BUYING A USED: HARDY 36 COMMODORE
Nick Burnham sings the praises of this legendary British built all-weather cruiser
It’s a pocket battleship” is Anthony Purnell’s perfect summation of his rock-solid Hardy 36 Commodore. Anthony has owned the 1998 example you see on these pages for five years. It followed his first boat, a Hardy 20 Fishing, kept on the Medway. “I actually wanted this boat for my retirement, but they don’t come up for sale very often so when I saw it advertised a year before I actually needed it, I went for it. At the time, I lived in Warwickshire and was working in
London, so I kept the boat in Gillingham Marina and stayed on it. It meant I finished work with a smile on my face knowing that I was going to my boat every evening”.
Designed by Andrew Wolstenholme and launched at the London Boat Show in 1996, it was at the time the biggest boat that Norfolk-based Hardy had ever built. An ‘evergreen’ design, the solid upright trawler yacht style was never a fashion statement and therefore has never gone out of fashion. It’s still in production. “We’ve updated the boat a little with things like bonded flush-fit tinted windows in the superstructure instead of aluminiumframed windows,” says Oliver James, Managing Director of Windboats Marine Limited, which owns Hardy Marine along with Gunfleet Yachts. “And whilst the traditional navy blue hull band is still popular, recently we have had clients request different hull colours with no top stripe, as seen on the 2018 Hardy 42 in dark grey, or the Hardy 65 in light grey. As standard, we now offer a white hull with light grey top stripe to give a more contemporary styling, but any colour combination is possible from the gelcoat
selection chart. In fact, all of our boats are built to order, allowing the client to semi-customise the build to suit their own cruising requirements; everything from engine choice and other equipment through to interior layout and styling”. Inside, teak carpentry was originally standard, with cherry an option; today light oak is the default choice, but with teak, maple or cherry on the options list.
SPACIOUS INTERIOR
And inside is a good place to start, because the space and layout of the 36 Commodore is impressive. That trawler yacht concept means an aft cabin layout, giving internal space the full length of the boat and gifting the owner a generous cabin with plenty of stowage and floor space, plus a decent ensuite. At the other end of the boat, the guest cabin features vee berths over 6ft long and 2ft wide, with reasonable room for two pairs of feet at its confluence. A sliding board infills the berths to make a double if preferred, and guests use the day heads directly outside the door. Unusually for a trawler yacht design, the galley is also forward on the lower deck, opposite the heads. It’s compact, but well equipped – you don’t often see four burner hobs on sub-40ft boats – and the size means you can wedge yourself safely in place if conditions are boisterous.
And as a result, the unencumbered main deck saloon is a great size, and has a number of useful features. The dinette boasts a high/low table with folding leaves so that you can choose between a large dining table, a small low-level coffee table or even slide it completely away beneath the seating. Two stools opposite allow dining right around the table, or infill the dinette once the table is stowed away to create an occasional third sleeping area. And opposite, a hinged panel lifts up behind the
helm to create a chart area. But perhaps the most subtle change that can be made is that a section of the dinette will ‘backflip’ into place alongside the helm to create a high-level forward-facing seat for the copilot.
It’s a layout that works well for Neal Gordon, another owner on his second Hardy. “We had a Hardy 32 previously, which Hardy Marine modified for us very effectively. Having decided that we didn’t want a sportscruiser or flybridge boat, the 32 fitted our needs well, except for the fact that there was only one permanent cabin, the lower deck had a converting dinette and the saloon on the main deck another converting dinette. Hardy Marine converted the lower dinette into a second cabin with bunk beds for us so effectively that when it was finished, you’d swear it was how the boat had been built originally. We ran that boat on inland waterways for two years, and when we decided to move up to a larger boat for offshore cruising it was an obvious step to move up to a larger Hardy.
Not only are the boats great, but it’s nice dealing with a small personal company rather than a volume builder. You can ring up and speak to the MD, and most of the guys working there have been there for years so there is masses of experience and knowledge to tap into. Although the 32 worked well, the accommodation of the 36 Commodore is a big step up; having sleeping cabins at either end of the boat gives better convenience and more privacy.”
YACHTSMAN’S MOTORBOAT
The deck spaces also work well. The aft cabin configuration means no sunken well of an aft cockpit, but Hardy put high rails with dodgers around the raised deck over the aft cabin, creating an outside social area, and ahead of that, a couple of steps lead up to a flybridge with an unusual floating helm console that you can walk completely around.
When MBY tested a 36 Commodore in 1996, that boat was fitted with a pair of Volvo Penta TAMD 41 200hp shaft-drive engines that gave 17.5 knots flat out and a 12.5 knot cruise speed. Hardy also offered a single TAMD 41, perhaps more suited to inland waterway use, but soon switched to twin Perkins Sabre 225hp motors with similar performance results. Inherently simple engines, Anthony Purnell refers to them as “analogue engines in a digital world – go on a course and you can maintain them yourself”. They’re tough too. Marine electronics company Raymarine run a Hardy as a test bed for its products and have just replaced its engines after clocking up 7,000 hours in 10 years. Later boats got twin Yanmar 250hp engines. A Perkins Sabre 265hp became the single-engine option, but only one boat was fitted with this choice, a nod perhaps to the inherently excellent sea keeping of the Wolstenholme hull.
A semi-displacement form, the deep forefoot and tight round bilge run into a pretty substantial keel, with aft sections of the hull flattening out almost completely. Andrew Wolstenholme described it as “a short, squat pilot boat”, and certainly it inherited the allweather wave-punching capability of a pilot
boat, something that Simon Clarke can attest to. Simon has a very recent example, a 2019 build fitted with the Yanmar 250hp engines. It replaced a Rustler 42 sailing boat, in fact 50 per cent of Hardy 36 buyers have been ex-yachtsmen keen to buy a ‘yachtsman’s motorboat’ according to Hardy Marine. “It was a big decision to come out of sailing,” says Simon. “We wanted to be able to travel further within the time available so that we could visit different places. I looked at other makes, including Duchy and Nelson, but Hardy had what I wanted, a semi-displacement hull for seakeeping, space and a very solid feel.
Plus I liked the people at Hardy, they’re straight talking and understood me as a client”. Simon’s first big trip was from Southampton to Dartmouth. “The forecast was force five to six, the reality was a force eight. We encountered all manner of seas, standing waves, confused seas and some properly big waves. We slowed down to six knots and just kept plodding through. We were very pleased to see Dartmouth, but it gave me tremendous faith in the boat and certainly confirmed my decision to choose the 36 Commodore”.
ALTERNATIVE VERSIONS
Hardy Marine has built 40 Hardy 36 models so far, including two DS models without aft cabins and with larger cockpits at main deck level. “The 36 Sedan (now 36DS – Deck Saloon) was introduced in 2012, specifically designed for her owners who wanted larger living space and a big cockpit on the same level for entertaining,” says Oliver James. “We built a second DS in 2017 that is now based in Scotland”. And in fact the model continues to be refined: “We have just announced the 36AD (Aft Deck) which uses the same proven 36 hull but with a new superstructure, inside/outside helm positions and two double cabins, both ensuite. It will have a single Yanmar 250hp engine as standard, but twin Yanmar 230hps are an option. We also offer a hybrid diesel/electric for those wishing to spend more time at slower speeds on inland waterways, but still have the single 250hp for offshore passages – it’s expected to give a top speed of 14 knots, cruising at 10-12 knots”.