Performance Dinghies

Bigger, roomier and sportier on the water than it looks on the dock, the Fusion 2 is designed to get new sailing adults excited and learning. The judges agreed that it sails great and would appeal to clubs and families.

The Maverick is the multitool of watersports. For sailing, there are inflatable seats and it tracks upwind just fine. Pop in the windsurf rig or practice your wing technique. No wind? Bust out the SUP paddle. For waterside living, this 10-foot, 95-pound dinghy will entertain all summer.

A gem of a dinghy from Mackay Boats, the VX Two was the top boat from our BOTY session in St. Pete. The judges described it as perfect in every way, a sophisticated but simple skiff-style dinghy for more experienced sailors.

Foilers

The IODA is a 10-foot foiler that the judges felt was challenging to sail as first-timers. It’s better suited for smaller and more nimble sailors. The judges felt that the BirdyFish S was far easier to sail and more versatile.

The BirdyFish Race was a contender from our St. Pete session. It’s a bigger scow-shaped craft than the BirdyFish S, and it was praised for its excellent construction, robust foils and the ability to sail two-up and share the fun. The Race’s gennaker takes the fun factor up a big notch. 

Club Racers

The J/7 made its BOTY debut in St. Pete in February, and in the lighter conditions, without a spinnaker, it was difficult for the judges to really assess the true performance of the boat. As a targeted multipurpose boat,  it has all the traits of a J Boat: lightweight, roomy, responsive and great upwind.

The development of the Storm 18 was thorough and the result is a legitimate multipurpose boat that’s built to last the abuses of adult sailing lessons, club team racing and recreational sailing. The judges praised the boat’s performance and versatility, but the demo tested in St. Petersburg was not yet perfected. Production is now apace, however, with several U.S. yacht clubs committed to fleets.       

Crossovers

With the Beneteau First 30’s highly refined hull and obsessive attention to detail with weight management, the engineers and builders at Beneteau have delivered what they tout as the first in a new genre of “planing cruisers.” Belowdecks is a weekender-worthy interior, and on deck, the sail-control systems and cockpit ergonomics all add up to make it an excellent platform for coastal and shorthanded races, especially courses with predominant downwind angles where its planing attributes can deliver.

The Argentinian-built Zonda Z28 follows the award-winning Z24, selected as the 2024 Best Recreational Racer. Whereas the Z24 was light and sporty, however, the 28 is much more of a cruiser-leaning design. With a lot of interior volume, an electrified lifting keel and a retractable transom-hung carbon rudder for shallow-water venues, the judges noted it being well-priced and well-built. With the rig out of tune for the test, they did, however, have helm control issues in the day’s 15-knot breeze.  

Multihulls

As the most sophisticated HH Catamaran ever tested as part of Boat of the Year, the HH52 delivered an exceptional sailing experience for the judges who praised it for its ergonomics and systems. Whatever the sail combination or angle, the judges said, the feel on the tiller was sensational as was the level of detail in the construction and execution. As a multimillion-dollar catamaran loaded with performance features, it will make many a happy owner.

The 15-foot inflatable Happy Cat Star Carbon is one not to be overlooked by adventure-race fanatics. Super durable rubber tubes for the hulls and a carbon frame to keep it all stiff and fast made for high-speed and thrilling test for the judges. With a gennaker deployed, they had the fun-meter pegged. The entire boat breaks down into duffel bags, and the accessories list from Grabner, the builder in Germany, is extensive. 

After a stunning session on the Happy Cat, the judges were left wanting on the MiniCat 520 Explorer, which did not have the same level of stiffness or balance. As a recreational inflatable catamaran, they didn’t feel it was suited for serious adventure racing.

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Saffier isn’t a brand well known in the States, and as far as we know, they’ve never entered a single model into our Boat of the Year world. But after admiring a brand new Saffier Lite 24 on a trailer all summer, we persisted in convincing them to show us what they’ve been hiding in Europe for the past few years.

Saffier, says our demo host and dealer Anton Webre, promises there is no pretending with its boats. “It is a premiere performance daysailor brand. That is their DNA. Dennis (Hennevanger, the builder) will tell you that if you’re looking for something else, then look somewhere else.”

Webre sells quite a few Saffier models, especially the builder’s bigger mooring candy. The 24 Lite, he says, is one sweet little harbor burner. Yes, it’s pricey at $195,000 (as quoted, with tariff), but sailing it is believing it.

“Esthetically, this boat is really, really nice,” Davis says. “It would be a beautiful thing to have for a Wednesday night club race series.”

