Oct. 12/2019: Just back from Phase One of my annual boat show dive in Nap Town. The most interesting new boat I saw there by far is the Eagle Class 53 (see image up top), a foiling (there’s that word again) all-carbon catamaran with a “hybrid” wing-sail rig. Coincidentally, I saw this very same boat...
By far the most interesting piece of news I picked up while wandering the show in Annapolis the last two days came from this man, Foxy Callwood, renowned owner of Foxy’s Bar on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. During the course of a rambling conversation, Foxy complained of the lagging effort to...
This truly was touch and go. I’d had the boat hauled in early September to attend to a fairly discrete list of chores: 1) put on fresh bottom paint; 2) have some nice handrails sent by my friends at Boréal welded on to the stern arch; 3) make sure the engine’s running gear was OK...
The big in-the-water show here in Annapolis is featuring a lot of the in-the-air water this year. We suffered a biblical downpour yesterday morning that continued sputtering on and off through the day. I was forced to invest in new Helly Hansen boots and an umbrella on the sperm of the moment...
Both the cats I tested after the Annapolis show this year are super-sized production boats designed mostly to serve in the charter trade. The Leopard 58, a.k.a. the Moorings 5800, is the more extreme example of this species, fully three stories tall, topped with an enormous covered flybridge on which it is possible to entertain...
Me and everyone else at SAIL magazine have been running about like the proverbial headless chickens doing what we do here in Annapolis in early October. Most important news first: SAIL has a new location at the show, en plein air (we used to be buried in a tent), directly across from Catalina's in-the-water boats,...
Thought I'd share with you some pix of a few things that raised my eyebrows while I was in Annapolis, starting with this hot catamaran, the Alibi 54 (built in Thailand), which in fact wasn't even in the show. Multihull maven Gregor Tarjan of Aeroyacht, who represents Alibi in the U.S., snuck me out to...
I've been padding around the big sailboat show here in Annapolis the last couple of days searching for cool boats and kit. Right at the top of my wanna-see gear list was Harken's new reversible winch, which is debuting here in the U.S. ahead of Selden's new reversible winch, due to be unveiled in Amsterdam...
