In the few years since the Bali brand appeared as an offshoot of the Catana line of catamarans, it has grown rapidly. The original models are popular bareboat charter vessels in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and the new Bali 5.4, the largest of the line, moves the company ...read more
A boat is a set of tradeoffs, and a perfect boat doesn’t exist. That said, if you’re searching for a proven bluewater multihull that can be sailed shorthanded, has all the comforts of a luxury home and is wicked fast without beating up your wallet, you owe yourself a test sail ...read more
Groupe Beneteau, builder of Lagoon catamarans, has introduced a new multihull line called Excess. The first of the boats to reach U.S. shores at the Annapolis boat show was the Excess 12, a 38ft 6in design based on the popular Lagoon 40. The thought process behind this new boat ...read more
This past fall at the Annapolis Sailboat show, we had a chance to catch up with Hanse’s Maxim Neumann, who kindly provided us a tour of the company’s new flagship, the Hanse 675. An impressive, well-built production yacht that boldly ventures into maxi-yacht territory, the ...read more
With new catamaran brands springing up like mushrooms, France’s Fountaine Pajot is something of an oak tree in the market, with a story that goes back to its founding in 1976. It is also one of the largest cat builders out there, sending some 600 boats down the ways in 2018. The ...read more
There is much new going on at Bavaria Yachts. Only a few months under new ownership and the German builder has already launched a new flagship—the C57, which presumably will be the template for future models, including possibly an even larger boat than this one. We sailed the ...read more
There’s something especially fun about sailing a boat on the home waters of the company that built it. And when you’re sailing the latest performance-cruiser from X-Yachts, the X4°, on the “Little Belt,” just down the road from the company’s squeaky-clean yard in Haderslev, ...read more
Old salts grouse about modern aesthetics. It’s just what they do, and the hard lines and spartan interiors of today’s production boats give them many reasons to complain. French builder Wauquiez, however, seems to consistently be able to marry contemporary elements with ...read more
Coming fast on the heels of its predecessor, the Bali 4.0, the Bali 4.1 adds a number of improvements, many of them inspired by feedback from owners and charterers. She’s an evolution of a concept that has already proven popular and very many benefits from its builder’s ...read more
The Beneteau sailboat line has long represented a kind of continuum, both in terms of the many models the company is offering at any given moment and over time. This does not, however, in any way diminish the quality of its individual boats. Just the opposite. Case in point: the ...read more
In a time when most new cruising boats are coming from Europe, it is refreshing to meet the Tartan 395, a brand-new design from a respected American builder. Not only that, but this is a proper yacht in the traditional American sense of the term that it is also entirely modern ...read more
The Danish builder X-Yachts, founded in 1979 by brothers Lars and Niels Jeppensen, has focused on creating high-quality cruiser-racers for many years now. Mixing lightweight construction techniques with no-nonsense structural integrity, the company has a well-deserved reputation ...read more
When I asked Fountaine Pajot’s Laurent Fabre if the new Astrea 42 was replacing Fountaine Pajot’s earlier Helia 44, his response was a firm “Non!” The reason, he said, is the Astrea isn’t just a shortened or tweaked design, but rather an all-new design for this LOA that borrows ...read more
There are boats and then there are those boats that turn heads, and for me, the boats built by Hylas have always fallen under the latter category. Sturdy ocean-crossers, these capable couples cruisers beckon to those with dreams of voyaging to distant shores in comfort and ...read more
After years of quiescence in the wake of the Great Recession, iconic Island Packet is back with its new 349, a re-boot of the old Estero that not only looks great, but takes the Island Packet style of sailing performance to a new level. Design & Construction First among the many ...read more
Because of its similarity to the previous Nautitech 40 Open, a winner in SAIL’s Best Boats contest a few years ago, you could perhaps label the latest version of the boat as a “Mark II” design. Nonetheless, the many tweaks made to the already award-winning design more than ...read more
Though it’s a modern truism that boatbuilders favor bigger boats because they make more money on them, several production builders have recently begun introducing some smaller models to their product lines so as to attract new and younger sailors to the sport. Among them is ...read more
It’s easy to get a big head sailing around on a boat like the Seawind 1260, if for no other reason than the fact you’re not only going faster than pretty much every other boat around, but you’re doing so in exceptional comfort. Add to that the fact the boat also happens to be ...read more
Anyone under the impression that change in today’s production catamarans is about little more than cosmetics needs to check out the Lagoon 50—an all-new design that went on to become the winner in the 40 to 50ft cruising multihull category in SAIL’s 2019 Best Boats awards. ...read more
Allures is not a name on the tip of many American sailors’ tongues, but it should be. After the debut of its 39-footer last year, the French company has made another significant entry into the U.S. midrange market with the Allures 45.9, an aluminum-hulled cruiser-voyager with ...read more
When it comes to sailing, the first boat a newbie sets foot on can make all the difference in the world; which is why our editors were especially impressed with the new Zest training dinghy from RS Sailing when they selected it as one of their winners in SAIL’s 2018 Best Boat ...read more
It’s funny the way things that work right almost inevitably tend to look right as well. Case in point: the Outremer 45, a catamaran that can’t help but turn heads with its large rig, nicely sculpted cabintrunk and narrow, purposeful bows. Better yet, under sail the boat more ...read more
True innovation in monohull sailboat design can be a bit elusive these days. That’s not to say that there are no more new ideas, but it does seem that many new tweaks and introductions are a bit incremental: let’s say evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Just when it seems ...read more
French catamaran builder Lagoon, created an unimaginable following when it launched its 380 nearly two decades ago. With over 800 of the boats built to date, it appealed both in size and price to couples with cruising dreams. No model launched since has been successful in ...read more
