Boats

J/111

by Adam Cort, Posted August 25, 2010

According to designer Alan Johnstone, the brief for the new 36ft 6in J/111 one-design was for a boat that he and the rest of the J/Boats crew would want to sail—and it shows.During a recent daysail off Newport, Rhode Island, hull #1 reveled in picture perfect sailing conditions, with winds out of the east in the mid to high teens. Sailing to windward, the boat was balanced and easy to

Bavaria by Farr

by Peter Nielsen, Posted September 21, 2010

Germany’s Bavaria Yachts, not long ago the 800-pound gorilla of European boatbuilding, took a pummeling during the recession. For years its philosophy of strict engineering practices and budget control had seen its value-priced cruising boats flying off the factory floor. By 2007 the factory was cranking out nearly 3,500 boats a year to feed a seemingly insatiable, mainly

Beneteau First 40

by Sail Staff, Posted September 22, 2010

The Farr-designed First 40 is the follow-up to Beneteau’s highly successful First 40.7, a boat that won a series of key international races and quickly established itself as a performer. Over the boat’s 11-year lifespan, Beneteau has sold more than 800 First 40.7s to customers around the globe. Launched in Europe a year ago, about 100 of these new 40-footers have already been sold, and the design

Portland Pudgy

by Peter Nielsen, Posted September 23, 2010

Once, in the interests of research, I spent an afternoon bobbing around in a liferaft. Ever since, I’ve had an obsession with bilge pumps, because what I learned was this: I don’t ever want to spend time in a liferaft again. The discomfort was one thing, and should not be downplayed, but what really got to me was the sense of helplessness. A liferaft is a passive device, at the mercy of wind and

Dazzling Daysailers

by Adam Cort, Posted September 27, 2010

Two days after the close of the Newport Boat Show, we had a chance to take out a couple of the smaller new boats we’d visited there, the Scandinvian Cruiser and Class 2M. Despite their diminutive size, both were standouts at the show, with their striking good looks, unique design and excellent build quality.Quick but forgivingThe first boat

The Dufour 40e

by Peter Nielsen, Posted November 23, 2010

It was one of those days a boat reviewer lives for: a solid 20 knots of wind, occasionally gusting toward 30; a cloudless blue sky; and a sharp performance cruiser with a couple of pro sailors aboard, all dialed up and ready to go. This example of Dufour’s new 40E had not been in the water long, and I happily seized the chance to put it through its paces during a visit last March to the factory

Prout 50SW

by Sail Staff, Posted December 9, 2010

The words sleek and fast aren’t normally associated with the Prout name. Words like “sturdy” and “well-finished” more typically come to mind. Nonetheless, the new Prout 50SW is very different from the—how to say this diplomatically—peculiarly English Prouts of the 1980s and 1990s. The signature mast-aft rig of those earlier boats, with their tiny mainsails and huge jibs, is long gone, as is the

Catalina 355

by Charles J. Doane, Posted December 30, 2010

Catalina’s 445, introduced in 2009, won multiple awards and attracted much interest from buyers. According to Catalina VP and design maven Gerry Douglas, the only complaint some potential buyers had was that the boat was a bit bigger than what they needed or could afford. Hence the straightforward design brief for Douglas’s new boat, the 355, introduced at the 2010 Annapolis boat show: scale down

High Performance Multihull Milestones

by Adam Cort, Posted January 3, 2011

Multihulls have been around for a long time. The Chinese reportedly sailed double-hulled junks as early as 2700 BC, and ancient Polynesians used a variety of multi-hulled craft to colonize the South Pacific. The Englishman William Dampier was the first Westerner on record to use the word “catamaran” back in the 1690s during a trip through the Tamil region in Southern India. The word itself comes

Trialing the First J/108 in North America

by Adam Cort, Posted February 7, 2011

It was the perfect test for the new J/108. We were in Key West, and the light southerly breeze was opposing an ebb tide, creating a nasty chop in the shipping channel, so we opted instead to make an end run between Sunset Key and Wisteria Island.Doing so in a typical, deep-draft, 35-foot J/Boat would have been risky at best—on the chart the passage between the two islands shows a couple of