At A Glance

Price As Sailed: $260,000

Design Purpose: Shorthanded or crewed point‑to‑point racing

Crew List: Two to six

Dave Powlison’s feet are wedged into the stainless-steel foot brace. He has a light grip on the tiller handle in his right hand. His gaze is forward, over the shoulders of his mainsail trimmer beside him, then travels over the backs of three big guys sitting comfortably on the rail and out of his sightline. The boat is perfectly balanced. Fifteen knots of wind on a flat bay is the sweet spot for this 32-footer under the seat of his pants. He’s entranced, and you can tell because his forward hand floats midair, digits outstretched as if their tips are feeling the wind direction and heel angle. In this moment, Powlison likes this boat a lot. It’s his frontrunner for Boat of the Year.

“When I was on the helm, I just wanted to be on it for much longer,” he says. “I would have enjoyed sailing it all day.”

For shorthanded offshore aspirants, Powlison’s sentiment should be all you need to hear, because when there’s only you and the autopilot for the next 48 hours, a balanced helm will be all yours to enjoy.

Greg Stewart—the naval architect of our BOTY panel—specializes in underwater appendages and knows balance when he feels it. “What impressed me most was the upwind sailing,” he says. “The balanced ends were really nice. It’s not excessively wide in the back, but the biggest thing is all the volume forward. It’s comfortable to hike and all that tumblehome gives you a lot of interior volume and buoyancy when you press the boat hard. It’s a fun and lively boat to sail.”

Beneath the red, white and blue vinyl wrap, the Sun Fast 3300 is a remarkable hull form, drafted by Jeanneau’s Daniel Andrieu and Guillaume Verdier, designer of the wicked 100-footer Comanche and a long list of fast boats. The hull shape can best be described as powerful, and most definitely designed for the big-deal races in Europe.

Jeanneau’s Mike Coe says the boat targets the shorthanded scene and might someday be considered a candidate for the 2024 Olympic offshore discipline, but in the meantime, the big event for new owners is the doublehanded Transquadra Race, from France to Martinique. In Europe, Coe says, it’s all about windy, downwind races, but for North America, the right boat has to get upwind, in light air too.

With a carbon rig and a big sail plan, the Sun Fast 3300, he says, is more than capable. And this is where Verdier’s clever thinking comes into play: In particular are curved hollows, referred to as concaves, on centerline. There’s one at the bow and one at the stern. In light air, Coe explains, when you want the stern to stop dragging, you sink the bow a bit. “In heavy air, especially downwind, the stern just kind of sinks onto the concave and induces planing. The boat just sort of grips and rips along.”

So foreign were the concaves to Coe, that when he first saw the boat in jack stands at the boatyard when it arrived, his reaction was that they’d accidentally dented the hull. Not so.

For the hyperactive shorthanded sailor, there are plenty of adjustments to tweak as conditions change: fine-­tuning, water ballast, a five- to six-sail inventory and a three-­dimensional jib-lead system, among other things. But such tweak-ability does result in piles of rope at your feet in the ­cockpit, the judges point out. It’s the nature of the beast.

However, where there are ropes, there’s much work to be done in shorthanded sailing, so the pit area at the companionway is both a busy and happy place. While your partner is getting pelted at the helm, you can tether in, take a slightly protected seat and play the sails or nod off in your foul-weather gear. It’s only an overnighter anyway.

To get out of the weather completely, climb a few steps down the companionway and take in the view through either of the large forward-facing ­windows built into the cabin top. While the auto­pilot is engaged, you can cook or navigate while keeping tabs on sail trim and an eye to leeward. There’s not much glitz belowdecks, the judges say, but that’s the point. The 3300 is no crossover cruiser. Inside the bowels of this white Vinylester-infused capsule are nothing but rudimentary accommodations: galley, nav station, convertible settees and aft berths that fold up to add additional pipe berths.

“A lot of people end up buying boats with too much interior and wish they could get rid of it once they start racing it,” Stewart says. “With this boat, you’ll never have to worry, because you’re not buying it in the first place.”

If distance racing and ­putting the boat away wet is what you desire, he says, this is the level of interior you’ll come to appreciate. Forward, inside the pointy end, is the head and plenty of space for some of your sail inventory, which would include two spinnakers in turtles, code zero on a furler and two hanked jibs. The carbon rig is deck-stepped, which makes the boat easier to ship by container, Coe says, a nod to its consideration as a 2024 Olympics-worthy contender.

“The keel head is a bow tie shape that goes into a socket in the bottom of the boat really easily,” he says. “The sprit bolts on and the rig is short, so it all packs into a ­container neatly.”

Coe had raced the boat in a doublehanded overnighter on the Chesapeake Bay a few weeks before its Boat of the Year appearance, and while he and his teammate, Cate Terhune, allegedly got caught on the wrong side of a 180-degree shift in the middle of the night, they paced well in a race that was all upwind, some of it light. They never got a chance to savor the 3300’s sweet spot. Thankfully, the judges did for their test sail.

“The helm has a lot of bite, upwind and down,” is judge Chuck Allen’s takeaway. He’s a longtime sailmaker, senior BOTY judge, and predictably the first guy to grab the helm. “I tried a bunch of times to try to wipe it out. It never came close. But it could be sticky in light air. It has a lot of wetted surface, so you have to pay attention to where the weight is and use those hollows. You can tell it likes to reach, and it definitely likes more wind.”

There are plenty of sail ­controls that will allow crews to stay dynamic with sail trim and boathandling. “You’ve got three-dimensional jib trim, and everything is led right; it’s all easy to get to,” Allen says. “Upwind, the main likes to be above centerline to get a bit of heel angle going, and downwind you can sail fairly deep in any type of breeze. Outside jibes for doublehanding will be no problem.”

