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.