Price Reduction – 1981 Colin Archer 12m Gaff Cutter

Classic Colin Archer design, VILDE is a strongly built and beautifully maintained wooden cruiser. Perfect for long-distance cruising with a storied history and robust construction, she’s an ideal vessel for those seeking both adventure and comfort on the seas.

FURTHER BROKER’S COMMENTS:

Launched in 1982, to an original 1902 Colin Archer design commissioned for a Danish physician, VILDE was built by Norway’s legendary traditional boat yard – Hardanger fartøyvernsenter.

Unmistakably a Colin Archer design with her canoe-stern, full-length keel, and topsail-rigged gaff cutter sailplan, VILDE is extremely strongly built using 2” Norwegian oak planks over frames with her top strake, deck and everything above completed in 2” unvarnished Burma teak.

Purchased by her current owners in 1998, VILDE has been used for serious offshore adventures including multiple crossings of the Atlantic in both low and high latitudes and has more recently returned to her build yard for an extensive refit to modernise her sail-handling, navigation, close-quarters manoeuvring and cruising comfort.

Her specification highlights include:-
• Oak on oak construction with 2” teak deck
• Solid teak interior joinery
• Full-length keel with lead ballast and fully supported rudder
• Norwegian Spruce gaff-rigged mast with topsail
• Retractable Oregan Pine bowsprit to reduce LOA in port
• Cutter rig with furler for running jib and jib-boom for working jib
• Andersen electric main halyard winch
• Lewmar self-tailing primary winches
• Doyle Dacron sails
• Hydraulic servo-steering system
• Monitor windvane self-steering system
• Sabb (Mitsubishi) 72hp diesel engine with shaft drive and 2 or 3 bladed propellers
• Sleipner Sidepower bowthruster
• Raymarine autopilot
• Simrad chartplotter
• B&G sailing instruments
• Lithium-Ion service batteries
• Shorepower
• Hot & cold pressurised fresh water
• Plumbing for watermaker
• Vacuum heads with holding tank
• Seawater cooled refrigeration
• Eberspacher hot-air diesel heating
• Webasto 10kw engine-supplied hot-air blower heating
• Electric anchor windlass
• Sprayhood
• Tender and outboard
• 6-man liferaft

Note – VILDE is Norwegian registered and taxes paid.

OWNER’S COMMENTS:

We bought VILDE in January 1998 and spent the following year preparing her for an Atlantic cruise with the kids which we performed in in the 1999 to 2000.

We had a fantastic trip across Atlantic to the Caribbean where we cruised among the islands for a couple of months before going north via the intercoastal waterway to New York and Boston. We then went to Newfoundland and visited the old Viking settlement before crossing to Greenland.

Crossing the Davis Strait to Greenland we were hit by a storm with 26 m/s winds and 10 m waves but the boat performed perfectly.

We spent 5 weeks in complete sunshine in Greenland waters among humongous icebergs, whales and seals, before crossing back to Norway via Ireland. We repeated a similar trip with our grandkids in 2018-19

We then went directly to the boatyard in Hardanger for a complete photo-documented refurbishment. We splined all the strakes across above the waterline, re-caulking the rest of the hull. We also removed the front and stern stem from that original fusion at the waterline. At the deck the old Sikaflex was removed and the boat was re-caulked with cotton, then primed twice and new Sikaflex was filled in. The total cost for the refurbishment was 1 million NOK (approx. Euro 87,000).

VILDE it is not the typical Colin Archer design as she is approx. 12.25m feet long (LOD) but only 3.60 cm wide, meaning she’s quite narrow. This gives her excellent sailing capabilities and on longer crossings, such as the Atlantic, we saw an average of 6 knots, with a record run of 192Nm in one 24hr period, giving her an average of 8 knots in 29 knots of wind.

Living on board a wooden boat like VILDE is very different from a modern boat. Firstly, being in the warm tropics we experienced a cool boat during the night because of her thick solid oak hull which also kept cool during the daytime because of her white hull.

Her 2-inch-thick teak deck and thick hull kept her very cozy and warm in the Arctic with close to freezing water temperatures. In addition, during heavy sailing her thick wooden construction keeps her very quiet inside, and as an example of this is that the kids were sitting down below playing chess during the storm crossing the Davis Strait.

1981 Colin Archer 12m Gaff Cutter ‘VILDE’ for sale – Now asking Euro 150,000 Norwegian VAT paid – full details here

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