The opportunity to sail on and write about a brand-new Contessa 32 was too good to miss. After my keelboat ownership began with a timber Nordic Folkboat in 1998, it was probably at the back of my mind for most of the next 20 years that I might have a Contessa 32 one day. Sure enough, when it came to it I didn’t consider anything else and I went to look at six of them. The most expensive of these was the 1990 Dart Dash which initially I told myself not to view as the asking price was above the budget I had set. As soon as I saw her, however, I knew she was the one so I bought her and renamed her Songbird. I haven’t had a moment’s regret since.
It was in 1971 that Jeremy Rogers started building the Contessa 32 which he had designed in collaboration with David Sadler. It proved so popular that at one stage the company was employing about 200 people and was producing two boats every week in five different factories in the Lymington area. But in the early ’80s, the company found itself the casualty of a recession and.