There are fine-tune cascades for the running backstays and the mainsheet, as well as the water-ballast system should you need additional righting moment. Port and starboard fill-and-dump buttons are mounted right at the companionway, and in less than a minute, the pump will top off the 52-gallon tank. (There is no transfer system between the two.) That’s the equivalent of about 430 pounds of crew weight on the rail.

While ideal for rank-and-file shorthanded American sailors, Powlison’s take on this clear choice for Boat of Year is that it’s not necessarily a beginner’s race yacht. “It’s a sophisticated boat that’s set up really well for a pair or team of accomplished sailors,” he says. “And like I said, it’s was the one boat I just wanted to keep sailing.”

See All Winners

Other Winners:

• 2020 Boat of the Year
• Best Crossover
• Best Multihull
• Best Foiler
• Best Dinghy

The post Boat of the Year 2020: Jeanneau Sun Fast 3300 appeared first on Sailing World.

At A Glance

Price As Sailed: $220,000

Design Purpose: Handicap, coastal, shorthanded and club racing

Crew List: Two to six

The J/99 was a favorite and a serious Boat of the Year contender. The judges sailed it on the snottiest day on the week, and as the breeze ratcheted ever higher, the boat, they said, comes alive. They’ve come to expect nothing less of a J Boat, because designer Alan Johnstone is on a roll. For J devotees and owners, of which there are many, the J/99 will feel like home.

“We’ve been missing a sweet spot in the 33- to 35-foot range with a performance boat that combines headroom and accommodations for family sailing, but is also purpose-built for owners aspiring to do double­handed sailing,” J Boats’ Jeff Johnstone tells the judges.

While tempting to cater to an emerging shorthanded market with a highly specialized boat, he adds, they didn’t want a one-trick pony with the J/99. “That’s not how we, or our owners use our boats,” Johnstone says. “We like a boat that can day sail well, have room for a full crew and set up right for shorthanded sailing.”

To that end, he points out, everything in the halyard and sail-control department is within reach of the tiller; at the same time, the cockpit can accommodate a busy five- or six-person crew for hustling around the cans.

Johnstone’s preferred model for comparison is the company’s big seller of earlier days. “Think of it as a modern J/105, with more headroom,” he says. “In terms of interior volume, it feels like twice the boat of a 105. But it’s quicker. It’s 2 feet smaller, and it’s more stable. It’s also slippery in light air.”

The Johnstones campaigned their stock French-built J/99 in New England with mixed results during the summer of 2019, with a provisional base PHRF rating of 78. Once they learned how to better tune the aluminum rig, Johnstone says they began to realize its true colors: “Our top speed, in 30 knots, [in Cowes, England] with six on board, was 18.5 knots,” he says. “We jibed it four or five times with outside jibes without any problems while boats were ­wiping out all around us.”

During their test session in Annapolis, the judges got their own taste of what the boat can do in a strong breeze.

“The boat is wicked stiff,” Allen says. “It’s comfortable to drive, and there’s enough space for the main trimmer to sit right next to you.”

When Stewart finally ­wrestled the helm away from Allen, he expected to be over­powered, being a few bodies shy of ideal weight on the rail. “With only three on the rail, it settled nicely,” he says. “We got to 7.5 knots upwind with ease, and when we put the kite up, everything all worked fine. It’s all really simple. We got it ripping downwind at 10 to 11 knots easily.”

The interior speaks to the boat’s dual-purpose calling: There are aft cabins and an option for flip-up pilot berths amidships, but the forepeak, with a head only, is left open for sail storage and spinnaker douses. Construction is a mix of balsa and CoreCell in the hull, all of it scrimped and infused.

The tapered mast is aluminum with an extruded mainsail track, which adds considerable stiffness to the rig, Stewart says, while keeping the overall tube‑weight low.

Like the J/111 and J/88 that preceded it, the J/99, he notes, continues a good trend for Corinthian-level owners and teams; it’s a boat that’s as powerful as it is versatile. “It’s not meant to be a strictly reaching kind of boat. It’s stiff upwind, and with the controls all led right, it’s a boat you can get a lot out of.”

At $220,000 all-up, Allen adds, this boat is also an ­absolute bang for your buck.

See All Winners

Other Winners:

• 2020 Boat of the Year
• Best Crossover
• Best Multihull
• Best Foiler
• Best Dinghy

The post Boat of the Year 2020 Best Crossover: J/99 appeared first on Sailing World.

At A Glance

Price As Sailed: $9 million

Design Purpose: High-performance multihull

Crew List: Experienced crew of two to three; unlimited guest list

Please, someone get Tommy Gonzalez a ribbon. The Boat of the Year innovation award is all Eagle Class 53. The Bristol-based boat boatbuilder rolled into Annapolis with the sexiest, most technical and most mind-bending craft our Boat of the Year competition has seen in a long time.

The Eagle’s story is a long one, so I’ll spare you with an abbreviated version of how the radical 53-footer came to be, and more importantly, where it’s headed. As Gonzalez tells it, one Donald Sussman, the wealthy former owner of a Gunboat 90, which Gonzalez captained for many years, was awestruck by the foiling AC75s of the San Francisco edition of the America’s Cup. Why couldn’t they just install a rigid wing and foils on the Gunboat and get the same thrills? Sussman asked.

Doing so would have been like his mother’s dog chasing its tail, Gonzalez says. It’d be wiser to start afresh, with a new ­purpose-built concept yacht.

Enter sailmaker and catamaran savant Randy Smyth with a clever idea for a hybrid wing and soft sail, one that could be left standing when not in use. Recruiting a cast of design and engineering wizards with Cup credentials, Gonzalez created Fast Forward Composites and launched the Eagle Class concept.

What was envisioned to be a craft in the 40-foot size grew to 53, for safety and scale considerations, Gonzalez says. Smyth’s hybrid wing is the key element of the package, a concept refined over the past two years. The challenge with these types of big high-performance catamarans—foiling or not (and someday soon this boat will fully foil Gonzalez assures us)—is the ability to quickly control power in the wing. The line between flying and capsizing is razor thin.

