Overview
The Nicholson 32 is one of the first glassfiber offshore cruisers, launched as a prototype in 1963 and built through about ten marks until the early 1980s. Halmatic moulded the hulls in Portsmouth and Camper & Nicholsons fitted them out. The design grew out of Charles Nicholson’s South Coast One Design.
Design and Construction
The hull is entirely GRP, with hull, deck, ballast, bulkheads and furniture bonded together, and a long keel carrying about half the boat’s weight as ballast. The rudder is a large barn-door blade that can give a little weather helm. The Mk X raised the freeboard by three inches and stretched the boat to about 33 ft. Yachting Monthly counts 11 marks. The Mk I (hulls 1 to 6) had mahogany joinery and individually built furniture, the Mk II brought aluminium spars, and the Mk IV (41 to 87) added a cockpit sole engine hatch, U-bolt chainplates and a teak interior. Hulls 237 to 329 were the Mk X, which got the raised freeboard, a lower coachroof and a centreline companionway, and the quarterberth did not appear until then. In 1977 Halmatic built another 40 Mk XI boats, with GRP furniture modules, a restyled galley and optional wheel steering.
Under Sail
Yachting Monthly found her stiff, happy under full sail, light on the helm and making very little leeway, but not quick, especially in light air. The bluff bow makes close-hauled work hard in a heavy sea, and she tends to yaw downwind. Duncan Kent attributes her comfortable motion to heavy displacement, long overhangs, a full keel and a 50 percent ballast ratio. All models are masthead rigged with a relatively short mast and stout shrouds, and the Mk II onward had silver anodised Proctor masts with a single set of straight spreaders. Some boats had an optional, often removable, inner forestay for a storm jib.
Buyers Notes
Check for osmosis first (see Known Issues). Early boats can have deck crazing around stanchion sockets, and some deck joints and stemhead fittings have parted. Original Watermota engines have often been replaced.
Below, the water and fuel tanks sit above the keel, which leaves stowage under the bunks. Early boats had twin forepeak berths, two 6 ft 4 in straight settees and a pilot berth, and headroom is 6 ft through the saloon and galley. The original galley had a non-gimballing Primus stove and a single sink with a hand pump, and most have since been upgraded. On deck the side decks are wide and uncluttered, with high coamings and raised teak-capped gunwales that give good foot bracing. Boats built before 1972 have a molded recess for a Danforth anchor that intrudes into the forecabin.
