
3) she is a joy to sail.
4) furling headsail, sail controls back to the cockpit, easy to single hand.
5) she is a joy to sail.
6) most things are simple so someone with basic skills can fix most things.

Oh, and did I mention she is a joy to sail ... ?

Happy to answer any specific questions and hopefully some of the other Currawong owners will add their thoughts.

Cheers,
Kinora

As many of our members will testify, they are fantastic boats, easy to sail and great in heavy weather.

Be careful as they getting long in the tooth. In particular the metal ring frame unit is coming up for replacement on most of the Currawongs, in fact almost any older metal thing will need replacement. With the exception of cracked keel bolts (Currawongs have an encapsulated keels) all the things that go wrong with old fiberglass boats can go wrong with Currawongs. Generally the more original the better and less likely you will have issues with "modifications"

They are a relatively small 30' boat so you need to make sure it's big enough for what you want to do with it. If you are just pottering around the bay then it probably isn't a big deal to get most of these old boats seaworthy, but if you have aspirations to take it racing off shore, its a big cost to get one to cat 2/3 if it wasn't already there.


A

Didn't Zues II win the Hobart one year ??

yes 1981

Evening all,
Thanks for the thoughts and advice on the Currawong, very much appreciated. The Townsville one that Cisco mentioned is the one I have my eye on, hoping to have a look in the next week or two. I'll be sure to give the ring frame some extra attention seeing that it's been mentioned. I have a feeling this one maybe fabricated from stainless, not sure if that's how they came from the factory ? Also nice to hear from Kinora that they're not prone to osmosis, was one of my worries. I'll be solo for most of the time, so good to hear about their ease of single handing. So by the sounds of it so far, fingers crossed, might be some happy days ahead, Cheers again guys.

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Whitecloud said..
Also nice to hear from Kinora that they're not prone to osmosis, was one of my worries.

I don't think this is entirely true, I have heard and seen several of Bakers boats with osmosis problems, particularly the early ones. Serious enough to justify a gel coat shave.

Cheers Andrew,
Something else to keep in mind and factor in. I'm a boily by trade, so metal's more my thing, I haven't had a great deal to do with glass, hence my concerns. But thanks again, all the info I can get is priceless and helps hugely with making decisions.

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Whitecloud said..
Evening all,
Thanks for the thoughts and advice on the Currawong, very much appreciated. The Townsville one that Cisco mentioned is the one I have my eye on, hoping to have a look in the next week or two. I'll be sure to give the ring frame some extra attention seeing that it's been mentioned. I have a feeling this one maybe fabricated from stainless, not sure if that's how they came from the factory ? Also nice to hear from Kinora that they're not prone to osmosis, was one of my worries. I'll be solo for most of the time, so good to hear about their ease of single handing. So by the sounds of it so far, fingers crossed, might be some happy days ahead, Cheers again guys.

Apologies for the confusion here, the comment about osmosis was meant to apply only to Kinora, not a general statement about Currawongs. Thanks, Andrew, for keeping me honest ...

K.

Nah, all good Kinora,
Was more so just wondering if it was a common occurrence in the Currawongs like some other yachts. I believe the Nicholson 32's are known to have issues with it. Being a Currawong owner, is there anything in particular you wish you could change on it if you had the opportunity?

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Whitecloud said..
Nah, all good Kinora,
Was more so just wondering if it was a common occurrence in the Currawongs like some other yachts. I believe the Nicholson 32's are known to have issues with it. Being a Currawong owner, is there anything in particular you wish you could change on it if you had the opportunity?

That's a really big, very open question and I'm not sure I have the experience to be definitive. At some point, the boat is just as she is and if you want something to be different, you just have to buy a different boat. I would say that for my purposes, budget, inclination and experience, the Currawong is a really good fit for me. But it won't be for others, it's a very personal thing.

For the basic design and construction, there are probably only 2 things I would comment on.

First is the ring frame. This is mild steel and due to water draining down the mast and pooling in the sump beneath the ring frame, the mild steel is quietly rusting. Some other Currawong owners (Andrew68 for one) have replaced the mild steel ring frame with one made from stainless steel and I will need to do it one day as well. Lydia, who posts on this forum, advised me to do it while the mast was out when the standing and running rigging got replaced and I should have followed their advice.

The second one is more a minor thing which can't be easily changed anyway. The clearance between the prop shaft and the hull is quite small and this restricts the diameter of the propeller. For example, I had to change the prop at the last haul out (went with a SeaHawk Autostream folding prop). The smallest they had in stock was 15" but that was too large and it had to be turned down to 14" to fit the space available. I'm not sure if this is the case, and would value the opinion of others, but this seems to limit the power that you can usefully put through the system once the pitch adjustment reaches some sort of practical limit. The end result may be that not all of the 20 hp from the DV20 is useful. That said, Kinora still motors comfortably at 6 kts so it may not be a big deal.

I guess a related thing is the prop walk. Kinora doesn't so much walk to port in reverse, she just charges wildly. This is useful in some circumstances, frightening in others and may just need me to become a better seaman to adapt to it. We did a lift and hang after the new prop was fitted, increased the forward pitch and decreased the reverse pitch but the prop walk is still impressive.

