SAIL.SailMagazine

Like W.D. Schock’s other daysailers, the new Harbor 30 is a tasteful blend of tradition and technology. At a distance, this boat looks good from every angle, and the visual pleasure continues as you step aboard and below into the cabin.

Who among us isn’t a sucker for pretty overhangs, a sweet sheerline and a flush deck? There isn’t a boat in Morris Yachts’s M-series line of Sparkman &Stephens-designed modern classics that’s not a head-turner, and the new M46 is no exception. There’s more to this beauty, though, than meets the eye: good performance was near the top of the design brief.

Something has happened to the Strictly Sail component of the Miami International Boat Show over the last five years. Each February, I’ve seen a drop in the number of monohulls and an increase in the number and variety of multihulls. This year, I twice attempted to count the number of catamarans; each time I was distracted and lost track somewhere around the mid-20s. Granted, there were a few brokerage boats in there, but it was an impressive turnout nevertheless, with plenty of new models amongst the evergreens. 

We sail the Blue Jacket 40, a fin-keeled, twin-wheeled performance cruiser from Island Packet Yachts

If you were asked to sum up any boat you sailed in just two words, it’s a fair bet that some of them wouldn’t be “family-friendly.” Thankfully, the phrase that stuck in my mind after our test sail of the new Blue Jacket 40 was this: sailor-friendly. Given the boat’s unusual but impeccable design pedigree, it could hardly have been anything else.

The Hanse 415 is superficially like a lot of new production cruising boats in the 40-foot range. But as I found out during a test sail on Narragansett Bay last fall, not all 40-foot “performance cruisers” are created equal.