Thursday, November 29, 2018

Seen at the 2018 Sailboat Show: The RS21

One couldn't help but notice the small keelboat jammed right up against the fence line of the Sailboat Show. She was tucked into the corner facing Annapolis's dockside restaurant row and sported all the accoutrements of modern keelboat design, reverse bow, bulb keel, skinny rudder, assymetric spinnaker. Once inside you discovered this keelboat, the RS21, is RS Sailing's new entry into the day keelboat market, the design brief targeting the emerging club keelboat market where the sailing club buys the boats and the sailors pay an extra fee to climb aboard and race.

A photo of the cockpit looking aft. Two mainsail cleats; the forward one for the mainsheet trimmer when going upwind, the aft one for the skipper or trimmer that has moved aft for the offwind legs.


Looking forward it is a very clean cockpit.


The bulb keel. It does have a weed cleaner/cutter that comes standard which is a must given the very straight leading edge of the keel. A Torqueedo electric drive comes with the RS21 (You can see the prop in front of the rudder - I think it gets raised when saililng.)


The business end of the mast. Plenty of controls to keep the crew occupied.


Some videos of the RS21 on the water. I would have to say the RS21 most closely matches the market where the popular J70 currently dominates in the U.S.A.





2 comments:

Tillerman said...

Does it have cupholders?

Tweezerman said...

Good point Tillerman! My bad; I just didn't think about looking for cupholders when I was scanning the cockpit at the show. These modern boats with their clean cockpit moldings don't leave any cubbyholes where you can store stuff