Troy is a Mistral 31

The Trapper 950 story starts with Rollercoaster the Rob Humphreys design which placed a close second in the 1979 half ton world championship. As his first design to attract international attention, Rollercoaster was a milestone design for Humphreys. There is now a page on the Rollercoaster story on Humphreys fascinating design archive. Rollercoaster was subsequently sold to the Aegean where she achieved considerable success and is still racing under Greek ownership and known as Glafki II.

Built by Fairey Allday Ltd, Troy is hull No.1 from the Rollercoaster mould and is a low tech solid laminate boat, built as befitted a company more associated with the construction of lifeboats. We think not more than four posibly only three Mistrals were produced by Fairey. Hull number two is a lightweight carbon epoxy one sold to no less than Alain Gautier for his Figaro campaign in 1980. Gautier would have been just a youngster at the time and did not figure high in the results but it is pleasing to have this connection with someone who has gone on to be a god of sailing. That boat, Miss Laureen is still being raced from Lorient in Brittany. There is at least one other, rigged for cruising and last seen for sale in Plymouth. Even by the standards of 1979 the design was conservative but was certainly much more visually attractive than many of the other half tonners of the period from designers such as Laurie Davidson and Stephen Jones. The Humphreys philosophy of a life after racing resulted in the design lending itself well to being productionised as a cruiser-racer firstly by Fairey Allday as the Mistral and later by Trapper Yachts as the Trapper 950 of which more later.

Troy at Scottish series Miss Laureen, Mistral 31 Nr2

Troy was we understand, sold as a hull/keel deck assembly and was home-fitted out on the North East coast for racing under the IOR and launched in 1980. After being laid up for some years at Whitby she was then acquired and refitted in 1987 -we have some old photos from that period - and subsequently was highly successful on the N.E.C.R.A. scene, racing from Hartlepool Yacht Club. She was bought by the writer in 1995 and transported to the Clyde. She was at that time, in the opinion of her owners, one of the prettiest grp yachts on the Clyde, the other contenders for that title also being Humphreys designs.
According to Humphreys’ own website his philosophy is fairly simple. "The essential criterion is that a yacht must earn great pride of ownership. It is not enough to say that for a racing yacht this qualification is simply to win races while for a cruising yacht it is to …, well…, what single expression can one possibly find to define success in a cruising yacht?" ..As far as we're concerned Troy easily achieved all of these objectives.

Rollercoaster - page lifted verbatim from Humphreys Yacht Design