Racer

Starting with the interior, however, I do have two gripes with this design. First, there is a door separating the double quarter berth from the main cabin. This essentially puts the berth in a box. To my eye this is just way too small a space to be shut in by a door. Privacy? Who are you kidding? I don't think there is room in that compartment sufficient to allow you to pull your pants on anyway. Note how the V-berth is butted right up against the bulkhead at the forward end of the main cabin so that anyone occupying the V-berths will have to get dressed and undressed in the main cabin. Cruising on this boat is best either for a couple, a couple with two kids, or two couples that are very intimate friends.

My second gripe is that the nav station, although nice, isn't necessary on a boat this size. What I really think this boat needs is more hanging-locker space. If you cruise in a rainy area like Seattle you will find that you need room to stow wet gear. Believe me, Henri Lloyd and Helly Hansen aside, by nightfall everything you have on will be damp.

The galley is better than adequate and includes fresh and saltwater foot pumps at the sink. This designer has even managed to get counter space on each side of the two-burner range as well as two drawers just aft of the range. The interior finish is kind of like a mini-Swan with solid teak trim, teak veneer and a teak-and-holly sole. It's an impressive look.

The hull is of the beamy, short-ended type that dominates the market today. The L/B is 2.96 and the D/L is 171. Draft is moderate at 5 feet, 5 inches, with the lead ballast hung on a deep GRP sump. The spade rudder looks quite big to my eye, but there is nothing wrong with a big rudder on a cruising boat. You could argue against the added wetted surface and drag from the thicker section, but I'd take those any day in exchange for excellent handling in close quarters and a boat that tracks well. Small boats, by virtue of their size, are not great trackers so the larger rudder may help keep the boat on course while you go below for a sandwich.

Looking at the sailplan we see this is a fractionally rigged boat. This means that the boat will have a longer boom, which in this case allows the mainsheet to come down to a traveler aft of the tiller head. This helps clean up the compact cockpit. There is a small bowsprit that contains the anchor roller. This is a thoughtful addition and will keep the anchor from clanking against the stem when you raise it.

The chainplates are external, which is a little unusual but well done in this case. The fact that this is a fractional rig with a minimally overlapping jib-I'd say about 110 percent-means you can sheet the jib inboard of the shrouds to cabintop tracks. This is helped even further by the 16-degree sweep to the spreaders.

I like the overall style of this good looking boat. I like the swim step on the transom, and I like the nearly plumb bow. In many ways this design reminds me of my own boat. We get some pretty awful small cruising boats these days, a situation that is all the more troubling since, as we get accustomed to them and they eventually begin to look okay, they pave the way for an even worse looking bunch of boats. The Finngulf 28E gives us an effective combination of features in a very attractive package put together by a clever design team