Overview
Sparkman & Stephens drew the Columbia 29 for an unlikely first-time builder: Glas Laminates Company, a California outfit that had built its name on fiberglass camper shells, shower pans, and chemical toilets before founders Dick Valdes and Bill Tripp Jr. decided to try a sailboat. The first hull went up in 1961 and reached the market the following year, and it sold well enough that the company renamed itself Columbia Yachts Corporation and carried the Columbia name across its entire subsequent lineup, growing into the highest-volume fiberglass yacht builder in the country by 1967.
She’s a coastal cruiser first: easy to handle, reasonably comfortable for her length, with sleek lines and performance that held up well against her era’s competition. Sail magazine’s 1970 review summed her up plainly: “The Columbia 29 is one of those boats that has everything going for it, good looks, good sailing characteristics, good accommodations, and sells for a reasonable price.”
Period sales material claimed room for six at a pinch: a pair of quarter berths, a double up in the forepeak, plus a dinette that converts to sleep two more. An outboard in a cockpit well was standard, with an 8hp Atomic 4 gas inboard offered as an upgrade. Ballast grew over the run: 3,120 lbs on early boats, bumped to 4,100 lbs on later MkI hulls ahead of the MkII’s introduction. Columbia built 304 MkI hulls in this run before the redesign.
James Baldwin’s AtomVoyages list of proven offshore boats includes her, which is why she’s in this catalog, but that listing comes with a real caveat worth weighing: build quality reportedly held up well through 1967, then slipped. Later hulls tabbed much of their interior structure to marine plywood rather than fiberglass, and that plywood is prone to saturating with age.
Links, References and Further Reading
» Columbia 29 specifications and details at the Columbia Yachts Owners Association» Columbia Yachts Yahoo Group, information and owner discussions.» Heart of Glass: Fiberglass Boats and the Men Who Built Them by Daniel Spurr, a short history of Columbia Yachts (p182)
MkII
Columbia introduced the MkII in 1967, keeping the original hull, rig, and sail plan unchanged, updating mainly the trunk cabin to better match the styling of the rest of the Columbia range and adding a one-piece fiberglass headliner inside. The extra 1,000 lbs of ballast already added late in the MkI run carried over unchanged. Columbia built 383 MkII hulls between 1967 and 1969.
Defender 29
A raised-deck variant, the Defender 29, traded the standard trunk cabin for a flush deck and more usable interior volume. Higher freeboard looks like a downside at a glance, but measured against the standard Columbia 29’s cabin profile, the Defender actually presents less windage overall.
