compac pilothouse sailboat

2023 Com-Pac CP 23 Pilothouse

The brand-new trailerable cruiser CP 23 Pilothouse offers a revolutionary combination of trailerability, cruisability, and livability. The CP 23 Pilothouse is designed with numerous well-thought-out features and Com-Pac's legendary attention to detail:

• Steering from inside the pilothouse during inclement weather, in addition to tiller steering in the aft cockpit
• Excellent natural light and visibility from inside the pilot house while under way or at anchor
• Abundant storage space, including 2 hanging lockers
• Draft of only 2'3"
• Twin cylinder freshwater-cooled diesel engine
• Dinette that converts to a berth
• Roomy v-berth
• Galley and enclosed head
• Mast is mounted in a tabernacle that allows it to be folded down for trailering
• Stainless steel handrails on deck (optional teak handrails available)

Specifications

Basic boat info, contact form submission, more from com-pac.

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• Sailboat Guide

2012 Com-Pac 23 Pilothouse

• Description

Seller's Description

Com-Pac 23 Pilothouse, 2012 sailboat for sale with Custom Magic Tilt Trailer

This is Hull #1, the boat you have seen in all of the promotional photographs, first shown at the Annapolis Boat Show, Reviewed and Test Sailed by all the Major Sailing Magazines and Reviewed by Sail Magazine when Selected as Best Boat of the Year in 2012 for Accommodation.

After all the Promotions and Accolades, this boat ended up stored in a barn in North Georgia for 8 Years. The boat is in Like New Condition and still Smells New Inside. The Yanmar 1GM10 Diesel has Very Low Hours. Sails are Excellent, Interior is Clean with Practically No Use.

The Sail Magazine Review Summed it Up Perfectly:

“How could anybody not be smitten by the Com-Pac CP 23 Pilothouse?” This is a must see!

ACCOMMODATIONS: A

ccording to the Sail Magazine Review: “Belowdecks is where the CP 23 really shines. In fact, the boat won a 2012 Best Boats award in recognition of its incredible interior layout. Theres much more inside the CP 23 than you would expect, and it feels quite spacious, with six feet of headroom, three full-length berths and an enclosed head. There’s also a little dinette and space for a helm seat at the wheel, with excellent visibility in all directions, thanks to a clever sliding door that lets the skipper see straight through the head compartment. You can stand amidships and touch all these features without taking a step, but they all do fit.” V Berth Forward makes a double berth Dinette folds down into a single berth Standing Height Marine Head with Holding Tank and Sink Inside Wheelhouse with all Instruments and Engine Controls Galley area with space for small Stove, Icebox Custom Sunbrella Fabric Cushions

According to the Sail Magazine Review:

“In 6-8 knots of breeze off Clearwater, Florida, I measured 4 knots of boat speed on a close reach. The CP 23 even kept moving when the wind dropped to only 4 knots. Despite its unconventional looks, this is an actual sailboat, and it tacked easily through 90 degrees without any unusual effort. I think the 135 percent genoa on our test boat is a better choice than the standard 112 percent headsail in areas where the wind seldom kicks up whitecaps. Under power the Com-Pac turned in 1 boat length and backed precisely. The engine quiets to a moderate 77 dBA and is smoother running at 2,000 rpm than when it idles. This is a capable coastal cruiser in which one owner has already cruised the Bahamas.”

HULL/DECK/SAILS/RIGGING:

According to the Sail Magazine Review: “In essence, the CP 23 is a standard Com-Pac 23 with a different deck. The hull is handlaid fiberglass, the keel is lead encapsulated in concrete, and the deck is cored. A tiny diesel snuggles under the companionway step.” Mainsail with Cover in Excellent Condition Roller Furling Headsail in Excellent Condition Optional Halyard Winch Standing and Running Rig in Excellent Condition or phone (770) 831-0403

Rig and Sails

Auxilary power, accomodations, calculations.

