Best Boats

Yacht Design Program - Just Launched

by Sail Staff, Posted September 23, 2009

It's a rare and wonderful thing to have three different American companies all working on new boats in the 30-foot range at the same time, let alone in such straitened times as these. And, as if to illustrate the rich diversity of boat design and construction, each of these boats is aimed at a different subset of the general sailing population.Truth to tell, one of these builders isn't

Fleet Action: Best Boats 2010

by Sail Staff, Posted August 27, 2009

Check out the nominees for the 2010 awards!Never mind the economy -- it’s business as usual in the boating game. Well, not quite. Everyone in the marine trade is feeling the financial pinch these days, so it’s even more impressive that so many new boats have been developed and readied in time for the fall boat show season. What this year’s line-up of new models—everything from dinghies to

Moody 45 DS

by Sail Staff, Posted August 17, 2009

What happens when one of Britain’s oldest and most conservative brands meets one of Germany’s most unorthodox boatbuilders? The Moody 45, that’s what. Longtime Moody designer Bill Dixon must have had a ball with this boat, built at the Hanse factory in Germany. It’s designed with most of the accommodation at deck level, just leaving heads and sleeping cabins down below. The

Evolution, not Revolution

by Nigel Calder, Posted November 12, 2008

October’s Annapolis Boat Show opened as Wall Street experienced one of the biggest sell-offs in history. With the scary economic news, it was easy to think that many people would put off investing in a new boat. That idea went out the window as VIP Thursday appeared to be more crowded than ever. Instead of panicking, sailors seemed to be turning to sailing, much as they did after 9/11—as a

Best Boats 2008

by Sail Staff, Posted December 20, 2007

There was a lot to see in this year’s Best Boats fleet. Multihull designer and guru Chris White, monohull designer Jeremy Wurmfeld, and I combed the docks at the Newport and Annapolis sailboat shows in search of boats worthy of SAIL’s Editors’ Choice awards for innovation and overall excellence. We walked the docks, familiarized ourselves with the fleet, and spent lots of time debating the merits

Best Boats 2006

by Sail Staff, Posted April 11, 2007

I needn’t point out that sailboats don’t evolve as quickly as electronics, but incremental changes over the years have gone a long way toward making boats safer, easier to sail, and more comfortable to live on. Each instance of applying fresh thinking to common problems—think staying out of the weather, or stowing the main—can claim a little credit for pushing the evolution of sailboats

Best Boats 2007

by Sail Staff, Posted November 27, 2006

SAIL’s Best Boats program is designed to seek out and acknowledge true innovation and forward thinking; the awards are based on firsthand knowledge of the new boats we see at the shows. SAIL editors Peter Nielsen, Bill Springer and Kimball Livingston, and editor-at large Charlie Doane combed the docks at the fall boat shows and have given Editors’ Choice awards for innovation and overall

2004 Best Boats

by Sail Staff, Posted September 18, 2006

The fall boat shows in Newport, Rhode Island, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Annapolis, Maryland, gave us plenty to think about as we got our Best Boats program under way. We had advance warning of 55 new models making their way into the boating marketplace; this is a phenomenal number for a relatively small industry. Boats being what they are, there were a few no-shows, but there were more than

The best of the rest

by Sail Staff, Posted February 4, 2003

Each of these boats deserves to be recognized for a specific feature, design, or construction technique that was particularly innovative and/or well executed.Island Packet 486's nav stationAny offshore navigator would love to call this nerve-center nav station home. There's room to mount every imaginable electronic gadget, the varnished teak chart table is big enough to unfold a