The magic of the Eagle’s hybrid, Smyth says, is the ability to rapidly depower it and also allow it to feather when the vessel is at rest. When unpinned, the wing element swings like a weather vane. The high-aspect, square-top mainsail goes up a Harken track on the wing’s trailing edge; when the sail is doused, its cars stack inside a 2-foot piece of track, which is then detached and zipped neatly inside its sail bag.

The wing sits atop what could be mistaken for a rooftop lounge. “It’s not a sun deck,” Smyth says. “It’s for end-plating the wing. You get all sorts of efficiency off the bottom of the sail by doing so.”

He is excitable when explaining the additional benefits of the 1,080-pound, 80-foot-tall contraption. “You can get a huge range of power, and when overpowered, you can just pull on a string to rotate it out,” he explains. “The beauty is while there’s a lot of load on the mainsheet, there’s hardly any on the controls.”

You can also reef the soft element, which Gonzalez does for the initial BOTY sail test. With an angry squall lurking to the west, he has no interest in breaking the boss’s boat. Still, the judges climb on board and set off at a great rate before running out of wind on the Eastern Shore. What they had hoped would be a joyride is a letdown.

Gonzalez admits to being ­conservative and offers to sail again on a windier day. It’s a good thing that he does so. Later, in a stiff northwesterly, the judges board the sleek, silver carbon sculpture again. This time, with a full main locked to the top of the wing, they unfurl the masthead code zero, and are practically in Norfolk, Virginia, before they have to turn back.

“We got that thing really wired,” Allen says. “We were locked in at 20 to 25 knots. That was fun.”

Driving from the weather-helm station, just behind the forward beam, it’s a full-noise, wind-and-water-in-your-face experience, the judges all agree—but that’s the best, and really the only safe place from which to drive.

“Up front, you can see the bows and you’re up by the mast where everything is happening,” Stewart says. “When the weather hull is skimming like it was, it’s not throwing up any water, so it was pretty dry.”

Powlison had a good rip across the bay too, with Gonzalez coaching him all the way. “This is a boat that you could get in a lot of trouble with if you didn’t know what you were doing,” Powlison says. “It has a high fun-to-risk ratio, but it’s a blast.”

Gonzalez is fully aware of how quickly things could go wrong, but he says each owner will be guided through a step-by-step progression to understand the wing and sailing the boat safely on its big carbon C-foils. When you buy the boat, he says, you get driving lessons too.

“You’re going to want to put some sunblock on because you’re going to get windburn,” Allen says. “Especially when you’re driving; you can see the hulls and stuff in the water. The steering is smooth, and it all felt highly responsive. The guests are behind you and not distracting, which is a good thing, because you need to be alert.”

As beautifully finished as the Eagle 53 is, it’s still early in the boat’s development, Gonzalez says. The next phase is the implementation of legitimate lifting T-foils, intelligent software and sensors that will automate ride height. This cat, in other words, is just scratching the surface.

See All Winners

Other Winners:

• 2020 Boat of the Year
• Best Crossover
• Best Multihull
• Best Foiler
• Best Dinghy

The post Boat of the Year 2020 Eagle Class 53: Best Multihull appeared first on Sailing World.

At A Glance

Price As Sailed: $24,750

Design Purpose: Learn to foil, advance skills

Crew List: One or two

Rob Andrews and his ­business partner Alan Hillman have been teaching foiling for a few years now, and one thing they’ve learned is we get better by sailing, not by swimming. Thus was the genesis of the F101, a craft with which they could teach the fundamentals of foiling—without the crash and burn. But it’s not just a learn-to-foil boat, either. It’s a platform with which new and experienced converts alike can take their ­foiling skill set to a higher level.

The key to mastering the F101, Andrews explains, is grasping righting moment. With the trimaran platform, you get plenty of it, as well as a stable boat that’s more forgiving than any other small foiler. “The trimaran configuration gives you righting moment direct from the foil in the middle hull,” he says, “and gives a measure of safety. It’s hard to capsize the boat.”

The judges learn as much when it comes time to sail the F101. In 15 knots and more, and a steep Chesapeake chop, Powlison is first to give it a go. He settles into the boat, gets his bearings, perches skittishly on the weather hull, sheets on the mainsail (no need to use the boat’s gennaker above 12 knots) and off he goes like a bat out of hell, popping up on the foils without even trying.

“The trick is getting used to the sensation of heeling to windward,” he says. “It takes a bit of trust. Once foiling, it’s quiet and fast, and I felt like I had to be really active on the mainsheet to keep it on the foils.”

That’s true of any foiler, but the beauty of the F101, the judges agree, is when you do lose it, it’s no big deal. The boat drops off its foils, the bows auger in and you get a face full of water; but just reset, bear away and try again.

“The hull shape picks up the buoyancy gently,” Stewart says, “which makes it depress smoothly and prevents it from pitchpoling. When I dumped it a few times I thought I was going in, but not a chance. You quickly realize there’s plenty of floatation there to save you. In flat water, with one day of training you’d get up to speed quickly.”

When teaching people to foil, Hillman starts with “skimming,” a ride height barely above the surface. As the sailor becomes more accustomed to how the boat behaves, there’s a simple line adjustment at the foil head: Dial it up one setting and increase your ride height.

As you’re sailing, the foil wand hanging behind the trailing edge effectively feels where the boat is riding relative to the water and actuates the main flap. In light winds, it gives you more lift, and the boat pops up on the foil. Get too high, and the wand drops down even ­further, forcing negative lift on the flap, which brings you back down to your desired height and prevents the foils from breaking the surface.

In terms of construction, the judges praise its carbon-and-epoxy build quality and the all-up weight of 180 pounds, which makes it easy to get to and from the water. With the F101 sitting on its dolly in the boat park, going sailing is as simple as pulling back the covers, hoisting the main and launching from a dock, beach or boat ramp with minimal fuss.

