Review of Defender 35

Basic specs.

The Defender 35 is a sailboat designed by the maritime architect E. Holman. The Defender 35 is built by Dekker.

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Hull

The hull is made of fibreglass. Generally, a hull made of fibreglass requires only a minimum of maintenance during the sailing season. And outside the sailing season, just bottom cleaning and perhaps anti-fouling painting once a year - a few hours of work, that's all.

Rig

The boat equipped with a masthead rig. The advantage of a masthead rig is its simplicity and the fact that a given sail area - compared with a fractional rig - can be carried lower and thus with less heeling moment.

Keel

The Defender 35 is equipped with a fin keel. The fin keel is the most common keel and provides splendid manoeuvrability. The downside is that it has less directional stability than a long keel.

The keel is made of lead. Compared with iron, lead has the advantage of being 44% heavier, which allows a smaller keel and hence less water resistance and higher speed.

The boat can enter most marinas as the draft is just about 1.68 - 1.78 meter (5.51 - 5.81 ft) dependent on the load.

Engine

The boat is typically equipped with a Volvo Penta diesel engine.

Sailing characteristics

This section covers widely used rules of thumb to describe the sailing characteristics. Please note that even though the calculations are correct, the interpretation of the results might not be valid for extreme boats.

Sorry, we have no sailing characteristics available for this boat.

Sailing statistics

This section is statistical comparison with similar boats of the same category. The basis of the following statistical computations is our unique database with more than 26,000 different boat types and 350,000 data points.

Over- / underrigged

Sorry, we do not have sufficient statistical information available for this boat to provide a significant reliable analysis.

Maintenance

Rig

Dimensions of sail for masthead rig.

Are your sails worn out? You might find your next sail here: Sails for Sale

If you need to renew parts of your running rig and is not quite sure of the dimensions, you may find the estimates computed below useful.

**Guiding dimensions of running rig**
Usage	Length		Diameter
Mainsail halyard	29.8 m	(97.8 feet)	6 mm	(1/4 inch)
Jib/genoa halyard	29.8 m	(97.8 feet)	6 mm	(1/4 inch)
Spinnaker halyard	29.8 m	(97.8 feet)	6 mm	(1/4 inch)
Cunningham	3.1 m	(10.3 feet)	6 mm	(1/4 inch)
Kickingstrap	6.3 m	(20.7 feet)	6 mm	(1/4 inch)
Clew-outhaul	6.3 m	(20.7 feet)	6 mm	(1/4 inch)

Boat owner's ideas

This section shown boat owner's changes, improvements, etc. Here you might find inspiration for your boat.

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Finally

We are always looking for new photos. If you can contribute with photos for Defender 35 it would be a great help.

If you have any comments to the review, improvement suggestions, or the like, feel free to contact us. Criticism helps us to improve.

References

[Ref 1]: ISO 8666 Small craft — Principal data.
[Ref 3]: ISO 12215-5 Small craft — Hull construction and scantlings.