Tuna Marine,a design by Angelo Lavranos

I am always surprised when information of importance can not be found on the web and so it was with the boat Voortrekker 2,  a boat designed by Angelo Lavranos (who does our own Proteus 106 kit design)and built by the SA Navy for Bertie Reed and John Martin to compete in. The boat was a success in many ways, when it became Tuna Marine,I was told at the time by Angelo that this was now a new boat, its performance was to be far greater than it was as first launched, some words from Angelo follow.

Hello Roy,

Voortekker II was designed as both a crewed boat and as a single hander. When she was new 1980 she came second over the line in the (crewed) Uraguay race ( Bertie Reed) and won the monohull division of the Round Britain Two hander ( Bertie Reed & John Martin ). For subsequent single handed races she was being "pipped" by water ballasted boats ( which is not allowed in "normal" racing ). For the 1986/87 BOC we took out all the crew amenties and put in waterballast tanks. I also took off the ( bulbless) IOR keel and put a much deeper thinner keel with a bulb at the bottom (about half the weight of the old keel.) We added mainsail area. John Martin & Rob Sharp won the Transatlantic Two hander, then John Martin won legs 1 & 4 in that BOC race, leg two the mainsal tore & he burnt out all his autopilots, leg three his 6 year old runners gave in.

Regards Angelo

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