30 YEARS AGO
NOVEMBER 1992, CB53
Three decades ago, the cover boat had a strong, double-ended, working look – the sort of vessel that you might imagine had descended from a Scandinavian fishing boat of some sort. She is, in fact, Sea Witch, a 45ft design by the American William Atkin, not a well-known name even today, but the man behind the design of Sir Robin Knox-Johnston’s Suhaili, which also featured in the issue, alongside a biography of the Atkin by our technical editor at the time, John Leather. Mark Fishwick looked at the Finesse 24 in our intermittent ‘Aordable Classics’ series, and recalls a childhood meeting with the builder, when his father was considering buying one (he went for a GRP yacht in the end). In the ads, Loran plotters vied with Walker towed logs in a stand-o between old and new technology. It is interesting to note that while most of the world was following German reunification in 1990, a much smaller news story (the world’s first web page) would have far greater ramifications for the future. It seemed sailing was not far behind the technological curve, with the early GPS sets coming out around the same time.