Bavaria yachts are in my opinion among the best mass production sailboats, sure, like all the others built for a low price, but I believe their building process is a bit better than the one that is used by all French mass production builders, having about the same built quality as Hanse, the other German yacht mass producer.
C45
Many people associate Bavaria with charter boat and it makes some sense because Bavarias are probably the most used boats on the charter business but curiously they retain only the negative connotation and they don't associate Bavarias with the reason why they are preferred by charter operators and that is a very positive one: they offer one of the best value on the market and the boats give less problems than some others.
But Bavarias always had a "defect": they looked like Bavarias. "Look like a Bavaria" became an expression to denominate yachts that not being necessarily ugly had a bland deja vu look. Things went better when they changed to Farr as a designer, but not much better. With the exception of the Vision line, that are better looking, the main line continued to look uninteresting and old looking.
C57
Then, for the C57, their top of the line, they started a collaboration with an Italian NA, Maurizio Cossutti and the C57 looks not like a Bavaria anymore, it looks elegant. I thought that collaboration was only for the top of the line, that the shipyard wanted to look like a "real" yacht, but surprise surprise, they liked so much the design that Cossutti is going to design more Bavarias and Bavarias will not look like "Bavaria" anymore, they will look more beautiful and elegant.
C57
Thanks to a Croatian friend you can look at the first elegant one (after the C57), the C45 (cover photo). I don't know if it will replace the 46, that has already a nice interior but, as usual, look like a "Bavaria" on the outside, or if they will start a new parallel C line. But that seems improbable to me and commercially does not seem to make sense.
The C45 has been maintained secret and no technical documentation has been released. The boat looks quite nice (except in what regards the giant middle port hull) and I am very curious about the technical specifications. Probably it is going to be a very interesting sailboat. Cossutti is known by designing very fast ORC racers namely the NM38 (that won the World's championship) and also for designing some fast performance cruisers like Salona 380, More 55 and the line of Italia Yachts.
The black beauty, the fastest of all IMOCA is for sale and now we understand why Alex Thompson did not make the last Transat, the Jacques Vabre, a race that he would have big chances of winning. The Hugo Boss, besides being the fastest is an almost new boat, built only two years ago for competing on the 2016/2017 Vendee Globe.
Contrary to what one could think these are not bad news for Alex Thompson but great news: he is going to have a faster and even better boat built next year to compete on the 2020 Vendee Globe. Crazy stuff?
No, the IMOCA class are from all the offshore racing boats the ones whose development is faster and with all information that was received from the use of foils on the last Vendee Globe it is already possible to build a better and faster IMOCA. Hugo Boss is the best on the water and after having been proved, not only faster solo on the trade winds but also fast with a crew, in conventional offshore races, has a high market value and Alex Thompson wants to take advantage of that to subsidize the new racer.
The asking price is three and a half million euro. If you have the money and want to have a winning boat go for it LOL. Seriously I don't know if that will be the selling price, probably not, but I am sure that the boat will have many interested buyers, not only rich billionaires but most of all major sponsors that want a competitive boat to win some major races, with the right sailor or the right crew.
Alex Thompson has made the best possible publicity to the boat, arriving 2nd on the Vendee Globe with a crippled boat (a broken foil) and even so fighting hard for the race leadership, leaving behind several boats from the same generation in perfect conditions. And even more surprising than that, he has proved that the Hugo Boss, with medium to strong wind, was able to be incredibly competitive on the great offshore classic races.
On the last Middle Sea Race, a month ago, the Hugo Boss was able to clearly beat not only all VOR boats racing but also one of the Maxi racers, the CQS, a yacht that was completely rebuilt last year. He crossed the line in real time in 3rd place. I hope somebody will buy it in time for the Sydney Hobart where the conditions are often strong and if not with too much upwind sailing, suitable to this boat. Curiously he showed on the Middle Sea Race that with strong winds he was not as bad upwind, as most including me would think, even if compared with CQS that is a upwind maximized boat.
