2002 Custom 48 Clipper Gaff Schooner

FOUR YEARS is a one-off 2002 custom-made clipper gaff-rigged schooner built by her owner, David Judd, over roughly four years and launched in December 2002. Her design scales Howard Chapelle’s Tancook Whaler up about twenty percent, with scantlings informed by Ruel Parker’s cold-moulded practice: laminated hardwood epoxy hull about one and a half inches in four layers, Dynel-epoxy exterior, glass-epoxy interior, New Zealand kauri strip decks and spars, and two-pack polyurethane over epoxy. Two watertight bulkheads add structural redundancy. Dimensions are serious passagemaking size—about 48 feet on deck, 56 feet LOA with bowsprit and rudder, beam near 3.6 meters, keel about five feet plus centerboard, board-down draft near eight feet, internal lead ballast, and displacement around 12,000 kilograms.

Sail area in the lowers is about 1,200 square feet plus a 360-square-foot fisherman staysail. New Contender cream gaff main, gaff foresail, and jib join a tanbark fisherman in very good condition and a scarcely used squaresail. Steering is tiller with wind-vane to trim-tab self-steering, backed by eleven winches, most self-tailing. The Beta Marine 35-horsepower diesel installed in 2016 shows about 1,836 hours on the tach (registration may still list an outdated Kubota), with ZF V-drive, Bruntons Sigmadrive, PSS seal, and a 2017 Variprop three-blade feathering propeller.

Tankage and hotel systems suit long ocean legs: roughly 350 liters of diesel in two tanks and about 800 liters of water in four tanks. Interior berths are two doubles, with headroom six feet fore and aft and about five feet nine amidships, Lavac head, hot shower via engine calorifier, gimbaled kerosene stove, eutectic fridge/freezer, diesel cabin heater, and Caframo fans. Electrical is 12-volt with 400 Ah LiFePO4, 500 watts of solar, a 70-amp alternator, and a 1,200-watt inverter. Navigation includes a Garmin world-chart plotter, Class B AIS, VHF with AIS, Mer Veille radar detector, compass, and speed log. Ground tackle is a Lofrans Tigre electric windlass with about 90 meters of chain and rope, a 17-kilogram Rocna-type, and a 30-kilogram spade-type.

Her logbook is the real brochure: more than 40,000 nautical miles through Australia, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, the South China Sea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Madagascar, three Indian Ocean crossings, and two Cape of Good Hope passages. She is currently in the Tanga, Tanzania region—an ocean-proven, owner-built gaff schooner for a sailor who wants traditional rig and cold-molded strength without a shipyard restoration first.

Cold-molded construction of this weight and thickness is a different animal from thin strip-plank daysailers: it is intended to take ocean loading for decades when kept painted and ventilated. Buyers evaluating FOUR YEARS should read the owner’s inventory write-up alongside the Australian registration, confirm the Beta Marine hours in person, and inspect the new exterior paint and sails that were completed around the listing period. The requested photo order—under sail, on the beach showing deck and paint, travel-lift with centerboard down—tells the story surveyors and schooner sailors both want to see. For the right steward, she is less a project than a continuation of an already-proven voyaging career. Australian registration documents on file name Melbourne as the hailing port and should be used for any flag or documentation questions rather than guesswork. The seller’s October inventory letter remains the authoritative equipment list for advertising copy and buyer packages.

Disclaimer

The Company offers the details of this vessel in good faith but cannot guarantee or warrant the accuracy of this information nor warrant the condition of the vessel. A buyer should instruct his agents, or his surveyors, to investigate such details as the buyer desires validated. This vessel is offered subject to prior sale, price change, or withdrawal without notice.

Listing MLS by Yachtr.com