When Bob Hayward, a successful American real estate developer, film studio co-founder and farmer, couldn’t find the perfect cruising catamaran, he had one built at Phil Harvey’s South African boat

When Canadian-born naval architect Rob Ball talks about favorites among the dozens of boats he designed for C&C Yachts, he lists the C&C 34+ racer-cruiser as one his best. During an October 20

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

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

During the late 1980s, recreational sailors began searching for cruising boats that were easy to handle and loaded with liveaboard comforts. Hunter Marine Corp. answered the call with several models,

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.

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

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

The origin of the celebrated Pearson Rhodes 41 can be traced back to the 1950s and construction of the Bounty II design, a cruising sloop designed by naval architect Philip Rhodes that was made of a p

More than 40 years after the first Cabot 36 cutter was built in Canada, the boats remain cherished by their owners and the stuff of dreams for sailors looking to purchase one.  Only 49 of these

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

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

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

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

Full disclosure: I love Leopard Catamarans. I’ve “owned” several, admittedly only for a week at a time on bareboat charters, but that was enough to find them fun to sail, easy to maintain and ve

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.

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

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,