The Alice Colleen of Montreal is the first Alberg 34 off the line at Nye Yachts of Belleville Ontario. Registered in 1984 she was built as the plug for the mould.
Since 1998 she has been owned by Ted Popham and Susan Thornborough who bought her in Australia. Prior to that she was owned by David Clark who was the original owner and kept her in Boston at one time. Apparenly at one time she was beached, in a blow when the mooring broke, and lifted out by helicopter after surviving. [Its True --Francis Clark] She was sailed across the Atlantic to Africa and back and then trucked across Canada and sailed via Mexico to Australia arriving in 1996.
Ted and Sue have sailed her from Australia across the Tasman Sea to New Caledonia and Vanuatu 3 times. The first trip commenced at Newcastle, NSW and included 5 days of westerly gales and at least 12 hours of stormforce winds. At one point we were sailing at 5knots downwind with no sails and the Cap Horn windvane was doing a magnificent job. Now what has this to do with a description of the Alberg 34? Well when you are out there in it you think a lot of things but forget to thank the designer for sticking to his guns concerning the seaworthyness of the design - and thats exactly what Alberg did, much to our relief and, despite pressure from builders.
The Alberg 34 appears to be the same general shape as the Alberg 30 (
) but we are continually asked if it is a 36 footer and have been asked if it is a 40 footer. The dimensions are simply: 34 ft OA 10 ft Beam 5.5 ft Draft (with our load we are 6 feet when measured on the hard) When we bought the boat we had to get out a tape and measure the beam inside before we would beleive that it was 10feet. At the time we owned an S&S34 sloop with the same nominal dimensions - the Alberg looked bigger.
More description added next time at the library.
We have recently repainted the boottop using black copper loaded epoxy antifouling paint and eliminated the traditional white line between the boottop and the antifoul to avoid the nuisance of the green weed. In the process we raised the ends of the waterline by 3 inches above the horizontal and faired this point in a curve almost to amidships. The optical illusion created by the boats pleasing shear and general double ender shape at the waterline makes this "bent" weterline invisible unless the observer sights at waterline level from ahead or astern. The result is the avoidance of the green slime on the topsides particularly at the counter.
According to a correspondent of ours only 4 Alberg 34 boats were built. If anyone can supply more information please communicate with Ted and Sue by text email with no attachments to:
vk2ezq[substitute the shift 2 character here]amsat.org