Building upon the success of its 445, 495 and 545 models, Hanse has worked with the Judel/Vrolijk design office to produce the new 385 to replace the 370 model. This is a family cruiser or charter boat designed with comfort in mind. There are some very interesting design features on this new model.

I have just finished writing an article on CCA Rule-era boats where long overhangs were a common feature as a result of the Cruising Club of America rule. But this Hanse 385 was not designed to a rule, so a quick glance at the hull profile will show you what happens when rule demands on measured length are removed. The overhangs disappear and the LOA and DWL are close to identical. The result is a squared-off hull with a lot of internal volume for its LOA. The specs list an LOA of 11.4 meters and a "hull length" of 10.99 meters, so I'll just use the LOA of 37 feet, 5 inches. Using that, there is only 3 feet, 3 inches of total overhang on this design and the DWL is longer than that of the old Valiant 40. The L/B is low at 2.94 and anything under 3 I consider a fat boat. The D/L is 171. You can pick the deep-draft keel drawing 6 feet, 6 inches, or the shoal keel drawing 5 feet, 4 inches.

Four layouts are available. The standard two-stateroom layout comes with the option of chairs in the saloon to port or a settee. If you go with the chairs the table separating the chairs must be the navigation table. With the settee to port you get a small nav table aft of the settee. With only one stateroom aft you get a really nice and well laid out galley. If you go for a three-stateroom layout you lose part of the galley so you can access the starboard stateroom. You also lose the huge cockpit lockers that the two-stateroom version has. For me, the two-stateroom version with settee looks like the best configuration for the way I would use this boat. But both layouts look very comfortable with plenty of hanging lockers.

The SA/D of 20.19 for the 385 would have been huge back in the CCA days. Even the Cal 40 had an SA/D of only around 18.00. But back then we sailed with huge, overlapping genoas; terrible sails. Today the 385 lives with a 100% self-tacking, working jib and a tall, factional rig. There are short jib tracks aft of the self-tacking track so there are some sheeting options for that jib. The sailplan drawing shows no backstay but the photos I have of the boat show a backstay with a bridle to span that big transom. The spreaders are swept and the chainplates are on the rail, so an overlapping genoa would not give you the sheeting angle needed to go to weather well. The mainsheet is on a bridle atop the cabintrunk and forward of the midpoint on the boom.

The deck has been designed to cleverly bring all lines including halyards back to the helmsman. The twin wheels open up the cockpit to access the huge fold-down swim step that tucks up flush into the transom. This is a very big cockpit.

This boat has some design features that are well worth a second look.