SAIL.SailMagazine

When Oyster founder Richard Matthews sold the company a few years ago, it was a safe bet that he wouldn’t be able to resist the siren call of boatbuilding for long. The Gunfleet 58 is the second design from Matthews’s new company, Gunfleet Marine.

Sometimes you need more living space than the average 100-foot monohull can provide. That’s when you turn to a boat like this Van Peteghem – Lauriot Prevost (VPLP) designed supercat.

When SAIL’s judges were weighing the candidates for the 2012 Best Boats daysailer award, there was no dissension over the winner: the BayRaider 20 scored a unanimous thumbs-up for its blend of portability, performance, good looks, build quality and innovation.

I have always admired Passport Yachts for their beauty, performance and detailing, but stepping aboard the new Passport Vista 545 CC, SAIL’s 2012 Best Boat in the Flagship Monohull category, I felt an especially strong sense of déja vu.

It’s great to see companies like Gunboat bringing big-boat manufacturing back to the United States. The company opened a new North Carolina yard in May, and we can look forward to seeing a new range of high-end catamarans appearing there in the near future.