As a cherry on top of the cake, Alex Thompson with the feeling all, including Hugo Boss, recognize in him for business, has managed to obtain recently the most incredible sailing images of his Imoca sailing well over 30k and flying sometimes the boat completely out of the water!!!(the first movie).
Hugo Boss, the Sponsor, has maintained with sailing and with Alex Thompson one of the longest associations on the sport: 18 years and 6 racing boats. Chapeau and a big thanks to Hugo Boss to believe in sailing as advertising.
The new Hugo Boss will be the VII. The two last ones were designed by VPLP and Guillaume Verdier. Now that they parted ways he has yet to chose between them who is going to design the new boat. I would say it would be Guillaume Verdier, that I believe is the best designer of offshore open racing boats today.
He is designing the new VOR racer and he can join all the information obtained on the last Vendee Globe, where the leading boats were all designed with his collaboration, with the new research on foils for the VOR, that is estimated at half a million euro and that will come as a bonus to the new design.
It looks like a different planet!!! On the South, the Antarctic continent, on the Northwest, New Zealand and all around the big Austral desert, the South Pacific Ocean. Soon the nearest guys from François Gabart will be the ones on the space station.
Ahead, he has heavy weather and strong winds. Better take care and not have an accident there because the help is going to take several days to arrive. The record attempt goes well, he has an advance of more than 700nm and he keeps smiling like a kid, as if it was not unusual to sail that monster at speed, alone for several months, doing repairs outside with temperatures below 0 and dodging Icebergs. Truly incredible François Gabart. You can follow the attempt on the tracker:
And what to say about Yves le Blevec, the one that is doing an attempt that even his fellow profissional solo racers considere incredibly difficult, one that was never been attempted by a multihull and the only absolute big sail record that still belongs to a monohull?
That is his second attempt to break the circumnavigation record the wrong way around, meaning against the dominant winds. The first one finished a month ago with breakage on the boat. I hope he has better luck this time. His team think that it is going to be possible to do it in 3 months. So far so good and the distance to the monohull is already big (the little blue boat) on the image above.
There was a big fight till the finish on the Transat Jacques Vabre among the leading Class40. By far the most interesting race on this Transat. Only 23 minutes separated 1st and 2nd after more than 17 days of racing!!! The victory went to Sorel/Carpentier on V and B. They were only 4th when they crossed the doldrums, some days ago, but their final part of the race was fantastic.
They left behind Sharp/Santurde (that lead the race till the doldrums) and went on close pursuit to Chappellier/Vaillant that put on a big fight, leading till very near the finish line. We can see their disappointment when they arrived almost not celebrating. Certainly it is hard to lose almost over the finish line after a titanic effort for many days. They can be proud regarding the way they battled till the end.
You can see what I am talking about pulling back the orange button on the lower right corner of the cartography, on the link behind. Amazing fight till the finish!
But there is another winner on this race, a big one, the NA that designed all the boats that arrived on the 3 first places, Sam Manuard. The class 40 is a kind of battleground for boat designers, almost all that are meaningful in what regards designing racing boats, have designed one, from Ker to Farr, passing by Marc Lombard, Finot/Conq, Verdier, Humphreys, Owen and Clark and many others.
With this kind of competition having a full podium is just incredible and says much about Sam Manuard's ability as a designer. Sam was a solo racer coming from the minis and even if he never had a chance in what regards a big commission by a main production shipyard (and that's unfair) he is responsible for some of the more interesting fast small cruisers on the market, the Seascape. You can read (link below) a very interesting interview he gave about boat design, one that is very important to understand the diference between new and old designs in what regards sailing downwind (explained with videos).
On the Volvo Ocean race, after a domination by the French/New Zealand crew of the Chinese boat, that lasted almost all the race, on the final part Mapfre, the Spanish boat, this time with mostly a Spanish crew, managed to overtake them and finished with a small lead. I guess that these two teams will be dominating the race from now on. In my opinion they are the strongest. My bet goes to Dongfeng, even if they lost this one to Mapfre.
