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Best Boats 2010

by Nigel Calder, Posted November 19, 2009
SAIL scoured the fall boat shows for the shining stars among this year's crop of new boats. Here they areThere was a buzz around the docks at the Annapolis and Newport shows, and it wasn't the sound of the plague of locusts we were half expecting, given the disasters of recent months and years. No, the sun shone, the water sparkled, the brightwork gleamed, and you all came to the show.

Flagships: Bavaria Cruiser 45

by Charles Mason, Posted January 20, 2010
For over 30 years Bavaria Yachts has been producing good sailing designs at a very affordable price, helped in part by automated production facilities and unit volumes that have exceeded 3,000 a year. The latest model from the Bavaria design crew is this 45-footer with a three-cabin layout that includes an owner’s cabin forward and two cabins aft of the saloon. The owner’s cabin

Island Packet Estero

by Kimball Livingston, Posted February 26, 2010
Using a bow thruster to get a 36-foot boat off the dock was new to me, but fair to say, the folks at Island Packet know what they're doing. Without the thruster we would have required a heap of pulpit shoving and gear shifting to escape that narrow corner of the marina, so our easy exit to San Francisco Bay provided the perfect introduction to the Estero, the latest offering from a company where

J/97

by Sail Staff, Posted April 22, 2010
As we strolled across the grounds at the New York Yacht Club’s Harbour Court facility in Newport, Rhode Island, Al Johnstone described the design brief for his new J/97 racer/cruiser. “I thought we needed an entry-level sprit boat that’s a little more user-friendly, non-intimidating and family-cruiseable than the J/105,” he said.CONSTRUCTIONStructurally, the boat is

Renovatio: The Passport 615

by Tom Dove, Posted April 23, 2010
Passport Yachts has been building semi-custom voyaging sailboats for three decades. For the last 20 years these boats have been produced in a modern facility in China. Thom Wagner has been the force behind the company from the beginning, and he still is the man to see when you are ready to buy one. His latest project is the Passport Vista 615 Twin Cockpit, designed by Bill Dixon.

Fountaine Pajot Lipari 41

by Sail Staff, Posted April 28, 2010
Fountaine Pajot has been building catamarans for more than 30 years. Over that time, the company's boats have changed in evolutionary steps rather than quantum leaps, with hundreds of them being field-tested every day in charter fleets around the world. The new Lipari 41 is a further refinement of the simple, strong, spacious craft this builder has always produced.

Landing School 30

by David Schmidt, Posted April 28, 2010
Most production boats are conceived with a design brief from a builder who has a targeted market in mind. Not so the Landing School 30 (LS-30). It’s built by students at a non-profit boatbuilding and design college. The Landing School and its resident designer, Steve Dalzell, design and build boats as part of the curriculum: selling them is an afterthought. As a result, only two or three LS30s

Dufour 405

by Sail Staff, Posted May 19, 2010
French builder Dufour Yachts added this sparkling new 40-footer to its range of Umberto-Felci-designed performance cruisers late last year.

Alerion 33

by Peter Nielsen, Posted June 2, 2010
Alerion’s take on electric drive utilizes the most up-to-date technology available. It involves a 7.5kw AC motor, powered by a pair of 160amp 12V DC lithium iron phosphate batteries from Mastervolt. These batteries, the first developed for the marine market, won a 2010 Freeman K. Pittman Innovation Award from SAIL. They have three times the cycle capacity of a lead-acid battery, and can

CW Hood 32

by Peter Nielsen, Posted June 7, 2010
Late last fall, I looked over a partly completed hull sitting in a small workshop at a boatyard in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Even minus keel, paint, trim and other essentials, it was apparent that this would be a fast and attractive boat. Less than four weeks later, with snow carpeting the small islands off Marblehead, the boat was being sea-trialed; and yes, it was indeed fast and
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