Dehler was one of a few venerable European sailboat brands that ran out of oxygen during the Great Recession. You may recall that many of their quick, durable, well-built cruiser-racers got sold on this side of the Pond over the years. Hanse Group, which evidently aspires to be the General Motors of European boatbuilding, bought...
First introduced in 1985, this trailerable trimaran quickly became a seminal boat in the world of multihull sailing. Designed by Ian Farrier, a Kiwi who emigrated to California (by way of Australia) with the specific goal of perfecting his concept of a production-built trimaran with folding amas, the F-27 is both an excellent high-performance coastal...
Gulfstar Yachts was founded in 1970 by Vince Lazzara, an industry pioneer who in the early 1950s helped make a success of Aeromarine, one of the very first fiberglass boatbuilders. In the early 1960s he did the same at Columbia Yachts, which became the world's biggest sailboat builder in its day. Early on Gulfstar emphasized...
MY LAST POST about that abandoned Swan 48 floating around south of Bermuda has created some buzz it seems and numerous people are now making noises about retrieving it. To help inform and inspire would-be salvagers, I thought I should share some of what I know about these boats. I've sailed them back and forth...
The Catalina 42 was introduced in 1989 and was one of the first mass-produced American boats to feature both a sugar-scoop transom with a swim platform and a three-stateroom layout with two aft cabins under the cockpit. It was very much a response to similar boats that first appeared in Europe in the mid-1980s, but...
The Lagoon 380 is not the smallest Lagoon catamaran ever built--both the Lagoon 37, its immediate predecessor, and the Lagoon 35CCC were smaller--but it is the smallest Lagoon currently built and one of the smallest dedicated cruising cats that succeeds in combining both reasonable performance and a "big cat" accommodation plan in a single package....
OFTEN HAILED as the first performance cruiser, the Valiant 40 was an important breakthrough boat both for its designer, Bob Perry, and for cruising sailors in general. The genius of the design is that it married what above the water looks like a beamy double-ended traditional cutter with a much more modern underbody featuring a...
THIS IS A VERY TRADITIONAL CRUISING BOAT that evokes a strong emotional response from most sailors, but is also surprisingly functional and performance-oriented for a vessel of its size and type. Conceived by Lyle Hess, the BCC 28 is based on earlier Hess designs built in wood--specifically Renegade, a small gaff-rigged cutter that won the...
THOUGH IT DABBLED BRIEFLY with more performance-oriented racing designs during the 1980s, the well-known Swedish builder Hallberg-Rassy has traditionally focused on creating moderately proportioned cruising boats with understated modern styling. The HR42E, so designated in honor of its designer, Olle Enderlein, predates its immediate successor, the HR42F (designed by German Frers), and was built from...
Theoretically, I was to spend all day Monday testing boats after the "multi-cocks" show in Lorient, but the weather was so foul everyone cancelled on me. Instead I managed to cram in a couple of short tests during the last day of the show, including one on the new Neel 45, an intriguing trimaran that...
