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The SAIL Top 10 Best Boats

Best Boats 2016: Italia 13.98

Cruising Monohull 41-50ft Italia13.98 According to Italia Yachts, the goal with the 13.98 was to create a “luxury cruiser” in which performance is a part

SAIL’s Best Boats 2016

By Nigel Calder, Christopher White, Adam Cort, Charles J. Doane, Zuzana Prochazka & Tom Dove Every year’s Best Boats competition brings at least a few

Raymarine Congratulates SAIL’s 2015 Best Boats Winners!

it would be hard to imagine a greater diversity of modern design styles than those comprising the SAIL Magazine Best Boats class of 2015. From a cutting-edge carbon cat to an aluminum sloop expressly designed to nudge aside icebergs, the winners of this year’s Best Boats contest have it all.

Best Boats 2015: Topper Topaz Argo

A few months ago, SAIL ran a story in which we considered exactly what it is that makes for a great small boat. And as fate would have it, the Topaz Argo from the UK’s Topper International meets an awful lot of the standards we came up with.

Best Boats 2015: Seascape 27

The Mini Class has long served as a feeder into the wild world of singlehanded offshore racing, offering huge adventure in a 21-foot package that emphasizes performance over all else. However, while this works well for the hard-core, 20- and 30-something crowd, Minis are cramped, highly strung raceboats that oftentimes stretch the definition of the term “enjoyable sailing.”

Best Boats 2015: C&C 30

We don’t often have ties in our Best Boats competition, but with two very different and equally exciting boats in the 30ft-and-under performance category, we just couldn’t go with a single winner.

Best Boats 2015: Dragonfly 32

Quorning Boats of Denmark has been absent from American boat shows for several years, and it’s good to have them back, especially with something as special as the new Dragonfly 32.

SAIL’s Best Boats 2014: Xp 44

Step aboard the Xp 44 and the first thing you might find yourself wondering is: what’s not to love? This mid-40-foot racer-cruiser is designed to deliver decades of racing and cruising pleasure while offering a wealth of the kind of design features sailors have long since come to expect from this high-end Danish builder.

SAIL’s Best Boats 2014: Gunboat

Gunboat catamarans are known for their sleek lines and speed. Owners take pride in sailing their boats, and the engines are used primarily for maneuvering and intermittent auxiliary propulsion-; they are rarely used for extended motoring.

Boat under shrinkwrap

Selecting a Marine Pro

Note: This story is excerpted from SAIL Contributing Editor Christopher Birch’s upcoming book The Four Seasons of Boat Maintenance—a compendium of lessons learned during his

Squalls at night are no joke, but good preparation will get you through safely. Photo courtesy of Andy Schell

Storms & Sea Stories

The wind built faster than it was forecasted to. We ate dinner with full sail, close-reaching on a building SSW’ly breeze. Before dark we had

Photo: Lisa Smith Molinari

A Charter Passage Rewritten

Sailing on a schedule is famously a recipe for disaster, but on charter you don’t have much of a choice. The adventure is what you make of it. 

Photo: Zuzana Prochazka

Tahiti Revisited

After a long absence, one sailor finds herself sailing the waters of her youth and contemplating years of change in all its forms.

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