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2022 March 1

This beautiful daysailer will be created by build-it-yourselfers

I was cruising around on Facebook one day and I saw a boat that jumped out at me. It was a great looking boat and very nicely drawn. Clearly the designer had some well honed skills and a good eye
2022 March 1

A wolf in sheep’s clothing, this classic cruiser is deceptively powerful

Here’s an elegant design from the Hoek design office in Holland for Performance Classic Yachts in the United Kingdom. The company has built a series of Hoek designs in Turkey that have proven quite
2022 January 1

With a emphasis on performance, this cruising catamaran doesn’t skimp on comfort and styling

I understand that it is difficult to sell boats from two-dimensional working drawings for a new design. Many sailors have trouble reading 2D drawings and need 3D renderings to understand the new
2022 January 1

This cruising catamaran has room for a crowd to sail in comfort

I don’t know if many of you have heard the story of how I got my job as “technical editor” of SAILING but I’ll tell it again. It’s a funny story.It was late in 1974 and SAILING Editor M
2021 November 1

This swift family cruiser is handsome and thoughtfully laid out

Holy cow! My editor has given me two new French boats to review this month, the Oceanis 34.1 by Beneteau and the Sun Odyssey 380 by Jeanneau. I had to study these two boats carefully to even tell them
2021 November 1

This good-looking family cruiser’s deck is laid out for easy sailing

Now let’s see what Marc Lombard, the same designer as the Oceanis 31.4 can do when you give him a very similar design brief and an additional 2 feet 8 inches of additional hull length. Looking at th
2021 October 1

With a racer-cruiser pedigree, this performance cruiser will make speedy offshore passages

Sometimes when I listen to an old Jackson Brown album, I get the feeling that Mr. Brown had been following me around taking notes. I get a similar feeling when I look at a new J/Boats cruising design.
2021 October 1

This elegant cruiser is meant for ocean sailing

When I was 15, I worked in a meat market, Ray’s Meats, after school. My walk home would take me past an old-fashioned drug store that had an extensive assortment of magazines including at least four
2021 September 1

After 50 years and hundreds of designs, Bob Perry revisits one of his classics and redesigns it for the modern era

It was 1973. I had left my job drawing ferrocement boat plans for Jay Benford and was headed to Boston to work for Dick Carter—my dream job. I never bought into the ferrocement “craze” that Benf
2021 July 1

This new cruising catamaran boasts good performance with comfortable living space

Let’s add 12 feet to the LOA and see what designers Simonis Voogd can do with an LOA of 54 feet 3 inches. I think the main difference between this big cat built by Kinetics Catamarans and the Bali 4
2021 July 1

This comfortable cruising cat has plenty of space for three couples to lounge about

I try to keep my reviews objective. I don’t always succeed. If I see what I consider to be a “design flaw” I’ll point it out. But aesthetics are so subjective. I hesitate to impose my sen
2021 June 1

With all kinds of bells and whistles available, this cruiser can make ocean passages in comfort

I always enjoy getting a new Hallberg-Rassy model to review. I like German Frers hull designs and the layouts and decks of the H-R boats are always very well thought out. This new model at 50 fee
2021 June 1

This powerful performance cruiser has speed and style for world cruising

Here’s a big, stylish cruising boat from Jeanneau with the focus on comfort. The Jeanneau Yacht 60 is designed by Philippe Briand, a very accomplished designer of both racing and cruising boats.Look
2021 April 1

The raised-saloon cruiser has creature comforts for two couples

Here’s a new Oyster model that is about the same LOA as the Shogun 50, but this is a cruising boat with no pretense to being a race boat. Oyster did not invent the raised saloon configuration.
2021 April 1

The racer-cruiser is 200% fast and comfortable

I frequently ask my editor Greta to give me something interesting and different to review. Well, I got my wish this month. This new design by Oscar and Haken Södergren is really different. If yo
2021 March 1

Sleek performance cruiser checks all the right boxes for offshore sailing

Dufour is one of the oldest French production builders still in business. In 1974 I raced a Dufour Arpege in the Chicago-Mackinac race. The Arpege was an older design at that time. This latest Dufour,
2021 March 1

This racer-cruiser puts the focus on speed with a slick deck layout

This month we have two new European builds to review, the Dehler 38 SQ and the Dufour 430 Grand Large. It would be nice to compare the differences in the two designs, but most of the differences are i
2021 January 1

The modern cold-molded cruiser has speed and style for fast passages

Here’s a handsome new design by my friend Kevin Dibley. Kevin is a very good designer and a nice guy. The builder is Lyman-Morse and the company’s pedigree goes back many years. I have been to tha
2021 January 1
This month we have two very nice cruising boats to review. It’s hard these days to clearly define “cruising boat.” My definition is any boat that you can cruise. That leaves a lot of latitude.&n
2020 November 1

With clever interior design, this new cruising cat feels bigger than 42 feet

Leopard Catamarans has 25 years of cruising catamaran experience. The result is this new 42-foot model that builds off the success of the Leopard 40 model along with advances in styling made with the

Perry on Design

  • A svelte cruising cat that has performance front and center

  • This cruising cat’s palatial accommodations have sailors living in comfort

  • This raised saloon offshore cruiser offers comfort and performance

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