Saturday, November 3, 2012

Columbia 43 stands-in for Hinckley 48 in Revenge TV show

A Tripp-designed Hinckley 48 was used as the sailboat Amanda on ABC's Revenge TV show.

My wife and I are hooked on the ABC TV show "Revenge." (Netflix has the full first season and Hulu has the second season.) I know, it's a prime-time soap, but the boat in it is really beautiful. In the first season the sailboat, "Amanda," was a Hinckley 48 designed by Bill Tripp. A beautiful boat, no question about it. It's a big sister to my Columbia 43.

I noticed that the boat changed slightly in the second season. OK, it changed a lot. To give credit to the ABC producers, at least they tried to make them look similar. So they chose another Tripp design, a Columbia 43. Here's a post from the Cruising World's Forum:

Re: ABC Revenge tv show...sailboat "Amanda"
There have been two very beautiful boats used in this series. The first was in fact a Hinckley.
The other boat used is a 43' Columbia moored at the 1700 finger in Marina Del Rey. It is called the Blue Norther and can be seen most Saturdays on the water of Santa Monica Bay. I sail as part of her crew almost every Saturday. The cast and crew of this series are great. The art department is amazing. They have matched the color of both the hull and the gold leaf lettering exactly. Occasionally we will sail with the Amanda decal on the starboard bow and Blue Norther lettering on the port bow.
(end quote)

Using a Hinckley, any Hinckley, as a boat that Jack Porter, a poor barkeep, could afford was really a stretch. The explanation was he "fixed it up." The Hinckley 48 was a gigantic leap. They are rare and expensive; there were only eight of them made. When you find them for sale they are usually somewhere north of $300k. The Columbia 43, on the other hand, is neither expensive nor rare. But, as the owners of Blue Norther proved, they can be a very beautiful boat; even something that billionaire Nolan Ryan would want to buy.

The hailing port on Oceanus is Marina Del Rey. I wonder if the two boats raced together? Did the owners know each other? Do the current owners wonder what happened to Blue Norther's sistership?