The Boat
About the Boat
The Abbott 36 Krikkit was designed by Bill Abbott Sr. and built by Abbott Boats Inc of Sarnia, Ontario in 1985, hull #3 of about a dozen 36-footers the company built. The original owner was a friend of the Abbotts, a Dr. Rathman from Sault St. Marie. He found that the boat’s draft was too deep for his home marina in the Soo and the vessel would sit on the bottom, so the Abbotts agreed to modify the boat to provide shallower draft. It was hauled at the builder’s yard and the keel was cut down by six inches (from six feet to 5.5 feet). To balance this the mast was cut off just above the spinnaker halyard, and then the mast crane was taken from the offcut and welded back on directly above the spinnaker halyard. The net effect was to convert the rig from a 7/8ths fractional rig with running backstays to a simpler Euro-masthead rig with a fixed adjustable backstay. For racing, the original east coast PHRF is between 105 and 111, and as modified racing in BC the boat currently rates 123. Under ORC the boat has a GPH of 657.0. See Krikkit's PHRF and ORC certificates here.
See the Complete Original Abbott 36 Brochure
About the Name
Krikkit is named for a fictional planet from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Krikkit is populated by a humanoid race of people who “casually, whimsically” declare war on the universe because they’ve been brainwashed by a demolished-but-still-operating supercomputer that surrounds their planet as a dust cloud, blocking out the night sky. Despite their cosmocidal tendencies, the Krikkiters themselves are actually quite charming and friendly, and they compose incredibly poetic music. This captures the duality of a racer/cruiser — cosmocidal on the race course, charming and good-natured on the cruising grounds. Krikkit's battleflag, pictured at right, shows a Krikkit battleclub lobbing a Krikkit bomb.
About the Exhaust Outlets
What are the four exhaust outlets for? It’s a question everyone eventually asks. Few believe the truth, which is that one is for the diesel exhaust (as expected), one deploys gelatin powder to mire following race competitors in Jello, and the other two are jet outlets for short bursts of rapid acceleration.
For the skeptical, a convenient and believable lie is that the outside two are cockpit drains, one is for the bilge pump and one is for the diesel exhaust.
About the Designers/Builders
The Abbotts have been deeply involved in Canada’s competitive sailing scene for many years. Abbott Boats was one of the world’s top-ranked builders of Ynglings and Solings, and also built the Martin 16 and Ultimate 20, as a well as a series of 22-foot, 27-foot and 33-foot keel boats. However a massive fire at the yard shut things down in 2006 leaving Abbott Boats operating as a rigging shop and chandlery pending insurance settlement.
Bill Abbott Sr. qualified to sail for Canada in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but missed his shot at Olympic gold when Canada followed other Western nations in boycotting the games. Bill Abbott Jr. and his wife Joanne went on to sail together in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and Bill sailed again with his brother Matt in the 2000 Sydney games. Bill and Joanne’s daughter Katie Abbott sailed Ynglings in the 2008 Beijing Olympics (Bill was an Olympic sailing coach at those games).
