Hunter 310 - Practical Sailor Print Edition Article
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8/13/2019 Hunter 310 - Practical Sailor Print Edition Article Hunter 310 This innovative family boat typifies Hunter’s design philosophy with its B&R rig, radar arch, circular cockpit and good value, but owners cite numerous niggling problems. Hunter Marine is one of the two largest sailboat builders in the US (Hunter claims more dollar volume, Catalina more boats sold). Its beginnings go back to the 1950’s when Henry Luhrs, grandson of a New York city chandler, used his last paycheck as a carpenter to begin building wooden lapstrake sea skiffs in Morgan, New Jersey. Eventually, he sold Luhrs Boat Company to marine conglomerate Bangor Punta and, shortly thereafter, established both of his sons in boatbuilding. John Luhrs bought fledgling Silverton Marine in 1969 and Warren Luhrs founded Hunter Marine in 1972. Hunter Marine builds cruising and daysailing sailboats from 14' to 45'. From the beginning it has courted “the broadest possible market.” Its boats have always been at the affordable end of the price scale; some have called them cheaply made. They are also widely known for innovation. Along the way, CEO Luhrs has been at the center of a highly visible racing program. Beginning with the 1980 Observer Single- handed TransAtlantic Race (OSTAR), in which he skippered Tuesday’s Child, Luhrs has sailed where theories meet the waves. Most recently, “test pilot” Steve Pettengill sailed Hunter’s Child to second overall in the 1994-95 BOC Challenge. Over the years there have been complaints from Hunter owners about the design and construction of their boats. Luhrs acknowledges some of the early problems, but late in the ‘80’s he made a celebrated return from campaigning his offshore boats to again take over as full-time manager of his company. Hunter increased its warranty from one year to five and underwent a period of re-engineering. Since then, the company has introduced new models at better than two a year and has combined its emphasis on engineering and innovation with its offshore racing program. The Hunter 310 is a member of Hunter’s newest generation: cockpit arches are standard (but can be left off at a small extra cost), the cockpit well is virtually circular, the rig is fractional, the hull is rounded and relatively narrow with lots of freeboard and beam on deck; the sheer is table-straight, and windows pierce hull and deck in astounding profusion. We sailed the 310 on Chesapeake Bay (unfortunately, in generally light conditions), talked to a number of owners, then journeyed to the Hunter plant in Alachua, Florida to see how the boats are built. Design Hunter has an in-house design team, but design input, especially in the racing program, also came from Lars Bergstrom. A Swedish designer/engineer (the “B” of B & R Masts & Riggings—Bergstrom & Ridder), he has been hailed as a genius and was Warren Luhrs’s friend and partner in experimentation for decades. Before he died last year in the crash of the experimental plane (see PS, October 15, 1997), Bergstrom designed the rigging system used now to support Hunter spars, the grid system employed to reinforce Hunter hulls, Hunter’s Child, and Route 66, the pilot project born to take the cruising outcomes of Hunter’s offshore racing “on the road.” He is also known for inventing the Windex masthead fly/wind direction indicator and, at the time of his death, was working on a winged keel with “tacking” winglets. With the 310, the goal was to combine maximum livability with rewarding short-handed performance. Privacy is a sensible priority in a 31-foot cruiser, and it is the central theme of the 310’s accommodations. The boat is very comfortable above deck. The circular cockpit well (achieved by taking the seatbacks right out to the sheer) with a molded table/steering pedestal at its center works so well creating space, affording security, and promoting comfort that we wondered why we hadn’t seen it before now. You may think the arch either painful to look at or a badge of distinction, but there’s no argument that it clears the mainsheet out of the cockpit, is a good place for traveler controls, makes a Bimini very workable, and is good to lean against. Providing a console in the steering station for VHF and instrument installation “beats the heck out of sawing holes in the house for mounting instruments,” one owner wrote. The helm seat pivots neatly to become the gate to the walk-aboard transom. The control assembly for the swim platform-shower is convenient but unobtrusive. Elsewhere in the cockpit and on deck, we liked the footlight built into the base of the steering pedestal, as well