Review of O'Day 14

Basic specs.

The O'Day 14 aka Vagabond 14 is a small dinghy designed by the maritime architect Ron Holder in the mid eighties. The O'Day 14 is built by Starcraft.

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Hull

The hull is made of fibreglass. Generally, a hull made of fibreglass requires only a minimum of maintenance during the sailing season. And outside the sailing season, just bottom cleaning and perhaps anti-fouling painting once a year - a few hours of work, that's all.

Rig

The boat equipped with a fractional rig. A fractional rig has smaller headsails which make tacking easier, which is an advantage for cruisers and racers, of course. The downside is that having the wind from behind often requires a genaker or a spinnaker for optimal speed.

Keel

The O'Day 14 is equipped with a daggerboard keel. A daggerboard is a lifting keel that can be lowered and raised, allowing the boat to enter shallow waters as well.

The boat can sail close to the beach as the draft is just 0.15 - 0.25 meter (0.49 - 0.79 ft) dependent of the load. See immersion rate below.

Sailing characteristics

This section covers widely used rules of thumb to describe the sailing characteristics. Please note that even though the calculations are correct, the interpretation of the results might not be valid for extreme boats.

Immersion rate

The immersion rate is defined as the weight required to sink the boat a certain level. The immersion rate for O'Day 14 is about 47 kg/cm, alternatively 268 lbs/inch.
Meaning: if you load 47 kg cargo on the boat then it will sink 1 cm. Alternatively, if you load 268 lbs cargo on the boat it will sink 1 inch.

Sailing statistics

This section is statistical comparison with similar boats of the same category. The basis of the following statistical computations is our unique database with more than 26,000 different boat types and 350,000 data points.

L/B (Length Beam Ratio)

What is L/B (Length Beam Ratio)?

The l/b ratio for O'Day 14 is 2.22.

Compared with other similar dinghies it is more spacy than 88% of all other designs. It seems that the designer has chosen a significantly more spacy hull design.

Maintenance

Boat owner's ideas

This section shown boat owner's changes, improvements, etc. Here you might find inspiration for your boat.

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Finally

We are always looking for new photos. If you can contribute with photos for O'Day 14 it would be a great help.

If you have any comments to the review, improvement suggestions, or the like, feel free to contact us. Criticism helps us to improve.

References

[Ref 1]: ISO 8666 Small craft — Principal data.
[Ref 3]: ISO 12215-5 Small craft — Hull construction and scantlings.