“What I like about it is that it’s one of those boats that you buy and don’t need to add anything to it,” Allen says. “There’s ­nothing to change out or upgrade.”

For simplicity, the boat is set up with adjustments that let you ratchet up the experience as you climb the learning curve. On the rudder foil, for example, there is a clear numbering system so that as you twist the tiller extension, you change the rudder rake. The baseline setting is zero, and it’s the same for the main foil. The only thing left is to balance the forces with the mainsheet.

“When I first got up on the foils, I was thinking to myself, ‘This is too easy; I should be working harder,’” Powlison says. “As they said, this boat solves a lot of the problems associated with other foiling dinghies. It’s a great high-performance boat that represents the next step in making foiling accessible to the public.”

See All Winners

Other Winners:

• 2020 Boat of the Year
• Best Crossover
• Best Multihull
• Best Foiler
• Best Dinghy

The post Boat of the Year 2020 F101: Best Foiler appeared first on Sailing World.

At A Glance

Price As Sailed: $4,800

Design Purpose: Freestyle sailing

Crew List: One or two

Allen and Stewart are like two oversize kids duking it out on the playground. Stewart, weighing in at a smidge over 200 pounds, is stretched out across the Tiwal 2’s nonskid decking, his feet dangling off the starboard float; his head pillowed by the port float. Allen is contorted over the top of the centerboard trunk, trying to get his Tiwal’s transom to break from the glassy surface. On starboard, he targets Stewart, who is trying to shake him in the prestart of the first-ever impromptu Tiwal 2 North American Challenge.

“Starboard!” Allen hollers.

“Hold your course!” Stewart retorts as he starts to bear away.

Allen can’t resist, and he too bears away as the two converge, plowing right into Stewart’s lap. The rubber boats simply bounce off each other and carry on up the course on opposite tacks.

“It’s Tiwal racing!” shouts its designer and energetic young visionary, Marion Excoffon, who is observing the comical two-boat slugfest from our Highfield RIB. “There are no rules. Only to have fun!”

Fun sailing is the way of the Tiwal tribe, an almost cult-like sailing community in Europe where hundreds of owners of these high-pressure, inflatable sailboats gather on lakes and Mediterranean beaches to play together.

Yes, they are “toy” boats, Excoffon says, but even as playthings, racing is irresistible whenever there’s more than one. It is also designed as a toy for a cruising boat that “allows you to sail and have an amazing moment around your boat while at anchor,” Excoffon says.

The Tiwal 2 is not to be ­confused with the larger Tiwal 3, a Boat of the Year finalist of the past, which has aluminum-bar racks for hiking. Customers asked for a smaller version that was also kinder to the gelcoat of their cruising boats and superyachts. The 9-foot, PVC-built Tiwal 2 weighs only 20 pounds. Add its marine-grade, coated plywood rudder and centerboard, ropes, hardware, five-piece carbon mast and bulletproof sail from North, and the whole enchilada is still only 60 pounds.

Portability is what has earned the Tiwal line of boats numerous innovation awards in Europe. When broken down to its bits, the entire craft fits into two duffle bags that are small enough to stuff into a lazar­ette or into the trunk of a Mini Cooper. Tiwal inflatables are standard equipment now in the toy boxes of superyachts, which Excoffon says is 20 percent of their market, where there can never be enough water toys.

“We’ve sold about 80 of them since this summer,” she says. “For less than $5,000, this boat is good for the whole family to share nice moments with your child, or to go have fun and play in good breeze. The boat is adaptable to different people, and adaptable to the wind.”

The judges agree with that much. They sail it first in glassy, drifting conditions, goof off and laugh their way to sunset. (Racing is ultimately abandoned, so there is no clear winner of the Tiwal Challenge.) With a gale in the forecast, however, they request a resail later in the week.

Allen takes the first spin, into frothy whitecaps whipped up by an opposing tide and wind at the entrance to the Severn River: “Downwind, in the 20-knot puffs and bigger waves, it was a little squirrelly, but once I got into flatter water and went power-reaching along, the thing was ripping and planing easily. Then I started playing with moving my weight and using my feet to push it around like a surfboard in the waves. It was so much fun. The rudder is nice and responsive; it turned on a dime.”

In one “angry puff of 30 knots” that comes along, he lets the sail luff, waits in “hang mode” and lets it pass. “The boat is quite buoyant, which is a nice safety element if a kid got caught out in too much breeze,” he says.

Tacking and jibing are easy, Allen adds, because of the buoyancy; and by vang sheeting and hardening the cunningham, he motors upwind. “I was surprised the bow wasn’t flexing all over the place, so whatever air pressure and stiffness they have going on there, it really works,” he says. “It was by far one of the most fun boats of the week. I’m a Tiwal fan—you can quote me on that.”

Stewart is a fan as well, but also claims to be 2 knots faster than Allen upwind because he’s heavier and able to use more of the sail. “I had a great time,” he says. “It’s one of those boats where we knew we were going to get wet and have fun. And amazingly, we didn’t break it.”

Not for lack of trying, though. Once, or maybe twice, Stewart ungracefully pearled in the photo boat’s wake and ­pirouetted into the brown bay waters.

He’s a big guy, but he easily hauled himself back into the boat, up forward on the wing deck. “I could easily grab the bar that is part of the mast structure and pull myself right in,” he reports. “There are also handles on the tubes to grab hold of if you need to.”

Powlison, meanwhile, boasts of sailing it in the most breeze: “It was nuking.” He thoroughly enjoys hiking hard off the supple tubes beneath his hamstrings. The wing, he says, is a nice comfortable platform, although maybe a little slippery toward the back: “A couple of times, I almost slid right off.”

His jibes are the smoothest of the team, and his suggestion in strong breeze is to simply “do it quickly.”

