Home waters to high latitudes

Rupert Holmes test sails the Nicholson 32, one of the most desirable early glass fibre yachts and still a great second-hand buy

- Rupert Holmes

The Nicholson 32 was one of the first production-built GRP yachts of its size. It quickly gained a reputation for being an ultimate go-anywhere cruiser that was also fitted out to a high standard. Some 370 were built over an 18-year period, following the launch of the prototype in 1963, and examples have ventured to all parts of the globe.

Well known boats include Claire Francis’s Gulliver G, a 1966 model in which she completed her first solo Atlantic crossing in 1973. More recently, Tony Curphey briefly became the oldest person to complete a non-stop circumnavigation via the Southern Ocean on board Nicola Deux when he completed the Longue Route last year.

At the same time, many Nic 32s have been used as excellent family cruisers.

The boat was the result of a partnership between pioneering glass fibre moulding company Halmatic and the Camper & Nicholson design office and shipyard. It was designed by Charles A Nicholson and his son Peter, whose family had an enviable reputation for yacht design, including America’s Cup challengers Shamrock and Endeavour, plus a long string of desirable custom ocean racing and cruising yachts.

Very heavy displacement was married to a high ballast ratio, slender beam and ‘a cod’s head and mackerel tail’ hull form. This shape, with full forward sections and relatively slender aft, had long been believed by British designers to produce a fast and sea-kindly hull. And it creates more for cabin space than might be expected given the Nic 32’s relatively narrow overall beam. In the early 1960s, no one knew how strong glass fibre boats needed to be and construction is of massively thick chopped strand mat. It’s a crude construction by today’s standards, but benefits from being strong and easily repaired.