The theoretical maximum speed that a displacement hull can move efficiently through the water is determined by it's waterline length and displacement. It may be unable to reach this speed if the boat is underpowered or heavily loaded, though it may exceed this speed given enough power. Read more.

Classic hull speed formula:

Hull Speed = 1.34 x √LWL

Max Speed/Length ratio = 8.26 ÷ Displacement/Length ratio .311 Hull Speed = Max Speed/Length ratio x √LWL

Sail Area / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the power of the sails relative to the weight of the boat. The higher the number, the higher the performance, but the harder the boat will be to handle. This ratio is a "non-dimensional" value that facilitates comparisons between boats of different types and sizes. Read more.

SA/D = SA ÷ (D ÷ 64) 2/3

• SA : Sail area in square feet, derived by adding the mainsail area to 100% of the foretriangle area (the lateral area above the deck between the mast and the forestay).
• D : Displacement in pounds.

Ballast / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the stability of a boat's hull that suggests how well a monohull will stand up to its sails. The ballast displacement ratio indicates how much of the weight of a boat is placed for maximum stability against capsizing and is an indicator of stiffness and resistance to capsize.

Ballast / Displacement * 100

Displacement / Length Ratio

A measure of the weight of the boat relative to it's length at the waterline. The higher a boat’s D/L ratio, the more easily it will carry a load and the more comfortable its motion will be. The lower a boat's ratio is, the less power it takes to drive the boat to its nominal hull speed or beyond. Read more.

D/L = (D ÷ 2240) ÷ (0.01 x LWL)³

• D: Displacement of the boat in pounds.
• LWL: Waterline length in feet

Comfort Ratio

This ratio assess how quickly and abruptly a boat’s hull reacts to waves in a significant seaway, these being the elements of a boat’s motion most likely to cause seasickness. Read more.

Comfort ratio = D ÷ (.65 x (.7 LWL + .3 LOA) x Beam 1.33 )

• D: Displacement of the boat in pounds
• LOA: Length overall in feet
• Beam: Width of boat at the widest point in feet

Capsize Screening Formula

This formula attempts to indicate whether a given boat might be too wide and light to readily right itself after being overturned in extreme conditions. Read more.

CSV = Beam ÷ ³√(D / 64)

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2012 Com-Pac 23 Pilot House

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First impressions Although the Com-Pac 23 is a very practical boat, its wide appeal comes from its traditional appearance. The sheerline sweeps aft from the short bowsprit before bending up again just before the transom-hung rudder. The box cabintrunk, with round or oval bronze ports, flows naturally into the deck lines. From a distance the boat looks bigger than 23 feet. There is a shallow forefoot and a long, shoal keel with a draft of just 2 feet, 3 inches. Any more draft would make it difficult to launch on many ramps. Although trailerability is a nice feature, most 23 owners keep the boat in the water all season. The aluminum rudder has a kick-up blade. Displacement is 3,000 pounds, of which 1,340 is ballast, accounting for the 23's stiffness. The mast stands 30 feet off the water.

Construction Com-Pac farms out the molding of the 23's solid fiberglass hull and balsa-cored deck. The hull includes longitudinal stringers that encapsulate the bulkheads and stiffen the panels. The crew at Com-Pac builds the interior and finishes the boat. Surprisingly, the interior components are handmade, including plywood bulkheads and surfaces with teak veneers. The interior is not a symphony of stark molded components and the teak-and-holly sole is a very nice touch for a small boat. The workmanship is first rate, much better in fact than most small boat manufacturers. Com-Pac uses good quality materials throughout, and the company's construction philosophy has always been to build small boats like they were just short big boats.