“It’s sensitive to steering,” he says. “I could throw it around in the jibe, and it would spin right around the centerboard. It’s a cool little boat that’s well engineered, and as we showed, it can handle the big stuff. We sailed it at both ends of the wind range, and the light-air part was fun too.”

See All Winners

Other Winners:

• 2020 Boat of the Year
• Best Crossover
• Best Multihull
• Best Foiler
• Best Dinghy

The post Boat of the Year 2020 Best Dinghy: Tiwal 2 appeared first on Sailing World.

There is no such thing as the right boat for everyone, but there is the right boat for the right time. For today’s fervent offshore racing soloists and doublehanded teammates, that boat — right here, right now — is the Figaro Beneteau 3.

This pint-sized ocean racer isn’t just another cruisy crossover from Beneteau, the powerhouse of production boatbuilding. There is zero intent of comfort below its low-slung deck, unless your idea of luxury is a white, wet and noisy fiberglass cavern. It’s not just a beastly Class 40 type, either. For righting moment and power, it doesn’t rely on hundreds of pounds of seawater sloshing ballast tanks. For Figaro Beneteau 3, there are two unmistakable arcing carbon side foils projecting from slots in its topsides. The foils are no gimmick. Beneteau, nor Figaro face fanatics, don’t do gimmicks.

The foils don’t necessarily “lift” the 2.9-ton platform completely free of the surface, as do the foils of modern multihulls and extreme craft like the soon-to-be AC75. The foils are there for a hint of lift and a pile of righting moment, which ultimately means a faster, smoother ride into the night.

The boat is built exclusively for the Solitaire du Figaro race, what Gianguido Girotti, Beneteau’s general manager says is, “the unofficial world championship of singlehanded sailing.” The Figaro Beneteau 3 will not get much love from international handicapping systems initially, or possibly ever, but that is beside the point. It’s a one-design class boat, plain and simple, with a guarantee from Beneteau that they’ll be the same from prod to stern — give or take a few kilos here and there.

The sport’s best shorthanded sailors spawn in the harbors and ports strung along France’s Atlantic face. They arrive on the scene as hungry rank-and-file dreamers with a sponsor or two and eventually the best of them emerge as round-the-world solo racers in anything insanely fast and crazy. The stage onto which all rookies, past and present, must step is the Solitaire du Figaro, a multi-stage late-summer race that runs the length of the coast, covering nearly 2,000 nautical miles over two weeks.

When the race was first held in 1970, entries varied in size and shape, and as editions passed, the boats grew bigger, more complex and more expensive. Stakeholders of the race made a strategic move in 1990, transforming the event into a one-design talent showcase, putting success — and failure — into the hands of the sailor instead of the caliber of his or her equipment. Enter the Figaro Solo 1, a stout 30-footer built to handle an occasional pasting in the Bay of Biscay. A decade’s worth of Vendée Globe Race legends emerged from these contests, including the likes of Yves Parlier, Michel Desjoyeaux, Dominic Vittet, Jean Le Cam, Philippe Poupon, Franck Cammas, and Pascal Bidégorry.

The Solo 1’s use-by date ushered in the Beneteau Figaro II, a robust double-rudder, symmetric-spinnaker design that delivered yet another generation of offshore greats, Volvo Ocean Race winning skipper Charles Caudrelier, counted among them.

For 16 years, pros and amateurs alike put “crazy amounts of mileage on the boats,” says Beneteau product manager, Luc Joëssel, before the class and competitors agreed enough is enough. It was time to elevate the official Figaro class — and the race itself — higher, mirroring the groundbreaking foil-assisted 60-footers of the IMOCA 60 Class.

“All the top design offices answered to the call,” says Joëssel. Ultimately, the firm founded by Marc Van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot-Prévost got the nod. Beneteau, with its longstanding relationship with the race, remained as builder of choice. They now have the monumental task of delivering a fleet of precisely matched offshore one-designs. Introducing side-foils was a big deal for involved, as well as a big investment in the necessary tooling. Reliability is essential.

“The philosophy of the class,” Girotti explained to Sailing World’s Boat of the Year judges, Chuck Allen, Tom Rich, and Greg Stewart, “is that if 50 boats start, 50 must arrive at the finish for the good of the event. In offshore sailing, too many boats don’t finish.”

Girotti also points out that in the previous edition of the Solitaire du Figaro, not only did every boat finish, but the first 20 competitors finished the first 500-mile leg within 20 minutes of each other. “These guys are maniacs with their trimming, they do it 24-7 because it’s in their DNA,” says Girotti. “They are always stuck to each other, which must make them push that much harder.”

Beneteau built a Figaro 3 prototype with input from a few of the race’s past and present champions, as well as French composite companies typically associated with grand-prix builds like the Ultime 100-foot trimarans and IMOCA 60s. To deliver a strictly-measured one-design to every competitor, says Joëssel, “required us to ensure tolerances remain negligible as each completed boat rolls off the assembly line in Chevine, France. The intent is to give to the sailors a boat that will require less time illegally modifying and more time sailing.”

Any discussion or concern of how the boat and its unique side foils will be handled by handicap rating systems is inconsequential, says Girotti. Again, that’s not the point. The Figaro Beneteau 3 is built for the race, and for aspiring sailors who have no intentions of ever making the Figaro race’s start in Le Havre. Take, for example, Charles Devanneaux and co-skipper Matthieu Damerval, who doublehanded the prototype in the 2018 Pacific Cup from San Francisco to Hawaii — finishing only three days behind 70-footers, with an elapsed time of 11 days, 4 hours and 24 minutes (racing under an experimental rating).

Demand for entry the June 2019 La Solitaire URGO Le Figaro is high and by February 2019, the first 50 boats will be delivered to awaiting skippers (assigned by lottery), measured and ready to race. The “controlled” released is intentional, says Joëssel, a ploy to ensure the playing field is level and prevent them from pushing the inevitable measurement edges too soon. From this first batch, Beneteau’s plan is one boat per week to reach 100 by the close of 2019.

