Sunbeam

A Solent Sunbeam on the hard at Itchenor, an elegant and really interesting keel boat class.

Apparently when Alfred Westmacott designed the boat he had in mind that "that a lady could perform any task on the yacht". It's claimed that this is the reason for the many husband and wife teams in the Solent fleet.

The original Sunbeams date from 1923 and are all built of wood using the same materials and traditional methods. However in 2011 the Solent Sunbeam Class approved GRP as an alternative construction and adopted a new build  V61  Betty, after a season of intensive trialling.

Six further new GRP boats are now complete and all will be racing in 2014.

When I was taking the pictures I didn't think to check on the construction, but having looked at the photos those top sides do look remarkably fair and all the deck equipment and fittings look very new so maybe this is one of the new boats.