Contact us and come for a trial sail. Sailing a Sunbeam can change your life.

Welcome

 

Hello and welcome to the Solent Sunbeam website. We are a friendly bunch who are enthusiastic about racing our wonderful classic keelboats.

Based at Itchenor Sailing Club in West Sussex, we race our Sunbeams at weekends and on Thursday evenings .
After racing we enjoy the company of fellow sailors, family and friends in a varied social programme in the attractive setting of our Club on the banks of Chichester Harbour.

Gayle Palmer, Class Captain

The original Sunbeams dating from 1923 are all built of wood using the same materials and traditional methods.  In 2011 the Solent Sunbeam Class approved GRP ("plastic") as an alternative construction and  adopted GRP hulled V61, Betty, after one season of intensive trialling. Three further new GRP boats are now complete and all will be racing in 2012. Their names are: V62 Firefly, V63 Dragonfly and V64 Maisy. 

The Class has also resolved to allow the wider use of epoxy glue in the wooden boats including as an external coating with GRP.
V25, Query is the first Sunbeam to be epoxy-coated, another 3 are currently awaiting their turn or nearly completed - Fay, Harmony and Sugar Daddy.

We race our boats to Cowes every year for the Dainty Dish and leave our boats in Cowes for the Classic Yacht Regatta, two weekends of racing followed by Cowes Week and returning home with a crew race. In 2012 there are also special celebrations for the Jubilee and the Olympics plus a race to Bembridge.

We welcome people to Contact Us for either crewing, owning, partnerships or chartering or just to take part in everything these wonderful keel boats have to offer.Get to know the Solent Sunbeams better and come out for a sail yourself.

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High quality and Close Racing for 2012

The prospects for 2012 are really exciting with the new grp boats taking part and also the three newly splined and epoxied wooden boats on the start line next year. Both the new approved hull types will be battling it out with the existing highly tuned traditional wooden hulled Solent Sunbeams. It ought to be anyone's season!

We also have in prospect a splendid racing program including three passage races and two Solent Regattas. These are just the waters and conditions that Alfred Westmacott designed the Solent Sunbeams for.

The fleet of 21 wooden Sunbeams is fast being augmented by the new builds. The current situation with the grp project is that of the four hulls built to date V61 Betty has been sold to Becky Wickens; V64 Maisy has been sold to Sue Smith and Peter Goddard; V62 Firefly is now complete and will be launched in April next year and raced by Stewart Reed and John Mawdsley; and V63 is currently in Andrew Oliver's boatyard having it's woodwork fitted prior to being completed in December at Haines Boatyard. Sample colours for V65 and V66 are being prepared by Mark Downer and all being well these two new hulls will be completed by next March, ready for fit out and hopefully new owners or charterers. When this happens the grp hulls will represent about a quarter of the Fleet in commission.

What is the underlying attraction that brings this success? Perhaps the everlasting appeal of the features set out on these web pages,

1. The Heritage of a Classic Yacht
2. Just one crew
3. Friendly
4. Thursday evenings
5. Good Value
6. Chichester and Solent
7. Itchenor Sailing Club

 

How I Came to Buy a Sunbeam

"I grew up on Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland sailing an Enterprise with my school friend Mike Robinson (Swallow at ISC), looking longingly at the biggest class at Whiterock SC, the River class, which is about the same age and configuration as the Solent Sunbeam.  Mike and I parted ways donkeys years ago, and I spent the next few decades sailing on big stuff in Australia, Arabian Gulf, the Great Lakes, the West Coast of Scotland and the Gulf of Mexico. 

When the music stopped, Rosie and I decided to move as far south in the UK as possible, within reach of the kids in London, whilst retaining a place in Edinburgh.  We wound up in Itchenor, and Mike and I discovered to our surprise we were neighbors again.  Delightfully, he was still sailing, eased my entrance to the Club, and I sailed with him in his Swallow..  Whilst getting soaked in his jumped-up dinghy, I noticed these beautiful overhung sterned, fine bowed and elegant length vessels readying for the start after the Swallows.  I thought, Rivers!  At last I would own one.

So now I'm a fifty-percenter, in Honey, with a great partner in Graham Colbourne.  How lucky can you get?  I hope to sail as much as the dual location of my life currently permits.  I have every intention of winning something, although that probably depends on Graham getting me through those goalposts up the channel that I havn't figured out yet.
Thank you for welcoming me to the Class. "

Colin and Rosie MacLean

"We so appreciated the warm welcome and now feel part of the extended Sunbeam family" NEW OWNERS IN 2011

 

...... buy or charter a grp or a classic wooden Sunbeam - Boat for sale or Charter