Viper 830

Our last boat was a viper 830. My Dad and I decided to sell the etchells and vector to get the viper as a fun boat to sail together (I hated the etchells downwind and he couldn’t sail on the vector). So we looked into some sportboats and the viper was our solution. We ended up tracking down High Voltage in Ohio and bought it and drove it home. The boat is a lot of fun, and can be very fast (our speed record was ~26kts, we know the speed-o was a little high, but it was probably a 20kt run).

Of course no boat is perfect and the viper was no different in that regard. First we had to stiffen up the doghouse of the boat, as it would flex when you stood on it. Second the pintle was loose and we had to cut it off the boat to fix it. Nothing serious. We also added a forward hatch for setting and dousing the spinnaker which was very nice.

The actual design of the boat didn’t really work well for us either. The boat really needed 7 people on the rail to be competitive upwind. But there was only enough elbow room for 5. So it was very difficult tacking upwind and crowded downwind. We could actually sail the boat with only 2 crew easy enough, you just needed rail meat to keep her happy upwind. The other big issue for us was the size of the boat and crew. It weighed 2,200lbs w/o the trailer so I needed to borrow my Mom’s truck any time I wanted to go sailing. Also I HAD to have at least one competent crew to sail it and if there was any wind I really needed a few people. Plus to rig and derig the boat we needed at least 3 people. Basically everything was a hassle, so the boat only got sailing on Tuesday nights.

It was fun sailing, it was just the headaches that went with it that made the boat less fun. We’ve since sold it to get something I can rig, launch and sail alone, and race with a crew of 2 or 3.

• LOA 27.5 feet
• Beam 8.5 feet
• Draft 7 feet
• Displacement 2,200 Lbs
• Ballast 1,100 Lbs
• SA (upwind) 488 sq. ft.
• SA (downwind) 1538 sq. ft.