After those things, there is not really anything I'd change. Or maybe I just don't know enough to know what could be better. The accommodation is a bit cramped, there is no double berth and even 4 people is a squeeze. I've heard that the typical (for the period) pinched stern of the Currawong increases the tendency to broach but we had 30 kts and 5 m following seas going round the corner from Greenwell Point to Jervis Bay and Kinora felt very stable going downwind with a single reef in the main and the partially furled headsail poled out on the other side. The rigger who did the standing and running rigging did comment that I would get tired of the keyhole-style entrance to the companionway and at 66 with bad knees, he's right. On the other hand, it's good exercise.

The biggest issue I have, and I'm sure others have had the same experience, is the accumulation of dodgy jobs done by previous owners who did the quickest, cheapest, dirtiest thing they could at the time. Kinora has a classic example of this and because of my inexperience, I didn't realise it until after I bought her. At some stage, a previous owner decided to stop using the fuel tank under the cabin floor. Instead of fixing the under-floor tank, they cut a hatch in the starboard cockpit seat and put a 40 litre stainless tank under the seat without separating the compartment from the rest of the boat, without fitting scupper drains to the locker and without even sealing the exposed core of the cockpit seat. When it rains, water fills the locker inside the boat and the fibreglass is delaminating from the core around the opening. Upside down or if the locker hatch comes off and suddenly there is a big problem. It's sad that someone would compromise the integrity of such a seaworthy boat in this way and I am embarrassed I didn't see the problem when I bought the boat. Converting the open locker to a watertight compartment and fitting drains is now an essential job before I will feel OK about venturing outside the Lakes.

To summarise, Kinora is a better boat than I am a sailor and it will be some time before I get frustrated by the compromises present in any design. There is probably a lot that could be better but there is already an awful lot that is right. Find someone nearby who has a Currawong and see if you can crew for them. That may help you decide.

Cheers,
Kinora

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Kinora said..

Whitecloud said..

The biggest issue I have, and I'm sure others have had the same experience, is the accumulation of dodgy jobs done by previous owners who did the quickest, cheapest, dirtiest thing they could at the time.
Cheers,
Kinora

I feel your pain! This is worth a running thread where we can try and top each others' "bloody PO" stories.

Cheers, Graeme

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Kinora said..

Whitecloud said..
Nah, all good Kinora,
Was more so just wondering if it was a common occurrence in the Currawongs like some other yachts. I believe the Nicholson 32's are known to have issues with it. Being a Currawong owner, is there anything in particular you wish you could change on it if you had the opportunity?

That's a really big, very open question and I'm not sure I have the experience to be definitive. At some point, the boat is just as she is and if you want something to be different, you just have to buy a different boat. I would say that for my purposes, budget, inclination and experience, the Currawong is a really good fit for me. But it won't be for others, it's a very personal thing.

For the basic design and construction, there are probably only 2 things I would comment on.

First is the ring frame. This is mild steel and due to water draining down the mast and pooling in the sump beneath the ring frame, the mild steel is quietly rusting. Some other Currawong owners (Andrew68 for one) have replaced the mild steel ring frame with one made from stainless steel and I will need to do it one day as well. Lydia, who posts on this forum, advised me to do it while the mast was out when the standing and running rigging got replaced and I should have followed their advice.

The second one is more a minor thing which can't be easily changed anyway. The clearance between the prop shaft and the hull is quite small and this restricts the diameter of the propeller. For example, I had to change the prop at the last haul out (went with a SeaHawk Autostream folding prop). The smallest they had in stock was 15" but that was too large and it had to be turned down to 14" to fit the space available. I'm not sure if this is the case, and would value the opinion of others, but this seems to limit the power that you can usefully put through the system once the pitch adjustment reaches some sort of practical limit. The end result may be that not all of the 20 hp from the DV20 is useful. That said, Kinora still motors comfortably at 6 kts so it may not be a big deal.

I guess a related thing is the prop walk. Kinora doesn't so much walk to port in reverse, she just charges wildly. This is useful in some circumstances, frightening in others and may just need me to become a better seaman to adapt to it. We did a lift and hang after the new prop was fitted, increased the forward pitch and decreased the reverse pitch but the prop walk is still impressive.

After those things, there is not really anything I'd change. Or maybe I just don't know enough to know what could be better. The accommodation is a bit cramped, there is no double berth and even 4 people is a squeeze. I've heard that the typical (for the period) pinched stern of the Currawong increases the tendency to broach but we had 30 kts and 5 m following seas going round the corner from Greenwell Point to Jervis Bay and Kinora felt very stable going downwind with a single reef in the main and the partially furled headsail poled out on the other side. The rigger who did the standing and running rigging did comment that I would get tired of the keyhole-style entrance to the companionway and at 66 with bad knees, he's right. On the other hand, it's good exercise.