It’s also light and plenty lively, Davis adds. At only 1,300 pounds, the boat is really stable, so the ballast is clearly in the right place. And sailing upwind was a delight. “It’s designed to be a stay-in-the-cockpit boat,” Davis says, “so yeah, sit on the cushions and enjoy it.”

Comfortable, very light and very cool-looking daysailor is what Ingham jotted into his note pad, while also noting the quality and finish of the composite hull, built in the Netherlands, northwest of Amsterdam, in what is described as a technically-advanced and clinically clean shop. Saffier’s story is a captivating one, but it is one for later. We know very little about them in the States, but what we do know is that they’ve been building award winning and ground breaking sailboats since 1999. The Saffier 24 Lite is yet another for them.

“It’s a boat where you get out on the water, by yourself or with a bunch of people,” Webre says. “It’s all so easy to use, thoughtful and beautiful.”

The judges also pointed out its impressive gelcoat finish and that there is not one piece of wood on the boat. It’s all composite, including the synthetic decking, which comes in almost any color.

Aluminum is the standard rig, and while carbon is an option, Webre says not to bother. The aluminum rig is perfectly fine. And for the dry-sail racer in the group: A single-point lift eye is embedded into the rock-solid keel grid. Easy in, easy out on the hoist.

It’s certainly possible to shorthand the 24 on a beer-can twilight, but four would be perfect company. Whether racing with a code zero, an A2 or even JAM, there’s something for everyone. All controls cascade aft to companionway clutches. With cabin-top winches, it’s all simple and effective. The jib is self-tacking and runs on a flush deck track, the Zero is on a furler at the end of a carbon sprit, and the mainsheet block is set on the cockpit floor post.

Behind the helm is a sprawling aft cushion lounge for guests to enjoy the ride, away from the fray, and down below is sitting headroom only and acres of cushions encircling a compression post. You hardly know the electric sail drive unit and batteries are there. Inside, there’s nothing more until you toss the overnight gear drybags on board and see where that takes you. “I’d overnight it with my son,” Webre tells the judges with a hint of sincerity, “but my wife would not.”

And that’s okay, because there is no night in daysailor. But there is all day—and there is twilight—in the Saffier 24 Lite.

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For the first day of our Boat of the Year test sailing, small-craft warning flags were whipping, and so too was the rain when we sailed off the beach at the Annapolis Sailing School with the BirdyFish S—S as in solo or single—without any clue of how to handle the scow-shaped 14-footer and its long, arcing and pointed “mustache” foils.

When it’s time to put our judge Monica Morgan into the driver’s seat, she hops in with her trademark giddy giggle. We don’t know what she knows: She’s never foiled.

She orients herself with the whereabouts of the boat’s key control lines: a 16-to-1 vang, downhaul and the 2-to-1 mainsheet. She promptly trims the reefed square-top mainsail, turns onto a reach, sails 100 feet or so away, then rises up onto both foils, streaking away as if she’s done it a million times.

“Insanely easy,” is how Morgan would later describe the experience, which is the whole point of the BirdyFish S.

Unlike the BirdyFish Double (Race), which has symmetric J-shaped foils, the BirdyFish S has curved asymmetric foils that can’t be inverted or swapped if damaged, so launching should always be a calculated effort. Still, says Hardy Peters of East Coast Sailboats, the U.S.’ BirdyFish distributor, getting underway is a simple affair. With the foils up in their stowed position, step one is to roll the boat to the water’s edge on its custom wheels, which fit into slots in the hull. These are removed once the boat is afloat, and then stored in a bag on the boat. Wade to waist-high water (two feet or more), push down and lock the foils into their sacrificial Delrin bearing cases. Do the same with the rudder and off you go.

Like the foils themselves, the BirdyFish S’s polyester and honeycomb hull is built (in France) in halves and then glued together. A robust structural bulkhead runs the full length of the boat, giving it some serious rigidity. The scow hull shape also provides strength and, more importantly, stability. Unlike other singlehanded foilers (such as the Moth or Waszp), the BirdyFish is stable at rest and far more forgiving in crash-downs.

Most other high-tech foilers also have dynamic rudder-angle adjustment, but with the BirdyFish S, rudder angle is preset and can be adjusted on the water with a wrench. The single-piece aluminum mast and a black Dacron mainsail with two reef points also opens up the boat to sailing in a wide range of conditions. It can be sailed upwind and downwind in displacement mode, with one crew or two, with all reefs or none at all.

“You’re probably looking somewhere between 185 to 210, max is 310 (pounds),” says Peters. “I’m 250 pounds and I can get this boat up and out in 8 knots of breeze.”

