Twister sailboats: a small offshore cruiser built in three waves of construction
Kim Holman drew the Twister in 1963, aiming for a small cruiser with more comfort and space than the Stellas and H26s that were dominating Class 3 of the East Anglian offshore racing scene in the early 1960s. He sketched the first boat — 27ft 8in (8.4m) overall — in a matter of hours, later describing it as a knockabout cruising boat for the summer with some racing for fun. The class was officially registered as the Holman 27, but it became known instead by the name of that first boat, Twister of Mersea, and the popular name stuck. The Twister was also named, in part, after "The Twist," the dance craze The Beatles had turned into a worldwide sensation in early 1963.
Origins and ownership
Holman's brother Jack owned the historic Brixham yard J.W. & A. Upham Limited, and when Holman rang him about the new design, Jack promised delivery in time for the middle of that season if his brother hurried. It wasn't the first time the family connection had mattered: Jack had already built an earlier Holman design, Stirling, after buying the Uphams yard in Devon. Uphams went on to complete around 105 Twisters of all types, wood and GRP alike, while other yards built additional wooden boats, including three in Australia and two in Japan. From the start, Holman intended that a glass-fibre version would follow if the wooden Twister proved successful — he had already designed one all-glass derivative of the related Stella class, the Elizabethan 29.
The designers
Holman came to yacht design after wartime service. Demobilised in 1946, he finished his education at a crammer school before reading naval architecture at Bristol University. In 1950 he moved to Woodbridge, Suffolk, and spent several years apprenticed to yacht designer Jack Francis-Jones before working independently as a naval architect. In 1961 Don Pye, a racing rival, joined his practice, and the firm became Holman and Pye; David Cooper joined as its third partner in 1965. When Holman eventually stepped back from day-to-day design, Pye and Cooper carried the practice forward, going on to have more than 4,000 boats built to Holman and Pye designs.
Construction through the eras
Several dozen wooden Twisters were built — accounts put the figure at 30 to 40 — before the Tyler Boat Company began moulding GRP hulls, with the earliest of those GRP hulls fitted out by Uphams. Those first GRP boats were composite: a glass-fibre hull and deck paired with a wooden cabin top and cockpit, built to a design tweaked slightly for the moulding process — six inches longer, three inches less draft, and a fuller bow than the wooden originals. Tyler's all-glass version, cheaper to build than the composite boats, debuted in 1969 and soon superseded them; Tylers marketed these GRP boats under the alternate names Tufglass 28 and Tyler 28. A competent do-it-yourselfer could buy in at lower cost by purchasing a bare hull and deck, or a hull, deck, and cabin top, and fitting it out — some 50 Twisters were completed this way. Later hulls picked up reinforcement at the chainplates, which had moved a little inboard from their original position as far outboard as practicable, and the final hulls gained a moulded-in stern locker for the gas bottle plus an optional anchor well forward. The definitive Mk II sail plan was worked out from Silver Twister, the boat Jack Holman kept for himself at Uphams. Most Twisters were built through the 1960s and '70s, though Tyler continued producing mouldings into the late 1990s before the business ceased trading; just over 200 boats were built or moulded in total before production wound down in the early 1980s.
Who Twister is for
Holman conceived the Twister as an offshore racer-cruiser first, built to out-comfort the Stellas and H26s that dominated East Anglian Class 3 racing while staying quick enough to race for fun. According to one account, a Twister of Mersea carried that pedigree to a win in the 1974 Round Britain and Ireland Race. The do-it-yourself completion route Tyler and Uphams offered — buyers finishing a bare hull and deck themselves — also means the class has always drawn hands-on owners as much as racing sailors, and any individual boat's build quality depends heavily on which yard, or which owner, finished it.