The biggest issue I have, and I'm sure others have had the same experience, is the accumulation of dodgy jobs done by previous owners who did the quickest, cheapest, dirtiest thing they could at the time. Kinora has a classic example of this and because of my inexperience, I didn't realise it until after I bought her. At some stage, a previous owner decided to stop using the fuel tank under the cabin floor. Instead of fixing the under-floor tank, they cut a hatch in the starboard cockpit seat and put a 40 litre stainless tank under the seat without separating the compartment from the rest of the boat, without fitting scupper drains to the locker and without even sealing the exposed core of the cockpit seat. When it rains, water fills the locker inside the boat and the fibreglass is delaminating from the core around the opening. Upside down or if the locker hatch comes off and suddenly there is a big problem. It's sad that someone would compromise the integrity of such a seaworthy boat in this way and I am embarrassed I didn't see the problem when I bought the boat. Converting the open locker to a watertight compartment and fitting drains is now an essential job before I will feel OK about venturing outside the Lakes.

To summarise, Kinora is a better boat than I am a sailor and it will be some time before I get frustrated by the compromises present in any design. There is probably a lot that could be better but there is already an awful lot that is right. Find someone nearby who has a Currawong and see if you can crew for them. That may help you decide.

Cheers,
Kinora

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed and thoughtful response Kinora. I think you've pretty much summed up the conclusion I've come to, that the boat is far better than my abilities, which will allow me to grow into it over time, quite along time if judging by my sailing abilities. As you said, boats are a personal thing, and the little Currawong won't appeal to everyone, but she ticks alot of boxes for me. The key hole entrance has crossed my mind, but I've just accepted that we'll have our arguments, and dare say there'll be times I'm grateful for it. In regards to dodgy jobs, I feel your pain, seems I'm spending more and more time these days fixing things that people have cut corners on, hopefully there won't be to much of that to deal with if all works out. Thanks again for all your thoughts and insights, very much appreciated.

I had to repair the mast base on my Currawong. The poor drain holes at the base of the mast rust up and water accumulates there. I welded up a new base in 10mm 316 SS from the metal recycle shop. I then lifted the whole rig about 75mm and slipped the new base in place, lowered the mast back down and welded new SS top and sides to the girdle. I left the bottom open. 10mm plate is overkill and the bottom is not needed.
I personally liked the cabin entrance. The only problem is the mainsheet coming off the cabin top makes it difficult to get a decent purchase on the mainsheet.

This is the finished article.

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Ramona said..
I had to repair the mast base on my Currawong. The poor drain holes at the base of the mast rust up and water accumulates there. I welded up a new base in 10mm 316 SS from the metal recycle shop. I then lifted the whole rig about 75mm and slipped the new base in place, lowered the mast back down and welded new SS top and sides to the girdle. I left the bottom open. 10mm plate is overkill and the bottom is not needed.
I personally liked the cabin entrance. The only problem is the mainsheet coming off the cabin top makes it difficult to get a decent purchase on the mainsheet.

And here we were just talking about dodgy jobs by previous owners, lol, just kidding Ramona, you know what your doing, 10mm is nice and solid. I'm guessing the original frame thickness would be about 6mm? Did you find entering backwards easier with the keyhole type entry? I think it was in this forum somewhere that someone suggested entering backwards is easier with a keyhole type entry.

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Kinora said..

The biggest issue I have, and I'm sure others have had the same experience, is the accumulation of dodgy jobs done by previous owners who did the quickest, cheapest, dirtiest thing they could at the time.

... true for most of us who bought a cheaper, older first boat, and not just Currawongs.

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Whitecloud said..

Ramona said..
I had to repair the mast base on my Currawong. The poor drain holes at the base of the mast rust up and water accumulates there. I welded up a new base in 10mm 316 SS from the metal recycle shop. I then lifted the whole rig about 75mm and slipped the new base in place, lowered the mast back down and welded new SS top and sides to the girdle. I left the bottom open. 10mm plate is overkill and the bottom is not needed.
I personally liked the cabin entrance. The only problem is the mainsheet coming off the cabin top makes it difficult to get a decent purchase on the mainsheet.

And here we were just talking about dodgy jobs by previous owners, lol, just kidding Ramona, you know what your doing, 10mm is nice and solid. I'm guessing the original frame thickness would be about 6mm? Did you find entering backwards easier with the keyhole type entry? I think it was in this forum somewhere that someone suggested entering backwards is easier with a keyhole type entry.

I think the girdle is only 4mm steel. I used to just swing forwards through the hatch. The only real downside with this sort of entry is you can not sit in the hatchway to keep watch while the yacht is being steered with the self steering. The cockpit sides are much higher than a lot of yachts and the cabin top is just the right height to look over so that's where I spent most of my time. The cockpit is actually more comfortable than my SS34's cockpit.

Cheers Ramona,
Every boat is going to have it's compromises I guess, not sure if you'd even call them compromises. I think in the end what it'll come down to is how much work it'll need overall to bring it up to the level where I'm happy with it. As yourself and many others would know, it doesn't take much for the dollars to start adding up, especially with the older boats as Andrew has mentioned. I shall find out in the next week or two, and if for some reason it doesn't happen with this one, think I'll still stick with getting a Currawong for my first keel boat, kinda got my heart set on one now, Cheers again.