What to look for The condition of all used boats is directly related to the care they receive. However, this seems to be more relevant with trailerable boats. For some reason these boats can be forgotten and languish on their trailers for years. If they are well sealed, they may be moldy, but otherwise are lightly used gems that just require a good cleaning and represent a solid value. On the other hand, if the boats have been leaking while shut up, you may push open the hatch to find rotting plywood and cabin soles among other problems. There are plenty of 23s on the market, and prospective owners can take the time to find a 23 that has been well cared for. There were several changes with different models and you should be aware of the differences. The first changes occurred with the model 23/2, which took place in the mid-1980s. This is when the popular hide-away galley was added, the interior finishing was upgraded and the bowsprit was added for much needed additional sail area. In the early 1990s, the 23/3 was offered and this model change included mostly small tooling upgrades. Small round portlights were changed to larger, oval ones for example. One model to look for is the rare 23 D, which includes a 10-horsepower single cylinder Yanmar diesel. According to Gerry Hutchins, only about 35 of these boats were built and they are quite desirable on the used market. On deck The cockpit is the best design feature on the boat. It is long, more than seven feet, and surprisingly comfortable. Many pocket cruiser designs sacrifice cockpit space to increase the size of the cabin but unless you are sailing offshore, and few pocket cruisers are capable of that, it is a mistake. The cockpit is control central, this is where you spend your time in most small boats. The 23's self-bailing cockpit includes two lockers and a bridgedeck. The original tiller was laminate mahogany and ash and there is good leg support when steering. Although the triangular mainsheet arrangement crowds the helmsman and isn't very efficient, a traveler would be more of an intrusion. The transom will likely have both an outboard motor bracket and swim ladder mounted, making it a bit crowded as well. The stainless pulpits and stanchions are beefy by small boat standards. In contrast, the standing rigging seems a bit undersized, but remember, the mast was designed to be raised and lowered without gin pole. Teak handrails on the cabintop and molded nonskid make getting around the boat safe and easy despite narrow side decks. Newer boats feature a chain pipe and divided chain locker. Most boats will include bronze cleats and small standard sheet winches.

Down below While nobody buys a Com-Pac 23 based on the interior, most are surprised when they drop below. The cabin is spacious, this is where you appreciate the nearly eight-foot beam. The bulkheads have teak veneers and the cabin sides are covered with teak paneling. Two overhead hatches and six opening bronze portlights provide excellent ventilation. There is just one step down into the cabin and standing headroom is only under the companionway. The hide-away galley usually features a two-burner stovetop to port and a stainless sink to starboard. These cleverly fold and slide aft. A boat without these features is a pre-23/2 model. The interior really does sleep four with some comfort, including two settee berths and two berths forward. There is a storage compartment for a portable head between the forward berths. As undesirable as this arrangement is, sacrificing room for an enclosed head would waste far too much space. There are clever storage compartments throughout the boat. A portable table mounts on the bulkhead.

Engine As noted earlier, the vast majority of boats came with outboard engines. A few, roughly 35, came with a 10-horsepower inboard diesel. While the inboard offers many obvious advantages, including the ability to efficiently charge batteries, don't set your hopes on finding one on the used market, and if you do, be prepared to pay for it. There is a bit of information on the Com-Pac owners Web site, www.com-pacowners.com, that discusses retrofitting a diesel. Unless you are committed to owning the boat a long time, it probably doesn't make sense. Outboards offer a few advantages of their own, one being portability for repairs. If something goes wrong, just heft it into the trunk and take it to a mechanic. A very unscientific survey reveals that most 23s on the market have 8-horsepower outboards. All major manufacturers seem to be represented. Another advantage of an outboard is that you can actually afford to repower without breaking the bank. A new four-stroke model would be a nice upgrade and a lot better for the water you sail in. A built-in locker is designed to house a six-gallon fuel tank.

Under way The hull shape of the Com-Pac 23 is deceptive, the boat has a long 20-foot, 2-inch waterline. The theoretical hull speed is 6 knots and owners report hitting this fairly regularly on a reach. The hull shape is a bit prone to pitching but more importantly, it doesn't pound in a chop. Although the 23 is nimble under sail it is not close winded. The sheeting angles are wide and it does develop a bit of weather helm when beating. So crack off a bit and enjoy the ride, the Com-Pac 23 is not a boat to race and it reaches beautifully. Besides, the 2-foot, 3-inch draft allows the 23 to skip across shallows that more weatherly deep-draft boats have to tack around.

