The boat was conceived by
Irvine Laidlaw, Baron Laidlaw as a "highly technical" boat to boost the
Cape Town, South Africa yachting community. The boat was intended for production there and was designed to entice young sailors to get into keelboat sailing. The Cape 31 is a racing
keelboat, built predominantly of
glassfibre and
carbon fibre. The hull is made from
vacuum-bagged E-glass with a core of cellular foam. The design has a
fractional sloop rig with a square-topped
mainsail, a
bowsprit, two sets of swept
spreaders, a carbon fibre two-piece mast and
aluminum boom, with steel rod
standing rigging. The hull has a
plumb stem and
transom, an internally mounted spade-type
rudder controlled by a carbon
tiller and a fixed carbon fibre fin
keel with a weighted lead bulb. It displaces and carries of ballast. The engineering was completed by Steve Koopman of composite engineering company SDK, with sails designed and made by
North Sails, South Africa. The boat has a draft of with the standard keel and is fitted with a Japanese
Yanmar 2YM
diesel engine of with a
saildrive for docking and manoeuvring. One of the design constraints was that it was made to fit inside a standard
high-cube container for global transport. The boat's class rules specify that it is helmed by the owner, with a minimum crew of five
sailors, with a combined weight of minimum to maximum. No more than three of the crew may be professional sailors. Boats are often sailed with a crew of seven or eight. == Operational history ==