Sailboats 36-40ft

This woody, seaworthy Crealock design has proved a good investment over the years.

This recent update of this extraordinarily popular 18-year-old Catalina 36 MK II design is a good all-around boat. Owners’ main complaint is with interior woodwork.

From the recently resurrected Canadian Sailcraft company, this early 80's racer/cruiser is well built, with a fair turn of speed. Its few shortcomings include a shallow bilge, difficult engine access and marginal stowage.

This German-built production cruiser has first-class construction and is favorably priced. For serious cruising, however, she does have a few drawbacks such as a small galley and marginal sea berths.

A gentleman’s cruiser that’s easy to single-hand, great to look at, well-built, but a bit small for long-term voyaging.

The smallest Sabre is a performance cruiser with an all-wood interior. It’s done well in some ocean races, though it’s too heavy to be flat-out fast.

This French cruiser has a nice all-wood interior, but a small sail plan for coastal US waters.

Freedom Yachts were the invention of Garry Hoyt back in the early 1970s. An advertising executive and champion one-design sailor, Hoyt reached a stage in his life when he wanted a cruising boat, but he found the existing fleet ordinary and unsatisfactory. So the story goes he set about designing himself a boat. The result was the Freedom 40, an unusual-looking cruiser with a long waterline, conventional hull, and a peculiar wishbone cat-ketch rig.

Rob Valdez and John Brooks founded Endeavour in 1974 using the molds from Ted Irwin's 32-footer to launch the business. The company built about 600 32s in all. Spurred by this success, Valdez and Brooks began looking around for a larger sistership to expand the line. Just how they "developed" the 37 is a tale best left untold until the principals pass away or become too senile to read the yachting periodicals. Brooks calls the 37 a "house design," and that is generous. The total number of Endeavour 37s built is 476 a lot for a boat that size.

This is a conservative boat, devoid of construction razzmatazz. The hull is an uncored, solid laminate. For those living in colder climates and wanting more insulation, the boat can be built with either foam or balsa core, but these are added to the normal hull layup, resulting in a somewhat heavier boat with slightly reduced interior volume.