It was about 5 a.m., I was awake and listening to the rain, thinking about my sailing reviews due later that morning. I began to think of all the production sailboats that were built in the U.S. in th

Nautor says, “The first Swan 51 represented a landmark in the inspirational evolution of the Nautor Swan brand.  Launched in 1981, the model marked the first collaboration between Swan and the

For this review, I should save the surprise for the end, but why make you wait? About a month ago, around midnight, depending on the version of the story, I rolled out of bed and fractured my bac

It will be fun to see what happens when we compare two catamarans with similar L/Ds using both hulls, and similar L/Ds using each hull individually, while reducing LOA by 9.62 feet.  The 48 Open

The Catana Group is launching its 14th Bali catamaran model, the 5.8, in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of the line. The promo blurb says “always bigger,” and I’m not going to argue with

Dufour is a French builder that has been around as long or longer than I have been designing. Its Arpege model was hugely successful and began life as a half-tonner. This new Dufour is aimed at the cr

I first met Tim Kernan about 20 years ago when he was attending The Landing School of Boatbuilding and Design in Maine, taking its yacht design course. The students are required to complete an in

Regular readers probably know that years ago Mark Mills was an intern in my office. He was fun to have around and really knew sailing. I would listen to him talking to my clients on the phone with his

The newest design in the Elan series of cruising boats is this Rob Humphreys-designed Elan Impression 43, which marks 20 years of Humphreys designs for Elan. The deck is designed by the Pininfarina st

We have two very contrasting designs to review this month. The first is this very special design that I’ll call a “weekender” although there’s nothing to stop it from sailing out for a mo

Now for that contrast I mentioned earlier: The Rapido 40 designed by Morrelli & Melvin in southern California, is a high-performance, high-tech, folding trimaran built by Triac Composites in Ho Ch

It’s hard to find interesting designs for review these days. So this month I thought we’d try a little different approach. In early 1973 I quit my design job in Seattle, loaded my Peugeot wagon an

When Yves-Marie, Chuck and I left Dick Carter’s tower in Nahant, Massachusetts, to try it on our own I don’t think either of us knew where the future would take us in the world of yacht design. We

Holy cow! We have a 40-foot folding trimaran to review. This will be fun. My buddy Doug, who lived on the next beach, had one. It wasn’t a Dragonfly but it was similar and not as nice as the Dragonf

This month we are going to look at a revamp of the X4.9. I’m not very familiar with the 4.9 but the promotional material I have does a good job of highlighting the changes and there are many. X-Yach

Here’s a new model from the Solaris yard in Aquileia, Italy. The design is by Javier Soto Acebal, with design contributions from the yard’s in-house design team. In keeping with the well-establish

I can’t recall seeing a Tim Jackett design I did not admire. Tim’s eye captures class proportions and shapes while insuring that performance does not take a back set to aesthetics. It’s sim

I’m not sure when I first became aware of Wally yachts. They are built in Milan, Italy. The company concentrates on maxi types with very sophisticated design work from a number of top designers. The