Sailboats 21-30ft

This C. Raymond Hunt design from the 1970’s has standing room and ample beam, making her a roomy family coastal cruiser. Our criticisms are few, the most serious of which is the iron keel.

From powerboat builder Bayliner, these two boats are very different in design and very similar in construction. The 295 is an outdated IOR design and the 305 a high-sided, shoal draft cruiser that makes too much leeway.

A 1970's racer/cruiser that makes a fine, economical boat despite a few problems.

This little sister to the F-27 folding trimaran is flat out fast and well built, but compared to a monohull (and you’ve heard this before), expensive and cramped down below.

This cruising catamaran features open living on the bridge deck, above average performance and low maintenance.

This late 60’s/early 70’s IOR and MORC racer/cruiser was a hot boat in its day, and it still acquits itself reasonably well. But lightweight construction limits the 26’s suitability for offshore.

The recent release of Steve Wystrachs outstanding documentary film Manry at Sea about Robert Manry, the former copy editor who sailed across the Atlantic in a 13-foot sailboat, got me thinking again about the virtues of small cruising boats. In my view, there are at least four main types of pocket cruisers. Manrys modified lake boat fits somewhere in between the first two.

A New Zealander greatly influenced by the traditional craft of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, famed multihull designer Ian Farrier understood that an enduring design goes through several evolutions. Proas, the small sailing craft of Micronesia that inspired his visionary folding trimaran design, presented a perfect example of this.

Its hard to mistake the Stiletto 27s appearance-typically with blazing topside graphics and aircraft-style, pop-top companionway hatches. Its also hard for the average sailor to appreciate the sophistication of the Stilettos construction-epoxy-saturated fiberglass over a Nomex honeycomb core. There is probably no production hull built in the U.S. with a better strength-to-weight ratio than the Stiletto. And although the design is 40 years old, the Nomex honeycomb fabrication is still impressive.

This summer, Stiletto Manufacturing will be launching the all-new Stiletto X-Series, including a foiling catamaran, with the first boats expected to splash about the time this article went press. Carrying on the Stiletto tradition, the 10-meter X-Series models are being marketed as high-performance boats that are fast, beachable, trailerable, and affordable, as well as easy to handle and ideal for coastal family getaways.