In October 2004, seven months after the loss of the first Harrier on the Peninsula Valdez, I bought another boat from Juan Jose, a member of the Yacht Club Argentino in Buenos Aires. Samba was built in 1981 to a high standard by the Astillero Marco on the Rio de la Plata from a design by Doug Peterson of San Diego, California. Her class, the Peterson 26, measures as a quarter tonner under the International Offshore Rule, according to which ocean racing yachts were designed in the 1970s and 1980s. She measures 7.81 metres (25 feet 8 inches) overall, 2.57 metres (8 foot 5 inches) beam and she draws 1.40 metres (4 foot 7 inches) of water.
Samba had been used as a cruising boat in the delta of the Rio de la Plata and during her life she had been little raced. A good deal of work was needed to make her suitable for the more demanding life of an ocean cruiser. The only change I made to her hull was the installation of a bridge deck to separate the accommodation from cockpit. Other changes involved in her transformation from Samba to Harrier can be seen by comparing the drawings to the right and below.
Harrier is furnished with a stainless steel platform aft, which supports a boarding ladder and a windvane steering gear. Above the aft end of her deck there is a tubular stainless steel gantry which carries a solar panel and a wind generator above head level. She has a really adequate spray dodger over the main hatch. The rugby football shaped object at the masthead is a high-performance radar reflector.
The genoa with which a standard Peterson 26 is rigged is a powerful racing sail but it requires a great deal of effort to handle it properly. A genoa has no place aboard a short-handed ocean cruising yacht. Harrier is rigged as a cutter, with a high-cut yankee jib and a self-setting staysail together with a cut-down mainsail, all set on a shorter mast. The boom is higher above deck level than on the standard Peterson 26 layout so as to give more air to the navigator’s head.
Sailing a yacht like Harrier requires only a modest amount of physical effort, but laying down her anchor and raising it again can be hard work. Harrier carries a two heavy anchors, an anchor windlass, 60 metres of 8 millimetre chain and she has two large diameter chain rollers on her bow from which her anchors are deployed.