| Pages |
|---|
| C&C Landfall 38 |
| First Impressions |
| Construction |
| What to Look For |
| On Deck |
| Down Below |
| Engine |
| Underway |
| Conclusion |
| All Pages |
Being too racy for its day in 1979 makes it a good cruiser today
I’ve always liked the word landfall. It evokes the essential dream of cruising, the successful conclusion of a voyage, landfall is your payoff. C&C had high hopes when it launched its Landfall series in the late 1970s. Cruising was putting a new twist on sailboat design by blending modern materials with traditional appearance, the dream of sailing to faraway places suddenly seemed within reach and builders were scrambling to come out with cruising boats. C&C, the progressive Canadian company that dominated performance sailing, hoped to make a splash in the cruising boat market as well. Unfortunately, its Landfall boats, at least to the sailing public, never quite lived up to the evocative name.
C&C’s first Landfall model was a chunky, 42-foot center-cockpit model designed to compete with Morgan, Irwin, Whitby and others. It gained some popularity as a charter boat in the Caribbean but never as a private cruiser. The Landfall 38 was launched in 1979. Although the boat was thoughtfully designed and responsibly manufactured, like its bigger sistership, it never really caught on. C&C just couldn’t shed its stripes, to many the Landfall 38 looked more like a racing boat than a cruising boat. It wasn’t, Neptune forbid, a double-ender. It was modern with sweet lines, a moderate draft, a fresh interior design and an efficient sailplan. By the time production wound down in 1985, just 180 Landfall 38s had been built. By comparison, Tayana, Taiwan builders of a teak-drenched, full-keeled, 37-foot cutter, was producing hull No. 500 when the Landfall 38 tools were shuffled to the back lot.
But how times change. Sailboat designs like fashions seem to come back around. How else would you explain the spree of elegant daysailers currently in production? Today, the very features that didn’t stack up against the Tayana 37 in the early 1980s make the Landfall 38 desirable on the used boat market. Consider most new cruising designs. They invariably feature a performance-oriented hull shape, often with shoal draft. Maintenance is kept to a minimum, especially externally. They eschew traditional and boring interior layout plans. These same criteria define the Landfall 38. Maybe it was just a boat ahead of its time.
