SV the Swallow

Our Swallow is a six meter Neptun-20 SV with a retractable daggerboard making her perfect for shallow waters or having her fall dry on mudbanks.

The advertisement folder states there is room for four to spent the night but that's very optimistic. There is barely enough room for three grown-ups or two with two kids. We had some amazing preparation trips with it and pushed it beyond the limits every time but it never failed us.

On our first trip with the Swallow, I thought the boat had some crappy sailing characteristics as it went all over the place and I even managed to bump the quayside pretty hard & thereby scratching the paint within the first half an hour after buying her.

It took me some time before figuring out what was wrong. The retractable daggerboard was stuck in it's housing by barnicals making us drift all over the place at the slightest breeze. After some hours banging a metal pool into the small hole where the rope for pulling the daggerboard up  is intended to go, it finally went down but not after the rope broke...

Until today that rope is still a pain in the backside as it wasn't the last time we couldn't lift the centerboard anymore...

The stainless steel pulpit was crushed on our Wadden Sea tour by a sailing boat three times our size who messed up and tried to run us over. It isn't missed thought as we now have a clear pathway for our kite launching platform :)

For the last prep trip we lost the mast on purpose to make room for a kite launching platform as we took the massive 13 meter Dyno kite to see if we could use it as a main propulsion system...

I didnt't think I would be saying this again after all the blood on the deck and so much swearing, but we will be giving it a second attempt this year.

We won't of course be taking the Swallow on our actual World Cruising Tour. It's definitely possible but we ain't that self distructive and crazy as you might think.