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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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,

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

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