The Figaro Beneteau 3’s price (as sailed and presented for Boat of the Year) is $250,000, which includes a six-sail North Sails inventory, electronics, cordage, all the race-required safety equipment and a shipping/dry storage cradle. Construction is polyester infusion with a mixed use of CoreCell and balsa cores, placing more structure where it’s required most and less where it’s not, to help get its overall weight to 2.9 tons.

Finalizing the deck layout was a complicated exercise, says Joëssel, as controls need to be centralized around the cockpit in order to minimize the competitor’s exposure on deck. “After hours and hours working with all the guys on the mock-up,” he says, “it was all validated on the prototype.” The most complicated piece of the puzzle, however, was with the foils and their adjustment.

In conjunction with Multiplast, which has built many of the best big rigs in high-speed ocean sailing, Joëssel says they invested substantially in a complex set of molds in order to maintain strict tolerances through the use of several measurements and jigs. “Everything is measured and weighed straight out of the molds,” he says. “So far, the maximum discrepancy is 40 kilos.”

Should there be any funny business with pre-race tampering, he says, they have the numbers for everything before any of it gets into the hands of the sailors. The same is true of the carbon-fiber rigs. So far in the first 20, says Joëssel, 50 grams is the variance, and “there’s less than a kilogram in the rudders.”

The 2.5-meter keel is cast iron with an iron-encased lead bulb. There is no fiberglass shell for protection, but there’s a reason: “Eventually, a fiberglass shell will leak, which will then lead to repairs and once you get into that, modifications will happen,” says Girotti.

By now, one should see the pattern: they take the Beneteau 3’s one-design reputation seriously.

“Tolerances in other classes today are unbelievable,” says Joëssel, “to the point where they’re not really one-design. Ours is a more rigorous approach to making sure everyone has their opportunity on the water.”

“This is essentially Beneteau’s grand-prix division,” says Stewart. “I like the launch idea of 50 at once. It allows them to find little issues if they’re there and apply them to the following boats before they go out the door. I think them going after the market where two young sailors can conceivably campaign this boat is great.”

While the tolerances are reportedly minimal, Boat of the Year judge Tom Rich, a custom boatbuilder, says the Beneteau 3’s build quality matches its purpose. “Maybe it’s a bit rough on the finishing touches,” he says after crawling through the innards of the boat, “but it’s a raceboat with a lot of structure. The standard boat is white, white, white. There’s nothing exotic.”

The interior isn’t meant for lounging with Rosé; it’s more like crashing in a state of exhaustion and fatigue, coddled in a bean bag chair or atop a pile of sails, wedged between ring frames, and still dressed in foul-weather gear. Two adjustable Class A-compliant piper berths, will mostly likely be used for gear stowage.

While the below decks may be standard and simple, the thoroughness in the deck and hardware layout, the judges say, is thorough but straightforward as well. Feel on the helm is smooth all the time. “It sure feels like a big boat,” is Rich’s first assessment after a walkthrough with Beneteau representatives at the doc before sailing. “The stability is unbelievable. I thought it was really stiff upwind, especially when you feel the leeward foil bite. The rig is the right size for the boat. It’s plenty big with a really wide shroud base.”

In roughly 10 knots of wind for the sail testing, Stewart, a naval architect, and Allen, a sailmaker, immediately recognized the Figaro Beneteau 3’s most important trait: a sensation of lift and righting moment from the active foil. “As soon as you feel it load up, the boat rises and just starts crushing it,” says Allen. “It’s like a baby Comanche [the 100-foot VPLP record machine built for American yachtsman Jim Clark).

Stewart’s assessment is that the boat has “a nice feeling upwind, with a really positive grip. The toe-in was set perfect and there was no noticeable wake off the transom. The foils don’t lift the boat, but rather straighten it upright. The lift component is pushing against the displacement, and there’s your righting moment increase.”

The foils, both of which are fully-deployed once the boat is off the dock and sailing, are adjusted independently through a block-and-tackle purchase led to the cockpit. They adjust fore and aft, with about five-inches of total adjustment. In light air, the judges say, it would be neutral to forward, and as the wind builds, they would be incrementally adjusted aft (but not under load). “When the foil is working the boat lightens up and feels really amazing,” says Allen. “When you start cracking off and going downwind, you can feel the bow rise. With the rig back and all that buoyancy forward, it will surf, for sure. The bow will pop out and you’ll be loving it.”

Stewart says there’s “a lot going on with the hull shape,” that makes it all work, notably its full bow section forward, which will prevent the boat from tripping over itself in a seaway. “With such a powerful sailplan, the power steering you get from the twin rudders is awesome,” says Stewart. “It will sail like a boat longer than 35 feet with all that volume in the ends.”

The class sail inventory includes a 440-sq.ft. North Sails 3Di square-top main, J2 and J3 jibs, a furling code zero, and A5-sized and A2 Airex spinnakers. With such a quiver, and with most of the sail-handling business conducted in the back of the yacht, there’s multi-colored spaghetti pouring into the cockpit at all times, requiring vigilant housekeeping. Foil-adjustment lines lead to winches, tack lines and halyards snake through banks of jammers. The gear layout is comprehensive, and the judges each agreed all control systems work flawlessly. Sets and douses, tacks and jibes were easy with four hands or two and an autopilot, which means more efficient downwind maneuvers for Figaro competitors used to jibing a symmetric spinnaker.

Faster, easier maneuvers may end up being one undesirable side effect of the Figaro Beneteau 3. If competitors think the racing is intense now, just wait until the sailing becomes elevated. And while on the topic of elevated, the judges unanimously agreed that while all of this year’s Boat of the Year candidates were of extremely high quality and execution, it was the Beneteau 3s innovation that makes it stand out above the field.