The sailing technique, Peters explains to the judges before splashing, is to shift weight aft when building speed, and once it takes off, shift forward enough to give the boat a slight bow-down attitude. Minimal rudder movement is essential, he adds, “Don’t sail it like an ILCA. Subtle tiller movements prevent spinouts.”

As for tacking, he says, “This boat will easily foil tack and jibe. Just remember that the best [exit] angle on this boat is 55 degrees. So, you have to take that 55 and go another 55 or more, so you’re looking at a 110-degree turn basically. But on a jibe, it’s a lot less.”

Both Morgan and fellow judge Mike Ingham eventually figured out the technique enough to pull off a few, albeit sketchy, foiling turns in 15 to 20 winds and flat water. And their straight-line speeds were more than impressive.

“I was a little surprised at how fast it would go,” Morgan says. “I almost wiped out once, but I never felt like I was just gonna get launched off the boat. I felt pretty locked in tacking. I was trying to figure out the right rate of turn for the tack, because you couldn’t go too slow, but if you went fast, it felt as if you were spinning out. I had that feeling a couple times, mostly tacking, but as a first-timer, it was really rewarding to go foiling so easily.”

To validate the boat’s versatility, before wrapping up our test sail, we put both Morgan and Ingham on the boat and shook out the reef. With both of them working in sync to balance the boat onto its foils, they hit their top speed of the day in one dark and streaking puff. We could hear the whooping from a good mile away, until the sleigh ride ended in a spectacular explosion of spray. Ingham slipped from his hiking strap, and Morgan casually tacked the boat back upwind and retrieved her teammate. It was easy for Ingham to get back into the boat and they soared away again.

“It was a surprisingly easy boat to foil,” Ingham says. “It was like stress-free foiling that was always just in the groove.” Morgan seconded the sentiment and says, “For never having foiled before, I was able to do it within 30 seconds, and that’s kind of crazy. But I also felt really stable on the boat, not intimidating or overwhelming at all.”

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Here is a reason why Dragonfly owners are okay with waiting two years or more to get their hands on the new 36. Everyone that has tested it agrees: It’s a multihuller’s dream boat. “Exhilarating” is the one word that BOTY judge Monica Morgan came away with after a windy session on the 36.

“It was such a joy to sail,” she says. It was effortless to sail in 25 knots under a big main at full hoist. Proper winches and everything led correctly into the cockpit, tails disappear into lockers. “It was fast and stable, and felt so safe and bulletproof,” she adds. “It wasn’t hitting waves, it was just cruising through them. The helm felt amazingly light, and everything was just so simple, but it made sense, and it is so classy.”

Dragonfly’s Jens Quorning, a master of his craft, confidently says the Dragonfly 36  is the best they’ve ever done. “Up in the bows we have some new modern tricks with the wave-piercing center hull bow. We’ve got more buoyancy there, and more buoyancy forward in the floats. It is really hard to force it down.”

That also allows him to pile on the sail area and have fun. He’s especially keen about the electric Code Zero furler that “introduces more fun sailing and allows our owners to go out and do 20 knots, easily.”

The rig towers 60 feet above the deck, which Quorning says is “probably the tallest mast on any 36-foot production boat, for sure.” He adds that he and his like-minded owners like a lot of sail area. “With a more intelligent hull design, you want to push it hard, and especially downwind,” Quorning says. “With the right buoyancy right where you want it, you can push up the speedometer.”

Dobbs Davis, our panel’s big-boat guru, felt the same way: “It was blowing 30, the helm was so gentle and balanced. With the weather ama just kissing the wavetops, the sensation was amazing. It just wanted to keep going faster, slicing through the water really nicely.”

With a centerboard in the center hull, Davis adds, the boat tacked just as well as a monohull, and with electric winches available, the jib wind was easy. The code zero can go in and out all day, especially when the hydrogenator and solar panels are topping off the batteries.

The overall bigness of the boat and the beautiful composite work of the beams, the coamings and the interior give the immediate impression of a bigger boat. “I felt like I was on a 40-footer,” Davis says. “Part of that is stability, but it’s the center hull form as well. The whole thing is exceptionally engineered and the details beautifully executed, including the cabinetry. I know there was a lot of tooling that went into that, so what’s amazing to me is the amount of effort it takes to make that right.”

The judges noted the boat feeling light for its size. Quorning says that’s because he’s finally been able to shed the weight of heavy steel fittings in the folding system. All parts are now composite, all of it done in-house, vacuum-infused vinylester and carbon in the bulkheads and beams.

