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

The French catamaran builder Catana started building cruising cats 20 years ago, and at that time, cruising cats were far from mainstream. If you went to the Annapolis boat show back then you might se

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

I was cruising through Facebook one morning and I saw a post that referenced a “Robert Perry Yacht Design Fan Club.” I thought it must be a joke, so I did a search. I found a very well-compos

This new catamaran was designed by VPLP with an interior design from Patrick Le Quement. Like almost all cruising cats the profile is a bit brutal and this is a function of pulling all the beam—21 f