Racer-cruiserr

Let's look at these boats and compare the advantages each offers for the simple cruising life. To keep the playing field level we are going to evaluate each boat based on its suitability for a long weekend cruise. We'll leave the dock Friday morning and return home Monday afternoon. I'll take a friend and, of course, the dog.

Jim Antrim's Ultimate Sailboats-built Ultimate 24 will be our first ride. This sporty little packet has performance written all over it, and it was probably conceived more as a race boat than a cruiser. But that won't stop us from looking at it through a cruiser's eyes. This model was designed to fit in between Jim's Ultimate 20 and the Antrim 27, two boats that are also designed with speed in mind. The hull is short-ended to maximize sailing length with a D/L of 96. The keel can be raised and lowered for trailering, but you will leave it down while sailing. Keel-down draft is 5 feet, 6 inches. The keel foil is carbon fiber and the bulb is lead. With the keel up and the rudder removed you can launch this boat from a ramp.

Below there are quarter berths port and starboard, which extend forward to the forward end of the keel trunk. Forward of the keel trunk there is a counter to starboard with a sink and another counter to port with a locker outboard. The head is a porta potty type and located under the V-berths. I have this same arrangement on my own boat. It is inconvenient if your friend is a lady and she insists on using the head during the night. But a better solution would be hard to find. For me there's a certain cavalier appeal to breaking the stillness of the night with a tinkle over the stern. "Ooh look, phosphorescence!"

I don't much care for this layout. I would prefer to see the galley aft where you could benefit from the unlimited headroom of the open companionway hatch. Of course, this would interfere with at least one of the quarter berths. The other shortcoming of this interior, which will be a common thread with all the designs this month, is the paucity of hanging lockers. A decent hanging locker would take a 24-inch-long chunk out of this layout. Cruising in the Pacific Northwest means you will get wet, and having a place to hang wet gear would be very convenient. My own boat has hanging space outboard of the settees and while the gear doesn't hang straight down (it drapes against the hull) at least it is out of the way.

The rig of the 24 shows a mainsail with lots of roach and a loose foot. The deck-mounted carbon bowsprit extends to fly a large asymmetrical chute. If you include the mainsail roach you get an SA/D of 35.3. If you base the SA/D on I, J, E and P with 100 percent of the foretriangle you get 27.96.

The 24 has an outboard for the auxiliary, but given the high SA/D and the general nature of this design I can't imagine that you would need to motor very often.