he’s flying

Part 2 of our interview with designer Mark Mills

A very good pro sailor and class organizer in the UK named Dave Swete got bored while in COVID lock down and he and Dave Bartholomew singlehandedly got the UK class together and became the dealer for the boats. The plan is to have 8 boats up there for the fleet this summer. It’s been crazy with that and an amazingly fast success story for the UK fleet. There’s also been interest from the US. Another South African ex-pat brought ‘Privateer’ to the US and is based in New Orleans, and has been taking people for rides. So the plan now is to unleash the Cape 31 on the US market in the next month or so. We are planning for a fleet in the US in 2022, it’s awesome to see so much interest in the boat in the US as well.

We are planning a Caribbean component to the Cape 31 as well. There’s definitely a missing piece to the puzzle with Key West no longer being on the calendar. Dave Swete has some exciting plans to get the UK boats to come out and do a Caribbean event; like  a mini world tour before their summer season gets started. Dave brings the organization and cohesion together to get the class going in both the UK and the US which is very exciting.

SA: So while the Cape 31 is taking off around the world, another one of your recent one-design boats seems to be stalling out a bit; the C&C 30. Why do you think that is?

MM: The C&C 30 was a super cool project for us at the time, but it was a very US east-coast focused project. When it came to us, the brief was that you can never be slower than a Mumm (Farr) 30, especially in the light to medium conditions of Annapolis and other east coast venues. Yacht design had come a long way in the last twenty years, and so it’s relatively easy to be faster than a Mumm 30 in a breeze, but it changes your design priorities in the light air…

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