Ariel sighting... A-250 "Fluent"

To All:

Alyce and I spied a pretty boat near Bristol,RI that we had not seen for a couple years. When we closed to hailing distance we found she was "Fluent" A-250(?). We passed news of the association to the skipper. Hopefully he'll join and we'll get a full report. Short list of interesting mods... Westerbeke 12hp IB, Split backstay with tension control, Sea Hood and I'm sure lots of other cool stuff...

Cheers,
bill@ariel231:)

Sorry about the resolution, all we had on board was a cell phone and a sketch pad:;)

Ooooh! Looks good and sounds interesting! :cool:

Great sketch!

Alyce and I took a swing through bristol harbor and got a better shot of "Fluent"... One of the more interesting features is her line stoppers and halyard winch on the sea hood:

What are line stoppers and can you post pictures?

I'll have some more detailed pictures tonight.

a better generic term is a rope clutch:

Hmmmm, lots of improvements: a sea hood, stern pulpit, two sets of winches, cove stripe - she even has canvas for the companionway! Looks like an inboard model too. Nice find Bill!

Ok, here are some close-ups...

first the sea hood and rope clutches.. note the direct feed for all lines led aft from the mast. this set up looks like it works really well for around the buoy racing:

while we are near the mast, note she has been fit for internal halyards (so far I've only done this for my topping lift):

here's a close-up of the adjustable backstay:

... and this is clever. it looks like the deck just forward of the hatch has sprouted a pair of horns to prevent the jib sheets from fouling ;)

ps. a note for Moderator Bill... can i trouble you to move the A-250 and A-201 threads to the gallery page? they may fit better in that location...thanks bill@ariel231 :)

That is definitely a boat owned by someone who sails a lot based on all of those modifications. One of my first orders of business for A-24 this winter other than a new rudder would have been tweeking the running rigging. Going up to the mast was getting old and I wanted to run all of the halyards, topping lifts, etc. aft to the cockpit to make sail handling easier. Originally I was going to run them along side the hand rails aft, but the sea hood idea makes a lot of sense and cleans things up nicely. Good find Bill.

Bill-

Thanks.

Rope Clutch I understand. Does the halyard come down the mast to a cheek block installed on the mast and then to the rope clutch?

yes the cheek block are mounted on the sides of the mast...

I've sailed on boats with a pit arraingment like this. it works great for around the buoys. All lines drop into the cabin. A person is stationed there for spinnaker hoists and drops. I'm not so sure this works for cruising (you'd need to do figure out where to put the halyards etc when it rains)

I don't know if this counts as a true sighting but I found this Ariel in an article. Solidare at one time was an active member in the local association.

http://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/...10-10&dayid=15