The post Figaro Beneteau 3, 2019 Boat of the Year appeared first on Sailing World.

Zim 15

Zim Sailing, of Fall River, Mass., builds 420s, Bytes, and Optimists, but the Zim 15, says Bob Adams, is the company’s calling. “This boat is about capturing a huge market of 20- to 30-year-olds,” he says. “It’s about getting them sailing again.” Post-collegiate sailors are all about team racing, and the boat is built for it. The hull is quick, the pointy foils are responsive (and hard to scull), and the rubber bow bumper eliminates repair work from late dips gone bad. The boat empowers crews with many controls, including the “dangle pole,” which tweaks the jib leech. A fair comparison is drawn to the beloved, but dated, Vanguard 15.

Designed for: Exciting the dinghy base with one-design and team racing

Required crew: Two—with one attentive crew

Best attributes: Quick-adjustable rig and dangle pole, lightweight hull, responsive foils

Price as tested: $11,500

Special Recognition: Dragonfly 32 Supreme

Dragonfly 32 Supreme

These Danish-built trimarans have a strong following, and U.S. importer Richard Suriani says the 32-footer is for experienced multihullers. It’s a high-quality build with a powerful sail plan and a center hull big enough to call home. “It feels like you’re in a monohull,” says Stewart. “There’s a lot in there, and the craftsmanship is impeccable, which justifies the boat’s $350,000 price tag.”

Designed for: Performance cruising and shorthanded distance races

Required crew: Two to cruise, four to five to race

Best attributes: High-quality construction, volume and efficient interior, powerful sail plan, speed, and folding amas for slip access

Price as tested: $350,000

Salona 44

Salona 44

The Salona 44 is a legitimate bluewater cruiser, laden with a pair of AC units, a generator, and a teak upgrade. The judges like the finish, and its $340,000 price tag.

Designed for: Handicap racing, performance cruising, team building

Required crew: Two to cruise, eight to 10 to race

Best attributes: Solid construction, immaculate interior finish, good value for volume

Price as tested: $340,000

mxNext

mxNext

The mxNext is the winged singlehander of one Vlad Murnikov. After two years as a prototype, it’s now built by a small composites shop in New Hampshire. It’s extreme, especially its torpedo-like bow, it has quirky tendencies, and the challenge of flying a spinnaker alone is, as Murnikov admits, “an intellectual exercise to get right.” “The purpose of the design is to create a high-performance boat that is very simple, exciting to sail, and less expensive than similar boats,” says Murnikov.

Designed for: Solo speed sailing, for the fun of it, and proof of concept

Required crew: Singlehander

Best attributes: Exotic design, quick and athletic experience, asymmetric kite

Price as tested: $15,000

C&C 30 One Design

C& 30 One Design

“It’s a modern boat that can sail one-design but do some offshore distance racing,” says builder Randy Borges. C&C went for a niche in the market for a one-design coastal racer, so the focus is “as simple as possible,” easy to tune, and a boat any amateur program can race. “There’s lot of stability for its size, says Borges. “It’s a powered up, dry boat that’s fun, fast, and affordable to sail.”

Designed for: One-design, coastal and beer-can racing, drysail storage

Required crew: Five to six

Best attributes: Quality American build, comfortable and quick upwind, easy around the cans

Price as tested: $125,000

ES44

ES44

The ES44 is a sistership to the Tim Kernan-designed Wasabi, an IRC winner in 2009 and 2010, and a rocket designed for heading straight to Hawaii. Wasabi’s molds are now in the hands of ES Yachts, and built in Conneaut, Ohio. It’s a small shop, says show rep Tom Mercer. The results are custom-boat quality, and the boat the judges will sail is Hull No. 2, built of E-glass and infused with carbon.

Designed for: Distance and handicap racing

Required crew: Eight to ten

Best attributes: Proven IRC results, semi-custom quality, versatility, well balanced boat, American built

Price as tested: $425,000

C&C Redline 41

C&C Redline 41

The C&C Redline 41 is deemed an updated King 40. BOTY rules require original tooling, so the 41, although well built, is excused from BOTY consideration.

Designed for: Offshore and handicap racing

Required crew: Eight to ten

Best attributes: Versatile design, comfortable interior, offshore ready

Price as tested: $470,000

Jeanneau Sun Fast 3600

Jeanneau Sun Fast 3200

The angular 36-footer from France is a shorthander’s dreamboat. There’s a lean interior better for offshore sprints than extended cruises. “It’s designed to go fast,” says Jeanneau’s Jeff Jorgenson. The whole package is impressive, but the construction quality less so. “They packed a lot in the boat,” says Allen, “but it’s a little thin on the detailing.

Designed for: Shorthanded or short-crew racing, coastal cruising

Required crew: Four to five

Best attributes: Powerful hull design for stability and windy venues, ergonomics are excellent

Price as tested: $350,000

Hobie T2

Hobie T2

Hobie Cat USA inherited the molds for what was once called the Hobie Tatoo, a higher-performance plastic beach cat built in Europe. It’s like a bigger Wave, and not quite a Getaway. The judges don’t find anything revolutionary about it, but its price ($7,000) is eye opening. “That’s bang for your buck,” says Allen. “The rig is powerful for a boat this size, it’s pretty narrow, and with the double-trap setup, it’s a perfect entry-level, high-performance beach cat. This thing will rip.”

Designed for: Off-the-beach cat sailors ready for high performance

Required crew: Two to race it, one to hot dog it

Best attributes: Powerful platform, stiff construction, and entry-level price

Price as tested: $7,000

Salona 33

Salona 33

The Salona 33 is “roomy” and the standard package comes with a tiller (the test boat comes with wheels). It’s construction mirrors the 44: vacuum-infused and cored, with steel grids locking it all together. For $155,000, what you get, says Tom Rich, is “good construction, amazing price.”