I had already posted about the J112e when it was on the project stage, I have visited the boat at the Dusseldorf boat show and it is all that it promised on the project: a very nice interior, well finished in a kind of modest way and I am not meaning anything negative quite the contrary. While most cruising boats nowadays have a flashy interior with average quality the J112 remains very sober and funcional featuring good quality everywhere. The J112e is made by Jcomposites in France and comes to substitute what was one of the most successful Jboats in what regards sales, the J109.
The J112 is a better and more modern design improving on the J109 in everything, from interior space to stability and performance. It has more length (36.00 to 35.25ft) more beam (11.75 to 11.50ft) a bigger SA/D (22.3 to 20.4) it is lighter (D/L-157 to 172) it has more stability (Max RM - 833 to 940 ft/lb) and all this allows not only a bigger interior but a remarkably faster boat (IRC - 1.015 to 1.060).
The interest on the boat by European magazines has not been big and though it has been tested by many sail magazines for the 2017 yacht of the year few have published the sail test but when they have the comments are very positive and everybody loves to sail the J112e. Curiously magazines in the US, where the interest for this type of boats is way smaller, have published more sail tests and even have made it boat of the year in an odd category: the crossover yacht.
But all this is not enough to make it a big sales success: the demand of this type of performance cruiser is very small on the US and it is diminishing in Europe not only due to the competition of other successful brands like JPK, Pogo, Italia Yachts (and now even Grand Soleil) among others but because unfortunately here we see also a decrease on the number of cruisers that want this type of sail boat.
Comparing the J112e with what seems to me to be the best performance cruiser of this size, the JPK 1080, I would say that the J112e is much more typed as an upwind sailboat while the JPK remains with a more balanced performance, one that has been giving it an incredible racing performance, from the Sydney Hobart to the Middle Sea Race, Fastnet and on the duo Transats.
In what regards hull diferences the JPK 1080 is just slightly beamier being the main diference on the transom design. The J112e, that is comparatively the beamier of all J's, has the max beam at the middle while the JPK has it pulled aft, giving it a big transom.
We can say this is a sailor's boat in a sense that the interior space has not come at the cost of a decreased sailing performance and that the sail hardware is not just a simplified one that only allows a basic sail trim. Many cruisers (or their wives) that buy the boats on boat shows are not able to understand at what cost comes that little bit of extra interior space or why even with a smaller interior these boats are more expensive than main mass produced boats.
The hulls seem similar on the way they are built even if that is not clearly the case and they are not aware of the differences that allow not only for a lighter boat but also a stronger boat. An then there is the misconception that seaworthiness has something to do with an open transom or higher freeboards, that are clearly visible while the very superior stability is dismissed because they cannot see it.
Even so, on these days that Beneteau stopped to make the First (because the market is not enough for a mass production boat to be truly profitable), the 30 boats already sold are a remarkable figure. Also very interesting to notice that from those only 5 were sold with the more racing specification indicating that the J112e is more bought by cruisers that want a fast boat (and eventually want to make a race now and then) than by racers that will just cruise eventually.
The J112e is a quality boat and therefore not a cheap one, it costs over 200 000 euros, a price that is not far from the ones of other fast quality cruiser-racers like XP yachts or JPK. A boat for the ones that like sailing, particularly upwind sailing and like to cruise in style and comfort but on a modest way and have a small family, a couple or a couple with two kids. A very nice boat specially adapted for Mediterranean sailing where the upwind performance is a must.
Incredible is just the word! The boat is nothing like it was expected to be. It is a truly new concept, one that leaves me wondering. They say it will be faster than the America’s cup multihulls!!!!
If it works it will be fantastic but I have some doubts regarding taming such a beast without electronic help. I really hope they have studied well this extreme design that changes all the concepts of a monohull. It seems a short period to develop such an extreme concept in terms of practicability and even more without having associated with it a complete team of experts. Or maybe they have and in that case they are already way ahead of all other teams.
There is no keel anymore, the foils work not only as foils but as canting keels and they will carry the ballast. The engineering problems seem huge since for controlling the boat the foil movements have to be fast. The boat will have the ability to re-right itself if capsized.
