Bluewater cruiserr

As a kid I would get up in the morning, pour myself the first of many bowls of cereal totally covered in white sugar and chomp away while studying the designs of Bill Garden, Bill Atkin, Bill Tripp, Phillip Rhodes and my all time favorite, K. Aage Neilsen.

It's no wonder I developed a reverence for the presentation of a design. Those guys could make the drawings talk to you. The boat would come alive on the paper. Garden's little cat schooner Bug had a guy asleep on the berth with a bottle of whiskey cradled in his crossed arms. The lacelike quality of Neilsen's line weights gave the boat an implied three-dimensional vitality and the exaggerated line weight shading of Phil Rhodes drafting style also lent a 3-D look to drawings. These drawings captured my heart. Compare these Judel/Vrolijk drawings of this new Najad 400 model with the drawings for the Ocean Star and you will see what I mean.

Forty feet is short for a centercockpit boat. This length challenges good designers spatially and aesthetically. J/V has done an excellent job with this design. The freeboard is on the high side but that helps with accommodations by allowing the cabin sole to come up, and as the sole rises it gains area. The sailplan shows a good looking boat with a fixed windshield and a low cockpit coaming rising above the long cabintrunk. The spinnaker pole will be carried on the mast when not in use. This not only eliminates the necessity of struggling around the deck with the pole in your arms but in this case there is very little free deck space to stow the pole on deck without it being a major obstacle. It causes weight and windage aloft stowed on the mast but it is convenient.

Using I, J, E and P, I get a SA/D of 14.13. This is very close to that of the Ocean Star. Maybe we are starting to see a reaction to the towering cruising rigs with SA/D ratios in excess of 20. Lots of sail area is fun when it's light but not fun in a blow. If you want light air speed and pointing ability the 53-horsepower Yanmar should do it.

You can choose from three interiors with the major options being in the way the boat is arranged aft of the cockpit. The standard layout shows a centerline double berth aft and one head accessible from the saloon. You can have outboard single berths aft or you can even go with two staterooms aft. It looks like you have to walk through one stateroom to get to the other. The galley extends down the passageway and there is no room for dishes on either side of the sinks. Of course this is no problem when you are heeled over because you'll put the dishes in the sinks. You can have a settee berth to starboard or you can go with Streisand chairs. It's a lot of interior for 40 feet and you give up fo'c'sle and lazarette to get it. There is one deep cockpit locker but it looks to me like this space, while big, would be hard to use efficiently. There are also small, saddlebag-style lockers in the quarters but there is no voluminous lazarette. Najads are built to order so some customization is possible.

The deck has no surprises for us. The cockpit is on the small side as you would expect from a 40-foot center-cockpit design. There is a flush hatch on the foredeck for access to the small fo'c'sle. Chainplates are smack in the middle of the side deck. I know you hate this but it's really where they need to go in most cases if you want to be able to sheet a genny in and go to weather. Sorry.

The Najad would make a great cruising boat for a couple with two kids.