Designed for: Offshore racing, performance cruising, and beer-can series envy

Required crew: Five for the assym, six with the spin pole

Best attributes: Construction quality, comfortable interior design, light helm, and price

Price as tested: $155,000

The post 2015 Boat of the Year: The Nominees appeared first on Sailing World.

Sailing World Boat of the Year 2014 Logo

Welcome to the 2014 Boat of the Year Contest.
Here are all the documents you need to get started with your new entry:

2014 BOTY Call for Entries Brochure

2014 BOTY Rules

2014 BOTY Entry Form

2014 BOTY Liability Agreement

The post BOTY 2014 Information for Builders appeared first on Sailing World.

MC38 One Design

Purpose: inshore racing
Recommended race crew: 7
Best attributes: sail-handling systems, straight-line speed, build quality
Price: $248,000 (base)
www.mcconaghyboats.com

The genesis of the MC38 One-Design, said its designer Harry Dunning, was to provide a pure raceboat for owners coming from the Farr 40 or Melges 32 classes. The design brief was therefore simple: leave out all the unnecessary interior extras (head, galley, berths, etc.) and put in all the latest go-fast technology. The result is one impressive, low-slung, one-design machine.

To build the boat, Dunning partnered with McConaghy Boats, of Australia. He then enlisted the help of friends and colleagues from his America’s Cup Rolodex to ensure the engineering was done right–and light–and that its systems were properly integrated into the boat. The hull, as we’d expect of a 7,040-pound 38-footer, is a carbon/E-glass, and CoreCell composite, and the deck is resin-infused Vinylester. The custom-quality build McConaghy is known for was visible in the clear-coated interior. “It’s cleanly built, with nice finish work, inside and on deck,” said Rich.

To minimize the number of crew required to sail the boat, and thereby reduce regatta costs, said Dunning, the design and engineering team focused on the boat’s stability and its sail-handling systems in order to get the ideal crew weight down to around 1,300 pounds, or seven people. The result is a boat that is light on its lines, quick to accelerate, and agile through the turns. “It’s really stable and pretty darn fast for a 38-footer,” said Stewart after our test sail in single-digit winds. “It’s easy to get to 8 knots, and the wake off the back of the boat was very clean.”

With most sail controls and the spinnaker sheets led under the deck, exiting from the cockpit walls, there were no issues of cockpit clutter or foot cleats, and good leads resulted in snag-free maneuvers (except when the lazy spinnaker sheet went under the boat, requiring it to be temporarily led externally). There are quite a few clever ideas borrowed from the grand-prix realm, including a pneumatic rubber seal on the foredeck hatch, a spinnaker string-takedown system, PBO rigging, and beautiful carbon fittings scattered around the boat. It all looks simple, said Dunning, but it took a lot of time to get right. In terms of regatta road travel, the boat has a lifting 9-foot carbon fin, which can also be removed for shipping.

The boat is powerful and high-tech, the judges cautioned, and will require a few experienced crewmembers to get it around the racecourse efficiently (approximate IRC rating is 1.25), especially in stronger winds. “Downwind, this boat will really rip,” said Allen, “and when it’s blowing 25, things will happen fast–you’re going to need three or four guys that know what they’re doing.”

For more images of the MC38 One Design, click here.
For more on McConaghy Boats, click here.
To see the rest of 2013’s winners, click here.

The post MC38 One Design: Best Grand-Prix One-Design appeared first on Sailing World.

Best Handicap Racer: Ker 40

Purpose: IRC and offshore racing
Recommended race crew: 11 to 12
Best attributes: build quality, cockpit
layout, and versatility
Price: $318,000 (base)
www.mcconaghyboats.com

In the realm of IRC handicap racing there are two realities: If outright speed is your endgame, then a bigger, expensive custom build is your only option. At the other end, where the greatest number of owners can afford to compete, IRC levels the playing field by encouraging new builds to be heavier than they should be. The Ker 40, built by McConaghy Boats, best addresses this contradiction in high-performance handicap racing with a semi-custom production boat, allowing owners to enter the grand-prix IRC game with a boat that’s custom fast, without the custom cost. As with McConaghy’s other BOTY-winning boat (the MC38 One Design), the judges said the Ker 40 was a work of boatbuilding art and excellent under sail.

“In the 40-foot range in IRC, because the boats are typically heavier, they’re not as exciting downwind,” said Stewart, “but this boat is much more aggressive and wicked-up than what you might otherwise find.”

Jason Ker and McConaghy borrowed a lot of ideas from IRC’s big-boat fleet and applied them to this, added Stewart. “It’s a big 40-footer. Its beam is wide aft because of the flair, and IRC gives a lot of credit for the beam. With this shape you have a hull that goes through the water on a narrow waterline, so there’s not a lot of drag.

“I could also tell they spent a lot of time on the deck layout, figuring out the leads, like the mainsheet stoppers that led to the winches, which is hard to do right. We got on the boat having never sailed it, and had no problems with any maneuvers. Everything worked great.”

The test boat presented for the judges is campaigned by an owner coming out of a J/122 program, and, says project manager Geoff Ewenson, he’s the type of owner that prefers to not be bound by one-design rules. The Ker 40 offers the flexibility to do both handicap racing and a selection of distance races, and race results from Ker 40s being campaigned overseas confirm that the design is one to be reckoned with. To meet its dual-purpose role, the owner of our test boat customized his with a Harken pedestal, a generous nav station, pipe berths, and other offshore accoutrements.

“What I like about this boat is that you’re not just saving money with a semi-custom boat, but you’re also saving on the overall campaign costs of a bigger boat,” said Rich. “The thing is incredibly well built, and if you’re the guy who wants to play with rules and have something unique that’s grand-prix, this is it.”

For more images of the Ker 40, click here.
For more on McConaghy Boats, click here.
To see the rest of 2013’s winners, click here.

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