Delivering the Gunboat 62: The Original Grand Lady of Gunboat
Before even getting on the plane home from a three-part Transatlantic crossing on a Gunboat 68, and the phone rang again. Another Gunboat, another Atlantic crossing — this time one of the originals, stuck in the Azores and needing a hand to get home.
There wasn’t even time to make it back before the next job started. The first day on board went to getting the boat sorted and safe enough to move — repairs, checks, making sure everything that needed fixing before departure actually got fixed. By day two, the crossing from the Azores to Gibraltar was properly underway, on almost exactly the same route just completed on the 68 days earlier. A genuinely rare chance to compare two Gunboats from different eras back to back, with the differences obvious within the first 24 hours.
An older boat, a different philosophy
The 62 is noticeably different in layout from the 68 — a more traditional cockpit arrangement, multiple separate entries down into each hull rather than the more integrated living space of the newer design. The aft cockpit sits properly as a tub, without the deep roof overhang the 68 carries, which changes the whole feel of moving around the boat underway. Not a bad thing, just a different design philosophy — a clear line between where you step down into the boat and where you stand on deck, rather than one continuous space.
Sail inventory came together for the trip as double-headed running rig — a big J0 and a J3 forward, full main up, working the boat efficiently through a genuinely mixed bag of conditions across the crossing: light patches requiring motor-sailing, solid 11 to 14 knots of breeze pushing the boat comfortably into double-digit boat speeds, and building conditions later that demanded real decisions about routing.
A furler rebuilt mid-ocean
Somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, before Shayne joined the crew in the Azores, the stainless furler hardware took real damage — bent and mashed out of shape, forcing a full rebuild using whatever spare parts happened to be on board. That’s the reality of an ocean delivery: there’s no chandlery a radio call away, just the parts in the lockers and the skill to make them work. The furler went back together and back onto the boat, functional again, purely from what was already carried.
A genuinely useful lesson in helm feel
One discovery partway through the crossing was worth remembering for any boat with a similar setup: the rudder blades on this boat are over-balanced. Sailing straight, the helm feels light and predictable. Turn in either direction, though, and the rudder wants to keep turning on its own rather than settling back to centre — a genuinely unsettling sensation hand-steering at 16 to 18 knots through waves, when a boat that’s meant to respond to small inputs instead wants to run away with the turn it’s already made. Most of the time the helm stays light and easy. It’s exactly when high-speed steering through waves matters most that the over-balance shows itself.
Reading the Portuguese trades
Approaching the Portuguese coast meant a real tactical decision: how far east to push into the building trade winds before conditions hit 25 knots, at which point the plan shifts to running with the breeze and keeping waves comfortably on the quarter rather than fighting them beam-on. Even on a boat this size, wave state still dictates the routing the same way it would on something far smaller — big boat, same physics.
The strategy worked. Pushing east under control, then bearing away to run with building conditions and tuck in under the headland toward flatter water, meant handling 20 to 25 knots of breeze without the discomfort that same wind would cause in an exposed sea state.
The unglamorous parts of an ocean crossing
Not everything on a passage like this is dramatic. There were days of near-zero wind drifting through the mid-Atlantic, motoring and watching the sea state and water colour shift — a genuinely striking change from deep blue to a noticeably green tint partway across, along with a pod of dolphins keeping pace off the bow. Watch systems got adjusted mid-passage too, moving from a two-person overlapping watch to a single-person rotation, giving each crew member two hours on and six comfortably off — small logistical changes that make a real difference to how rested a crew stays across a week-plus crossing.
A dinghy davit failure partway through the trip turned into a genuine lesson worth passing on: a bolted D-ring eye failed, letting the dinghy drop and press against the steering, which made the helm noticeably harder to manage until the problem was traced and sorted. It’s exactly the kind of cascading failure that starts small and compounds fast if it’s not caught early. The fix in the moment was straightforward, but the broader takeaway stuck: dinghy davits on boats like this often lack a simple safety sling running around the whole dinghy, something most standard cruising boats include as a matter of course. Worth adding to any Gunboat’s setup, and worth checking on any boat carrying a dinghy on davits.
Arrival in Toulon
Eight days after leaving the Azores, the boat came into Toulon at night — the same destination, almost the same route, as the 68 delivery just completed. A final rig check up the mast closed out the job properly, making sure nothing was left loose or questionable before signing off and heading home. Checking the rig before walking away is the difference between a clean handover and a problem waiting to surface on the next person’s watch.
Two deliveries back to back, two very different eras of the same boat family, and a genuinely good comparison of how far Gunboat’s design has evolved between the original 62 and today’s 68 — same DNA, different priorities, both still very much capable boats.
In the Members Library, the full systems breakdown covering clutch arrays and deck padeye layout on the Gunboat 68 also applies directly here — same underlying design logic, same load-matching principles, carried across the whole Gunboat range.