SAIL.SailMagazine

On a crisp early-fall day, designer and builder Brian Bennett unfurled the self-tacking jib on the VX One Design prototype and we moved to the weather side, feet under the hiking straps, pulling the boat upright and effortlessly accelerating in the puffy northerly. Feedback from the mainsheet and the tiller told me to ease the main a bit. My first thought was, “Brian’s got it right with this design!”

It’s fitting that one of the most interesting big cruisers I’ve sailed in a long while came out of a small Florida yard that builds trailerable sailboats. No mass-production builder could have come up with the Seaward 46RK—it wouldn’t have got past the focus groups.

In his famous novella Typhoon, sailor and author Joseph Conrad pokes fun at a character named Capt. MacWhirr who is obsessed with the quality of the door handles on the steamer Nan-Shan. 

The Southerly range of beachable swing-keel cruisers from Britain’s Northshore Yachts has been consistently represented in the United States now for a number of years, which is a good thing, as there are many cruising grounds here where shoal-draft capability is a great advantage. Every time I sail a Southerly, I come away impressed by the utility offered by their ballasted swing keels and by the high quality of their design and construction

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. The boat not only shares a family resemblance to other Passports, but has the same hull and rig as the Passport 515 I sailed in 2008