Premier Cruising Boats of the World 2008
Article of the Month April 200810 of the best cruising boats available anywhere
It’s a pleasure for us to bring you Premier Cruising Boats of the World 2008. In
the pages that follow you will see and read about 10 of the best cruising boats
available anywhere in the world. You will have the chance to read about the builders, discover their passion for excellence and appreciate their dedication to building boats that can cross oceans and take you and your friends and family safely to new and exciting landfalls.
You will notice that we have focused exclusively on cruising boats and, for that matter, on boats that are suitable for family cruising.
While there are other categories of sail and power boats we could have explored, it is the builders of cruising boats and the cruisers who buy them that make up the largest cross section of the boating population. Owning a cruising boat and enjoying the cruising life is a lifestyle choice that brings out the best in people by drawing families together, binding old friends and
creating new friends. Boat building is a craft, it is an art and it is a science. You might be surprised but almost all of the boat building companies represented here are run by the people who first started them or by the
offspring of the founders. Boat building, even on a large scale, is
still in most cases a family business. That’s because it takes special
skills and a special temperament to build really fine yachts that are also capable floating homes that can cross oceans. Certainly boat builders need to know the craft of laminating fiberglass hulls. They need to understand masts
and spars and sails. They need to know all about engines and engineering
systems. They have to be master furniture makers. And, they need to have the artistic eye to see when the combination of curves and angles and shapes
that make up a cruising boat looks right, or not.
So we offer you Premier Cruising Boats of the World 2008 in praise of the builders around the world who toil in the fields of yacht building and create with their hands and their wit these amazing creations for us to sail. If, like us, you think these boats are all things of beauty, you will know why rowing yacht tenders were set up for us to face backwards as we row…it’s so we can look at and admire our own boats as we row away at the end of the day.
The Cruising Life
Owning a premier cruising boat surely is an end in itself for some but in reality buying a cruising boat is a way to get fully engaged in a lifestyle that offers so much to so many. Sailing and cruising really opens the door to many of the best things in life while also reinforcing some essential skills, attitudes and values. Sailing and the cruising life are not for couch potatoes, video game players or the timid.
Sailing a boat requires both mental acuity and physical ability. You have to be alert to where the wind is coming from and know what the tide and current are doing. You have to be tuned into nature and then tuned into the way your sails and the boat beneath you are reacting to the natural forces.
Yet once you do get tuned in, once you are comfortable feeling the wind on the hairs on the back of your neck and knowing exactly what that tells you, then you will have ventured into a new realm of experience. You will be able to look at a flag streaming and know how hard it is blowing. You will be able to look at ripples on the water and know the wind’s direction. Or, you can look at the shape of the current as it flows by a buoy and know how strong it is and where it is running. Nature no longer is something separate to be
conquered. It has become your partner in the progress of your boat across the water.
In the spirit of that partnership between a sailor and nature, you can in fact sail your boat just about anywhere in the world that is touched by water, from the tip of Lake Superior, to the Antarctic Peninsula, to the back side of Borneo or the quay side of Paris. You are traveling on the wind and under power and you are using the natural elements as your medium and your guide.
To do all this, to really go out and explore the world under sail or power, you need to develop a core competency in the operation of your boat beyond even the sailing skills. You need to learn navigation, weather forecasting, engine mechanics, advanced communications, first aid, diving, a foreign language
or two and much more.
Once you set off to sail the seven seas you become more self-reliant than just about any person on the planet, similar in many ways to an astronaut or a mountain climber. You have to become the master of your own ship and must be constantly vigilant for the progress, safety and well-being of the ship and its crew.
That vigilance, that alertness, is what really sharpens the senses of sailors and cruisers. They have learned about the natural forces of wind and wave and weather. And, they have had to learn also about advanced electronics, navigation software, communications software and advanced weather forecasting tools. They have learned these things because, at the end of the day, they are responsible for the lives of those who sail with them and for their own lives.
It’s that sense of competence and self-reliance that really makes sailing and the cruising life so engaging. And it is what leads sailors on to new challenges like sailing across an ocean for the first time, or sailing to a new isolated cruising region. Facing new challenges allows you to apply all you have learned, play out all of your competence and self reliance, until you have really moved to a new level.
Cruising is all about enjoying life and having fun. But it is also about meeting challenges and through those challenges making new discoveries, whether that is discovering an island group or discovering something new about yourself.
After crossing an ocean you come ashore in a new anchorage and you see and smell the land as you never have before. Did you know you can often smell land long before you see it when making landfall? Did you know that you can often see special clouds over a mountainous island long before you see the
mountains? Did you know that you can see the turquoise color of a tropical atoll reflected on the bottom sides of clouds long before you
will see the atoll?
When you are sailing and cruising, you are making these kinds of discoveries all the time and they tend to link you ever more closely with the natural world. But it is the discoveries you make ashore among the new lands and cultures that are often the most interesting. Even in the most foreign of foreign lands, where they use a different alphabet and have different cultures and religions, you can still get along fine if you develop the right attitude and remain open minded and curious. No doubt, if you learn a few key phrases of the foreign language and try to understand the foreign customs you
will get along much better than if you don’t. It’s the old story of trying to walk a mile in their shoes before you judge them, no matter how foreign they may seem.
In a way, sailing and the cruising life is all about making new landfalls. You sail to a new land, make a new landfall and the discoveries and wonders and new friends will follow. And even at the personal level it is all about new landfalls, too. You buy a new cruising boat and master its sailing qualities; you learn navigation and communications; you learn first aid and CPR…these are all new landfalls in your journey and each delivers its own challenges and pleasures and ultimate satisfactions.
What makes the sailing life and cruising possible is a proper cruising boat. So we hope you enjoy the following pages of Premier Cruising Boats of the World 2008 and that these boats stir dreams of new landfalls near and far. Σ