Conclusion The Com-Pac 23 blends quality construction, practical design features and a handsome appearance in an affordable package. Prices may range from $5,000 for an early boat to more than $20,000 for a recent model, however the bulk of the boats on the market are asking less than $10,000. When you factor in the low cost of ownership, the 23 is genuinely affordable. If you live up north, you can trailer it south in the winter. It is an ideal boat for exploring the shimmering flats of the Florida Keys. It is also capable of crossing the Gulf Stream on a nice day, and is perfect for gunkholing the broad banks of the Bahamas.

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Why the Baltimore Bridge Collapsed So Quickly

Just shy of half past 1 in the morning, the MV Dali , a giant container ship, was sailing gently out of the port of Baltimore when something went terribly wrong. Suddenly, lights all over the 300-meter-long vessel went out. They flicked on again a moment later, but the ship then began to veer to the right, toward one of the massive pylon-like supports on the Francis Scott Key truss bridge—a huge mass of steel and concrete that spans the Patapsco River.

The Dali ’s lights went out a second time. Then the impact came. The ship plowed into the support, with large sections of the bridge’s main truss section instantly snapping apart and falling into the river. It took just 20 seconds or so for the structure to come down.

Now, a major US port is in disarray, and several people who were working on the bridge at the time of its collapse are missing. A rescue operation is underway. President Biden has called the disaster a “terrible accident.” Ship traffic is currently stuck on either side of the crash site, and a major roadway through Baltimore has been cut off.

“It’s a dreadful tragedy and something you hope never to see,” says David Knight, a bridge expert and specialist adviser to the UK’s Institution of Civil Engineers. But commenting on footage of the bridge collapse , he says he is not surprised by the manner in which it crumpled.

Large steel structures may seem invulnerable, but steel, explains Knight, is relatively lightweight for its size. As soon as it is pushed or pulled the wrong way with enough force, it can fold like paper. In this case, the Francis Scott Key Bridge was a “continuous,” or unjointed, bridge that had a 366-meter-long central truss section. (Truss bridges use steel beams, arranged in triangular shapes, to support their load.) The central truss was made up of three horizontal stretches, known as spans, with two sets of supports holding these above the water. It was the third-largest structure of its kind in the world.

Matt Burgess

R Douglas Fields

Kate O'Flaherty

“When you take a support away, there is very little in the way of robustness,” says Knight. “It will drag down, as we saw, all three spans.” The separate approach spans remain standing. There is nothing in Knight’s view that immediately suggests any structural problem with the bridge. An engineering firm, Hardesty & Hanover, confirmed to WIRED that it performed an inspection of the bridge in 2019, and that other inspections have been carried out since, but did not provide any additional details on the state of the structure. WIRED has approached H&H for further comment. In June last year, the US Federal Highway Administration rated the condition of the bridge as satisfactory .

The immense force of the container ship impact should not be underestimated, adds Knight. Such vessels require a lot of power and time—perhaps many minutes—to come to a complete stop. The Francis Scott Key Bridge was completed in 1977. In more recent decades, bridge engineers have commonly incorporated defenses to reduce the potential damage by ship strikes when bridges are erected in similar locations, Knight says. These include hydraulic barriers and additional concrete around the base of bridge supports, for instance. However, even with such fortifications in place, heavy strikes can still cause devastating damage.

It is not clear why lights turned off and on again on the Dali , a Singapore-flagged ship built in 2015. “That is an indication of a massive problem,” says Salvatore Mercogliano, a maritime historian at Campbell University in North Carolina and a YouTuber who has analyzed the crash .

At the time of the accident, two pilots—mariners who board a ship to help it navigate particular stretches of water, including in and out of ports—from Baltimore were on board. The Dali was broadcasting its position publicly via the automatic identification system (AIS) and was traveling at a speed of over 8.5 knots. It then slowed to around 6 knots in the moments before the crash, according to AIS data .

