high quality yacht brands?

[CapeCodSailor]

Where does a Watkins rate?

[Jeff_H]

Pretty close to the bottom. Watkins offered a lot of boat for the money, but they were not all that well built and their designs tended to be pretty mediocre.

Respectfully,
Jeff

[trecksail]

Jeff,

What about the C&C''s?(late 60''s early 70''s - 34'' or 36'') From the info I''ve found they seem to be well built, quick, and well designed. (deck, cockpit, cabin layout)

[Grigrigrigoris]

Any detailed opinions about the Moodys? Jeff, I am wondering which model of sailing boat you have and why you chose the particular one.

Grigoris

[Jeff_H]

I am not much of a fan of the Angus Primrose era Moody''s but the newer boats seem to be pretty good boats. They seem to be nicely finished. I have not especially liked their interior layouts and I am not a fan of aft cabins on boats as small as Moody tries to put them. Most of the ones that I have seen in the States have interiors that are biased towards coastal cruising.

I own a Farr 11.6 (Farr 38).The Farr 11.6 (Farr 38) were built as cruiser/racers and in their day they were extremely fast compared to other 38 footers that could be cruised. Compared to cruiser/racers of that era, they were very light. With a design weight of only 10,600 lbs., they were somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4''s of the weight of a normal 38 foot coastal cruiser of that era. In some ways these were boats with a split personality. Sisterships of my boat are distance cruising all over the world. My boat, for example, was single-handed in from South Africa on her own bottom. Yet, when these were new boats, Farr 11.6’s were also winning races in a wide range of venues.

My boat was designed at an interesting point in Bruce Farr''s and yacht design history. Farr, like many top designers, had been designing race boats to compete under the IOR racing rule and had done so quite successfully. But in late 1970’s and early 1980''s designers and racers were becoming disillusioned with boats optimized for the IOR rule. These early 80’s IOR boats were comparably slow, tender and difficult to sail especially in heavy conditions or with short crews. Designers began designing large one-design, offshore capable, keel-boats that were designed to be well rounded designs and which were not specifically optimized to any racing rule. For example this is the era that saw the introduction of boats like J-36/35, Express 37 and Santana 36. Into that climate, Bruce Farr designed the Farr 11.6. The boat was a big hit in New Zealand and South Africa with well over a 125 of these boats built in a very short period worldwide.

In a lot of ways she was also a typical family cruiser built for use in New Zealand. From what I understand, the New Zealanders have a culture that is more accepting of the idea of cruising carefully engineered, very light weight boats. During this era Bruce Farr designed a whole range of very fast cruising boats that were similar in concept to the 11.6 but ranging from 21 feet up to 60 footers. Even in the early 1980''s, these fast cruisers offered a lot of carrying capacity for their dry weight, had surprisingly comfortable motions and were quite stable as compared to the light boats that we knew at that time in the northern hemisphere.

The engineering on my boat is amazing. The 11.6 has a comparatively thin skin for that day, (heavy by modern standards) supported on closely spaced framing. The boat has a series of closely spaced, hand glassed longitudinal stringers that run the length of the boat and terminate at a squash block at the bow knuckle. Depending on where you are in the boat, there are transverse framing or a structural bulkhead every 20” to 30”, The framing around the keel area consists of massive glassed in transverse frames. These are incredible stiff and sturdy boats that really seem to stand up to a lot of abuse.

Today she is pretty slow when compared to modern race boats. But she was in many ways the last of the last generation of boats that could be raced or cruised in a wide range of conditions. She is remarkably easy to handle single-handed and in a heavy breeze. She points well for a cruising boat and is very fast in a wide range of conditions. Although light in weight, her hull form and weight distribution makes the Farr 11.6 surprising comfortable in rough going. I have been very pleased with her sailing ability right across the board. She is moderately well balanced with a very light helm, but unlike some of the newer boats, she does not track all that well. As a result I tend to use the autopilot when covering distance. With her light helm these boats do very well with streering vanes. (My boat had one which was removed when she came to the States. )

For me, one of the big draws to this boat is her fractional rig which I look at as being the ideal offshore and shorthanded rig for a boat of this size.

The previous owner had almost exclusively raced her and so she has a lot of good racing gear but when I bought her cruising systems were in serious need of updating and I have been slowly converting her back into more of a cruiser and less of a racer. The interior layout is clearly designed around offshore passage making rather than coastal cruising and her stock tankage is a bit on the small size.

I do not think that these are an ideal boat for everyone. I think that these are great high performance singlehanders or for couples who will accept a pretty spartan boat for a bit of extra performance. I am not sure that I would classify her as a high quality yacht but she works for me.

Respectfully,
Jeff

[PCP]

Moody, like a lot of top high quality boat manufacturers could not cope with the prices of big production sailboats manufacturers and stopped making small sailing boats.
They have stopped making the 38 and the 42 in 2003 and are now focused in making big luxury oceangoing boats.
Smaller second hand boats have a good value in the market, are well built and are good oceangoing boats. They are also adapted to live aboard.
They are not fast boats, but all is relative (If you compare them with an Island Packet, they are fast).
I particularly like the recent production of the 38. Nice interior in a good looking boat.

Paulo

[windship]

Norseman 447

Dennis

[Brian Murphy]

Has anybody got a Nordship 40DS?

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by PCP

I would say that we have 4 different categories regarding price and quality.

1- Completely custom boats like Camper and Nicolson or Alden yachts.

2- Low production semi-custom boats like Najad, Malo, Morris, Cabo Rico or Contest.

3- High quality production boats like Tartan, Sabre, Dehler, wauquiez, x-yachts, J-boats.

4- Big production sail boats . Boats that are made in large numbers to a price, like Bavaria, Hanse, Dufour,Hunter, Catalina, Harmony or Beneteau.

Don't agree with some your choices....

J-boats - anyone who mounts winches through balsa core could not be considered high quality.

Tartan - More marketing than quality. Have you followed any of the law suits and horror story threads on this forum (the best of which were deleted a couple of years ago).

Island Packet - Anyone who uses concrete and scrap metal for ballast (including old re-bar and what looked like the damper plate from my 1967 Chevy Nova) should not be considered high quality.

[SloopJonB]

Pretty old thread but also fairly timeless. When I talk about a "quality boat" I think in terms of engineering and build quality. Design/performance aspects aren't really a part of "quality" to my mind. There are lots of ugly, stripped out quality race boats, just as there are lots of beautiful, slow, quality cruising boats.

Is a Ferrari higher or lower quality than a Rolls Royce? How about a Cadillac Escalade compared to a Chevy Suburban?

On a side note, the Scandinavian boats listed made me think - are there any low or middling quality boats produced in the Scandinavian countries? I sure don't know of any.