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Tartan Yachts has a reputation for building high quality cruising sailboats for sailors who want performance and comfort for extended journeying. Tartan hand builds its current line of four models at its facility in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, sharing its facilities with sister brand, C & C Yachts. Under the parent company, Fairport Yachts, the two lines produce a total of seven different models. Since 1998 the company has boasted two distinct lines: the Tartan line, built for the performance-oriented cruiser, and C & C, designed for the racing enthusiast.
Tim Jackett, Chief Operating Officer of Fairport Yachts and also its Chief Designer, has had a long tenure with Tartan. Growing up nearby, he joined the Tartan design team in the 1970's, and has risen through the ranks becoming Chief Designer by the mid 1980's.
We had the opportunity to chat with the man behind Tartan's lineage of the past three decades, and to discuss, among other things, Tartan's newest flagship, the 4400.
Rex: Obviously you’ve been involved with Tartan for quite some time now.
Tim: Twenty six years this September. I went to work originally for Charlie Brittan, who was the founder of the brand. I worked for him while I was going to school and then signed-on afterwards. I worked summers in the plant and learned boat building while I was doing some custom boats on the side. I’m really a grassroots boat builder at heart. It really developed in 1977 when we introduced the Tartan 10. 
Rex: The Tartan 10 - That’s a great boat.
Tim: That was a unique project for Tartan and really one of Charlie’s pets. It was the tail end of Charlie’s heyday. By 1982 he was thinking of getting out of it and wound up selling the company to John Richards and Jim Briggs. He then worked for John and Jim through the 80’s.
During that time, I was doing production engineering and design work. We were working in the early 80’s in conjunction with Sparkman & Stevens. I was doing the interior and deck design. Sparkman & Stevens was doing the hulls, rigs and appendages. The 31 was the first in-house boat that we had built. It was a very successful boat; we built about 150 of them.
From there we continued as we developed the brand, keeping all design work in-house. Sparkman & Stevens is a great design firm. We tried to keep to the lineage of Tartan, but Sparkman & Stevens tended to draw a very small boat. The volume of the boats was very small.
The boat market was looking for more large volume boats for a given length , and we weren’t getting that large volume hull to compete and really put good accommodations in a performing Tartan. So that was the push we went into, getting the boats pumped up a bit in volume, for which Tartan is known.
The Wider Transom Challenge
Rex: There are obviously trade-offs. What is good, and what’s bad about having more volume?
Tim: What we’ve done in the hulls for Tartan is to make them fuller in the aft end, but if you look at sections forward, the boats have a very even distribution of volume.
You want the boat - when it heels over - to heel over evenly. Heel like a barrel, not a triangle. A barrel goes evenly, the angle of attack of the keel is good, and you don’t need to pile the rail with people to keep it sailing upright and well behaved.
Not only do you get the ability to put in the nice big aft cabin with the double berths, but forward cabins get bigger, and the whole boat takes on a much larger feel.
On board the 44 yesterday, people walking through that boat were commenting that they were surprised that it was only 44 feet long. It’s a huge boat.
Rex: It’s cavernous on the inside. I would think there are some traditional sailors that would accuse you of building a condo and not a sailboat. Does she still perform?
Tim: In the case of the 44, the challenge was to take on a new deck concept that gave you the opportunity to do things much differently on the interior of the boat but keep performance up.
You wind up with a big deck structure, and you say “weight’s going up and getting up high” but, conversely, you wind up with a section in the middle of the boat that below the cabin soul you can put batteries, the engine, and most of the tankage. The bulk of the weight, rather than getting spread out throughout the boat, winds up right in the middle and down below. 
At the other end of that boat the hull is a fairly traditional Tartan hull- very clean, broad in the aft end, a nice straight run.
The boat power reaches. Out in San Francisco, during the sea trials, we were close reaching 20 knots and nipped close to 10 knots. The boat was happy and going fast.
Volume & Performance
Rex: It's obviously not a light boat though. So how did you keep your commitment to performance?
 Tim: It’s proportionate to the rest of our line. The performance pieces are there, and our boats perform over a wide range of conditions.
I believe, if the builder doesn’t commit to very good building practices and current technology, what takes place is they get overweight and performance really suffers.
We’re still doing an oven-baked epoxy hull on a production sailboat, so that cuts about 1800 pounds out of the laminate. We’re putting carbon rigs on the boat as a standard feature in 2004. These aren’t things that you do if you are not concerned about performance.
These commitments in a cruising boat are a callback to Tartan’s heritage. We tend to produce performing boats with the cruising sailor in mind, as opposed to the club racer. We’re able to focus on the performance cruiser.
 
Rex: How do you feel about that boat for blue water sailing?
Tim: I think it would be the right kind of ride. The cockpit offers a lot of protection. The performance of the boat is nearly identical to the 46. You can set up in the aft cabin with two good sea births where there’s not a lot of motion. I think the boat will perform well for that type of use.
Rex: Structurally, the bulkheads - the internal structures - keep the boat together. You walk inside the 44 and you ask what keeps it together?
Tim: The raised salon concept allows you to put absolutely massive floor structures into a boat. There are floor timbers on that boat that are 3.5 ft deep. In other boats those would be considered bulkheads, but these are molded fiberglass structural athwartship and longitudinal members.
 The bottom structure - the keel carrying ability, the rig, the chain plates, what have you - it has more massive floor structures than any boat we’ve built.
The bulkheads are through the main cabin, and are glassed in around their perimeter. Forward there are two watertight bulkheads, and then a small watertight chamber right at the waterline that’s filled.
Rex: So, she really is beefy from a structural point of view.
Tim: Yes, that's right. | 
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