Both pilots and all crew members on the Dali are accounted for. There are no reports of injuries, the ship’s management company, Synergy Group, said in a statement on March 26.

ABC News reports that the crew of the vessel made a desperate mayday call in an attempt to warn transport officials that the crash was about to occur. A report from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, seen by ABC, says the Dali “lost propulsion” and that the crew were aware they had “lost control” of the ship. Maryland governor Wes Moore told reporters that , thanks to the mayday call, officials were able to stem the flow of traffic over the bridge, an intervention that he says “saved lives.”

Mercogliano says it is very difficult for ships of this size to make rapid adjustments to their trajectories. Video footage shows a sudden outpouring of smoke from the vessel’s stack, indicating a change in engine activity of some kind. What is particularly disturbing is that, in this case, the vessel ends up plowing straight into one of the key supports for the bridge, clearly off course. No information as to why this happened has become public.

Photographs of the aftermath show the bow of the ship pinned beneath fallen sections of the bridge . The anchor chain is visible, meaning that at some point the anchor was dropped, though it is not certain whether this happened before or after impact. The chain appears to be at an angle, however, which Mercogliano says could be a sign that it was dropped shortly before the crash and dragged for a brief time.

Lawyer James Turner of Quadrant Chambers in London specializes in, among other things, ship collisions. He says that there would have been no automated systems on board a merchant ship of this kind able to prevent the impact. Information from radar, AIS, and visual observations would have been available to the crew, however.

But data-collecting systems may now reveal exactly what happened. As on airplanes, commercial ships have data and audio recorders on the bridge, which are often a key source of information for investigators post-incident. “The master will hit a button and that ensures that the last two hours of audio recording are preserved, as well as all the data from the various parts of the ship, like the engine and steering and so on,” explains Turner. “That can be downloaded and queried.”

He adds that estimates of the ship’s speed at the time of the incident as recorded by AIS are likely “99.99 percent accurate.”

For now, the focus of responders will be on locating survivors from the fallen bridge. Two people have been rescued, one of whom is in the hospital. Six construction workers remain missing .

The disaster has come at a difficult time for shipping, with drought afflicting the Panama Canal and Houthi attacks striking multiple vessels in the Red Sea in recent months. Somali piracy is on the rise again , also. The grounding of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal is very much still within recent memory—it occurred a mere three years ago.

The Port of Baltimore insists in a statement that it has not been shut down—road vehicles are still operating within the port—however, all ship traffic in and out is suspended until further notice. AIS data reveals around a dozen commercial vessels at anchor outside the port, their entry now blocked by the stricken bridge and the Dali . It will take some time for the US Army Corps of Engineers to remove the steel pieces of the bridge, which present a significant threat to passing vessels, from the river.

“Whatever ships are in the port are now stuck,” says Mercogliano, who notes that Baltimore is an important port in terms of car deliveries and coal exports.

Overall, he argues, maritime operations are extremely safe today, though the volume and velocity of trade mean that when things go wrong it can be especially serious.

“We move goods a lot faster than ever before, and there’s very little margin for error,” he says. “When there is a mistake, the mistakes tend to be very large.”

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The CP 23 Pilothouse

We are pleased to announce that the CP-23 PILOT HOUSE has won Sail Magazine's 2012 Best Boat Accommodations award.

The award winners were announced on 11-21-2011 and to say the least we are extremely pleased with this acknowledgment of the efforts of the Com-Pac team.

Click here to visit Sail Magazine’s website where you can view the write-up and a video. Some excerpts from the article:

• Return to main Pilot House 23 Page
• See our Photo Gallery of the CP 23 Pilothouse
• Download a brochure (.pdf format)

Among the many large, expensive sailing vessels at this year’s Annapolis show, the crowd-stopper was this diminutive 23-footer with a tall pilothouse. Something about it — perhaps the proportions, perhaps the novelty, perhaps the accessibility — made people pause, do double takes and smile.

It’s bright and livable, and as adorable as a Teddy bear.

Com-Pac has a reputation for strongly built boats with neatly executed details...