Boats

Presto 30

by Sail Staff, Posted April 19, 2011

The new Presto 30 is a rare and spectacular example of what a talented naval architect can do with an old but practical idea. The design is an evolution of an 1885 Biscayne Bay sharpie created by Commodore Ralph Munroe, a South Florida businessman who was also a passionate naval architect.Though Rodger Martin’s Presto 30 resembles Munroe’s boat, also called Presto, it is a true 21st

The Dynamic Duo

by Peter Nielsen, Posted April 21, 2011

Eavesdropping on an in-depth discussion of rating rules will send a casual bystander into a deep sleep as effectively as any hypnotist, and IRC—the successor to IOR and IMS—is no exception to this, er, rule. All I can say with any kind of authority is that boats designed to IRC tend to be a good deal more interesting than the rule itself. Over the last few years we’ve seen a steady stream of IRC

Norseboat 21.5

by Adam Cort, Posted April 28, 2011

The salty-looking gaff-rigged Norseboat 21.5 is just about the last boat you’d expect to see sailing against the shiny glass and steel backdrop of downtown Miami—which may explain why the beautiful people roaring by in their megayachts couldn’t seem to keep their eyes off us. I swear they looked more than a little envious.The 21.5 is the third in the Norseboat series,

Shoal Survivor

by Sail Staff, Posted May 5, 2011

There was a time when the variable-draft sailboat was a common sight along North America’s coastlines. Tartan, Pearson, Morgan, C&C, Sabre, Hunter and other builders all offered largish cruising boats with centerboards or swing keels, and many of those now-elderly vessels still populate the thin waters of the Carolinas, Chesapeake and Florida.Changes to racing rules in the 1970s made

The Dufour 375

by Sail Staff, Posted May 5, 2011

The Hobie Mirage Tandem Island

by David Schmidt, Posted May 6, 2011

Few designs pack as much fun into 18 feet as the Hobie Mirage Tandem Island, a two-person pedal-or-paddle kayak that converts to a sail-powered trimaran by attaching a pair of akas and amas, and stepping a carbon-fiber mast. The roller-reefing loose-footed mainsail carries a generous amount of sailcloth up high and is supported by vertical battens. The boat’s robust rotomolded hull encourages

Modern Tradition

by Peter Nielsen, Posted May 31, 2011

If there’s one lesson to be taken away from the success of the daysailer concept, it is that traditional is never old-fashioned—at least not when it comes to boats. I find plenty of modern boats attractive, but the only drop-dead, wolf-whistle gorgeous ones are those that look as though they could have been built at any time in the last century.I’m far from alone in this.

Dragonfly 28 Sport

by Jeremy Evans, Posted May 31, 2011

Quorning Boats has been building trimarans in Denmark for more than 40 years. Run by the father and son team of Borge and Jens Quorning, the company specializes in Dragonfly fast cruisers with a “swing wing” system that reduces beam by more than 50 percent for trailering or berthing.The Dragonfly 28 is the smallest in the range. It’s available as a Touring 28 with aluminium spars or

Bargain Performance

by Kimball Livingston, Posted June 13, 2011

Bill Schock, the founder of California-based W.D. Schock Corp., got a lot of things right in his time, not the least of which when he turned to his son Tom back in 1976 and said, “It’s a great little boat. Let’s build it.” In this way the Santana 20 was born with, as Tom recalls it, “no demographic studies, no market research, nothing. We didn’t know who we’d sell it to.”Thirty-five years

The Hylas 56

by John Kretschmer, Posted July 6, 2011

The Hylas 56 is the logical successor to the popular passagemaker, the Hylas 54. Introduced in 1999, the 54 proved that big, powerful cruisers could be efficiently handled by shorthanded crews, and several 54s have since logged circumnavigations. Why add two feet? For several reasons. The 56’s cockpit is longer and more refined, the aft cabin has more headroom, the rudder is