as the serious non-skid, struts as handholds, and windlass mounted in the anchor locker. On the other hand, we found the cockpit lockers shallow, due, of course, to the aft cabin. https://www.practical-sailor.com/issues/24_5/boatreview/Hunter_310_4358-1.html?zkPrintable=true 1/4 Sailing8/13/2019 performance depends on a variety of elements. WhenHunter hull 310 form, - Practical sail plan, Sailor displacement, Print Edition Article and foil shapes harmonize, the 310 sings, but that doesn’t always happen. She is long at 28' 0" on the waterline (as compared with a 25' LWL for the Catalina 30, 26' for the vintage Tartan 3100, even 27' 9" for the speedy Henderson 30). And she is light. She displaces just 8,500 lbs., least of any cruiser in her size range. Her sail area/displacement ratio is right up there with the rapid J-32 (17.39 vs. the J’s 17.55) and her top end potential is high. But her sail area is small, just 455 sq. feet, less than any cruiser —save the Catalina 30 short rig—in her class. On the drawing board the 310’s sail area may balance her design displacement. On the water a small sail plan usually gets overwhelmed by actual displacement. It’s nice to have sailpower in reserve when the inevitable weight of cruising gear gets added to a boat. The 310 has no such margin. This hampers pure performance, but allows pleasing performance—that combination of good speed, sailing ease, and a sense of security that can make a boat fun even if she isn’t overly fast. The 310 is a good example of how Hunter tries to keep the sizzle in sailing while tuning down the complexity and factoring out the fear. A crucial part of that process is the B & R rig. First introduced almost 20 years ago, it has evolved into a Hunter hallmark more distinctive even than cockpit arches, and more reverenced even than the hallowed “Cruise-Pac” (that bundle of standard cruising equipment—down to fenders, flares and life jackets—that comes with every Hunter). Attacked for its complexity, irrelevance, windage, and Erector-set aesthetic, no other builder uses it. The rig is the key, however, to Warren Luhrs’ vision of the future of performance cruising—long, light boats with big mainsails and tiny jibs. The set-up combines cross-stressed diagonals, cap shrouds, and intermediates with swept-back spreaders and a conventional headstay. In the process, the need for backstays, either running or permanent, disappears. Deck-mounted struts that support the spar above the gooseneck help make masts lighter, thinner, and cleaner (thus improving the boat’s resistance to pitching and heeling). The rig fosters big- roach mainsails where area can be added while keeping the center of effort low to minimize heeling. Removing the backstay permits full- length battens. There are problems, though. One is the tendency of swept-back spreaders to poke alarmingly into the mainsail when sailing downwind. “No one sails dead downwind anymore,” is the standard response, but the 310 is not big or light enough to benefit from the increases in apparent wind that help iceboats, sprit boats, multihulls, and maxis do well tacking downwind. You can live with the problem, but not being comfortable running dead downwind is a liability in terms of seamanship and navigation. Steve Pettengill broke a shroud when he was racing Hunter’s Child. “No way any other rig would have stayed in the boat, but the B&R did,” he said. “I jury-rigged it (four separate ways.) Good thing I did. We went through two capsizes and three gales after that, but it stood to the finish.” Combining winglets with a bulb works well to generate lift and promote stability. The bulb-wing keel has thus become Hunter’s standard shoal draft solution. While the short keels are almost as effective as a deep bulb, they do produce a lot of parasitic drag. That’s a problem in light to moderate air, especially upwind. We sailed the 310 shoal draft version in single-digit wind speeds and found her noticeably sluggish. Construction Lars Bergstrom was instrumental in one of the more significant developments in modern boatbuilding. He engineered the tubular stress- frame structure around which Ron Holland designed Imp in 1974. She went on to win the Southern Ocean Racing Conference illustrating that, with the loads of rig and keel taken by the structure, Imp could be made radically lighter and thus significantly faster. Today, nearly all production and custom sailboats are designed around some variation on this principle. The 310’s hull is laid-up by hand in a female mold. The hull is solid glass up to the waterline. A molded fiberglass reinforcing grid is glassed into the hull. This structure is anchored with extra fabric (four layers each of 1.5 oz.