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IMPALA's particulars:

IMPALA:  

 loa:      56-8      draft:          7-8

 lwl       40-0      displ.:   52,000 lbs

 beam   12-6

    

designed by:  Sparkman & Stephens

built by:         Abeking & Rasmussen

Accommodation plan, sail plans and builders plan.

Sparkman & Stephen's comments on Impala's design.

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In 1954, three institutions, the CCA rating rule, the Sparkman & Stephens design firm, and the Abeking and Rasmussen building yard, all three in their ascendancy, came together to create Impala, a boat that even then, when most all sailboats were beautiful, was considered a particular beauty.

Impala was built for James Farrell, of Connecticut​, in 1954. He sailed and raced her for 17 years, keeping her summers in Edgartown.  In those years she was the queen of Nantucket Sound and the scratch boat at the Edgartown Regatta.  Farrell sold her to Bob Larsen in 1971. Larsen sailed her on Long Island Sound and sold her to people who took her to the West Indies. After some obscure adventures there she ended up back in Florida and came under the Federal Marshalls' hammar. She was bought and sailed to Los Angeles, through the Canal, where she raced for four owners until 1986 . Then I  [Alfred Sanford] bought her and trucked her across the country from San Diego to Great Bridge, Virginia before sailing her back to Nantucket Sound which she had left 15 years earlier to her new home port of Nantucket. We arrived early Sunday morning, just in time for that day's 14th Opera House Cup race.

Sparkman &  Stephens designed Impala in the tradition of Stormy Weather and their long line of full keel ocean racers. She is a bit beamier, and wider aft, than many of her sisters. She is also a little shallower, drawing 7’8” rather than the customary 8’ to 8 1/2’.  She is flush decked with a small house aft. Her interior is reminiscent of an Alden--off center companionway, owner’s cabin aft, and galley forward., a particularly good arrangement for cruising. A & R built her to a high standard in double-planked mahogany

 

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