It may seem odd, a Hanse is typically a main market cruising boat, the Solaris (above) it is more of a performance cruising boat but if we look at the two boats we will find similarities in what regards design intention: both boats assume the pretension of looking like a bigger yacht, a yacht with clean lines, a small cabin height over the deck allowing a huge unobstructed area that provides a great view forward from the steering wheel.
Many would think that the Hanse is a more practical cruising boat being the Solaris more of a looker and a fast sailer, less adapted to cruising but it is the Hanse that does not have a dodger not even a place to mount one while the Solaris has one that can fold and be hidden behind a teak cover.
It is true that the Hanse has a version with a large fixed cover (kind of a bimini) but I saw it only on drawings and the thing is so ugly that I doubt very much anybody is going to have it. It is a kind of anti-statement regarding the boat design intention.
Both boats have a dinghy garage and an interior with similar dimensions with several possible options, a very nice cruising interior with all the space and storage needed for cruising (depending on the selection of the interior layout).
Both boats have a good tankage being the standard one a bit bigger on the Hanse and a similar hull with the beam pulled back and not a very different one, 4.85 meter on Solaris, 5.05 on Hanse even if the Solaris has considerably finer entries. Both boats have similarly big sized engines with around 110hp.
The Solaris is much nicer due to a smaller freeboard, a much cleaner design and due to much smaller port hulls, that on the Hanse are really huge and have a very negative effect on the way the boat looks.
The Solaris has a better stability due to a bigger B/D. Considering, among the different options, approximated drafts (2.70 for the Solaris and 2.80 for the Hanse) and similar torpedo keels, the Hanse has 30.5% and the Solaris 36.9%. note that the Hanse B/D for this type of hull is a good one, the Solaris one is a very good one.
The Solaris is much faster. It his lighter (17600kg to 19 000kg) and due to the superior stability can carry more sail area (176 m2 to 138). The Solaris has also a considerable bigger LWL (15.78 meter to 14.90). Due to better building techniques and materials (vacuum infused hull and cabin, airex sandwich, carbon reinforcements, structural bulkheads) the Solaris is stronger. The interior material and quality of finish are also clearly superior.
Not intending to say that the Hanse 548 is not well built, that it is slow (in fact it has a very decent 19.7 SA/D), that it has a bad stability, that the interior is not of good quality and nicely designed or even that the boat is ugly, with the exception of that incredibly shade that comes as an option.
Far from that, it is good looking, with a good stability and with a rigging that allows for easy sailing. What I mean is that the Solaris 55 is just superior, sometimes a lot, in what regards all these points.
The only point in what the Hanse is clearly better is on the price and it is not just a small difference, the Hanse is announced with a basic price of 415 310 euro while the Solaris 55 is announced at 821 000 Euros. Even considering that the Hanse is really a 53fter and the Solaris is a 55fter and that the Solaris for the same price has more equipment the difference in price is huge. Even the Solaris 50 is more expensive than de Hanse 548 even if now the difference is not very substantial.
I guess that some that will dream of a Solaris 55 will end up buying an Hanse 548 and even if the differences are remarkable and not only in price, at least they will be comforted with what the press and the brand says about the Hanse: "luxurious...the crème de la crème"..."the new Hanse 548 ... is a demonstration of what luxury means"..."luxury living on 55 feet"..."the new Hanse 548 is every bit the mini superyacht designed for luxury"...European luxury"..."luxury yacht".
No I am not making up, all these qualifications were used as high lines not only by the brand but by many sellers and sailing magazines including American ones. In comparison the high lines used for describing the Solaris 55 are quite modest: "Solaris 55 has been designed to satisfy the most demanding customers requiring performance sailing even with reduced crew."..."breathtaking beauty sets the trends".
Funny that contrary to Hanse we don't find the word luxury used neither by the shipyard neither by boat magazines referring to the Solaris. Guess what this means regarding the target customers, the ones that will buy one or another. Not hard to figure that out 😊
