The Bowman 57 Ketch : The Perfect Family Boat

We’ve found the perfect family boat. Our 57 foot  Bowman ketch, Searcher. She’s fast, comfortable in all kinds of weather, roomy, and easy to sail, even single handed. She is a grand old lady, built in 1977 in the UK. She was designed by Holman-Pain, with a midship cockpit and raised saloon . . . the ancestor to today’s Oysters.

What makes this Bowman the “Perfect Family Boat” is the use of space, on deck and bellow. She has 5 private cabins, four with double-bunk,. There’s space for a crew of two forward with their own head and shower. There are two cabins amidships, each with upper and lower bunks. Our two kids each have their own cabin, with ample room for “their stuff”  or a sleep-over guest. A second head with shower services these cabins. The saloon, amidships, has a pilot berth, used mostly for storage except when underway on a long voyage, when it is a berth for a crew member.The salon table can seat 6 comfortably, or sleep a kid or two. There is a large and efficient gallery to starboard, and a large nav-station cum ship’s office to port. This space provides access to the aft cabin for the owner, with two bunks, which can be made into a queen size bunk. plus a separate head and a shower stall. Count them, 10 bunks, eleven if you add in  the navigator’s berth in the nav-station, which we use for storage. There are lockers and book shelves all over the place, for boat schooling supplies, our library  of books, CD ands DVDs.

Searcher at anchor below Shirley’s Heights in England Harbor, Antigua April 2010.

The 135 HP Volvo diesel engine is under the saloon floor, well insulated, so well so it’s hard to tell when the engine has started. The 4 KW generator is in the lazerette, aft.

On deck, the cockpit can seat 8 around a removable table, under the dodger and cockpit awning. The aft deck of the mizzen mast is where we carry the dinghy when off shore. At anchor this space becomes a “back yard” for the kids, with a swing under the mizzen boom. The foredeck is large and open, with space for a hammock, two kayaks, and room for the kids to swing on the spinnaker halyards.

Searcher is strong and safe. With a 7.5 foot keel she’s comfortable in all kids of a seaway. She fast . . . under sail we cruse at 7 to 8 knots in 15 to 20 knots of wind and can power along at 6.7 to 7 knots with the engine at 2400 RPM. She can do 150 to 180 miles a days under sail, with the occasional 200-mile day, making long open ocean voyages practical. We can keep ahead of mist weather systems, or steer out of their way.

Searcher’s 57 feet on deck gives her a 48-foot water line . .  allowing her a 8 to 9 knot hull speed. Shorter boats that average say 6 kts, make 144 miles a day, and will  take over 4 days to to make the 640 miles voyage from Newport to Bermuda. Searcher, at 7.5 knots is capable of making 180 miles in 24 hours. We can cover the same 640 miles in just 3.5 days, a whole day shorter over the shorter, slower boats

We have a 10.5-foot AB RIB inflatable dinghy with a 15HP Yamaha outboard that scoots along, fast enough to tow the kids on knee boards. The RIB can also push or pull Searcher along at 4 kts in calm water when needed. We bought the 2-cycle outboard, because it is 20 pounds lighter than the 4-stroke, making it easier to haul up and mount n the push-pit aft when underway.

There is a VHF radios in the cockpit and one in the Nav-station, plus a SSB transceiver, three GPS units, radar, loud hailer, EPIRB, everything that’s need for serious off shore sailing and life aboard in the tropics.

We have just completed a year aboard, sailing from Maine to the Caribbean and back. You can read about the adventure elsewhere on this website.

Searcher at the Rockport Boat Club dock, September 2009, just prior to departure for the Caribbean.