Dock Ranger: David Barker Dream Cat
GALLERY | Click images to enlarge
Whenever we drive by a marina, we almost always have to duck in and take a quick look, to see if there are interesting multis lurking about. It’s called walking the dock, and the online version is perusing Craigslist and brokerage ads. When we stumble upon something interesting, we’ll post it here as Dock Ranger.
Sundreamer is the iconic performance cruising cat designed by New Zealand artist David Barker, and built by he and Fiona Kay on a New Zealand farm in 1983. He and the boat were showcased in Nautical Quarterly 23, which is where I first read about it, and it’s still as cool today as it was when launched, 31 years ago.
Like most of us, David Barker couldn’t afford his dream boat, until he conceived of a cunning plan:
Sundreamer and her near sister Stratosphere are unique products of a design and construction concept that brings large multihulls into the realm of possibility for many transoceanic dreamers, people whose pocketbooks are less prepossessing than their dreams. Both are modular yachts, born in a simple mold… The giant main beam that connects the hulls of Sundreamer was lifted from that mold, as were the underbodies, the side decks, and the blisters on either flank. There are 14 different applications of the same shape in Sundreamer, the pieces were simply assembled at the end of the construction process through the magic of fiberglass and kevlar.
—Jay Broze, Nautical Quarterly
To Proanista, the “blisters” echo the anti-capsize pods found on some proas. They weren’t added for stability, however, but to open up the confined linear space of the hulls, with a minimum of weight and windage. Sundreamer is as modern today as ever, give her a reverse bow facelift and everyone would think she was the latest thing.
Well cared for and updated over the past decade, find it here on Seaboats for $200,000 NZ.