When folded, the beam is roughly 12 feet, great for storage and slip life. And liveaboard is definitely possible for extended fast getaways. And that’s why Quorning is also proud of what they’ve accomplished with the 36’s interior. They’ve managed to bump out the center hull enough to create space and accommodations that, he says, is on par with most modern 40-footers. All the sails, toys, bikes and gear go into the floats.

“There is tons of headroom, the head is lovely, and the aft cabin is really spacious,” Morgan says. “It was all so functional down below, everything had its place and fit really well.”

The engine is aft, under the cockpit, and the sail drive is not below the belly of the boat, Quorning says. “It gives us more freedom and more space in the main cabin. Less smell, less noise in the cabin.”

To its value and quality, Quorning is transparent about his Dragonflys being perceived as expensive. But building in Denmark is expensive, and quality comes with a price. “It’s a high-tech product with a lot of man-hours,” he says. “But we sell a lot of boats because people really admire our boats.”

Judge Mike Ingham would second that, and if he had the funds, he’d seriously consider buying one and giving the Scandinavian multihull racing circuit a go.

“It’s just such a classy boat, really well made, really functional, something you’d want to own, if you could afford it,” says Ingham. “Its stated purpose is to be a fast, safe, comfortable, offshore cruiser-racer, and it just knocks it out of the park in my mind.”

When we sailed with Quorning in October he shared that there were 35 owners in the queue already. And widely praised throughout Europe, the wait now extends well beyond 2028. It’s no surprise the Dragonfly 36 is in demand.

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Melges is on a roll. From its humble shop in Zenda, Wisconsin, to its Watersports Center in Florida, they reignited the adult dinghy racing scene with their Melges 15, of which more than 1,200 and counting have been built. But the 15, as popular as it is, does have one limitation: it’s a double-hander. So, what’s a larger sailing family to do? Try the Melges 19, a supersized twist on the Melges 15 that delivers a supersized sailing experience for a trio.

“This is our aim at a true three-person family boat,” Eddie Cox of Melges Performance Sailboats tells our judges. “There’s a real gap in our line, and this fills it. We wanted to build something that was simple to use and affordable—under $35,000 for the boat and sails, on the water.”

“Simple,” as Cox describes the boat, does not do justice to its sophistication. It’s an immaculately infused epoxy hull that weighs in at 375 pounds, and once again they entrusted the naval architecture firm of Reichel/Pugh  to deliver a hull shape that Cox says is revolutionary. “It’s so stable yet not sticky upwind,” he says, “This boat is really free upwind, and with a nicer rocker and taper into the transom, it’s a downwind sled, too.”

While cognizant of criticism about yet another one-design class with the potential to disrupt the livelihood of legacy one-designs like the Lightning and Thistle, the judges acknowledged that certain classes will continue to enjoy their followings so long as there are active builders. The Melges 19, they say, will better appeal to a newer generation of sailors who prefer a sportier asymmetric sailing experience. This one’s out of the bag, and the judges must evaluate it on what it is, not what it has the potential to do. Natural selection in the one-design world will do its thing over time, they agreed, but given their enjoyment of sailing the boat, and the commitment of Melges to support its classes, the Melges 19 is certainly the most exciting dinghy of the year.

The Melges 19 incorporates several design features that make it suitable for a family-oriented three-person racing experience over many heavier legacy classes. Lightweight construction makes it easier to launch and handle for a wider range of sailors. And the comfort and ergonomics of the cockpit, which Ingham described as considerably deep, will provide more comfortable hiking. The structural spine that runs the length of the cockpit doubles as a support during tacks, which is beneficial even for older sailors.

They appreciated such simple but modern features as the self-tacking jib and its athwartships jib tracks. But its accessibility, the judges say, is its best trait. The boat accommodates sailors of varied abilities and ages, with spacious and obstruction-free arrangements. The loads on sheets and control lines are not excessive, making it manageable for smaller or less experienced crew members.

“A smaller person can definitely handle it, which is really cool,” says Morgan, a sought-after crew in a number of one-design dinghy classes, including the Lightning and Melges 15. “Nothing on this boat felt overly loaded. It’s just so easy to hike, it’s easy to crew.”

And it was definitely easy to drive—that is the Melges Midas touch. “The boat is just so easy to understand,” Morgan adds, appreciating the simplicity of the boat’s straightforward and minimalist layout, especially after her recent experience rigging a new custom 6 Metre with a cat’s cradle of control lines. “We were never sitting on any hardware, jib sheets or spinnaker gear. We weren’t tangled up in maneuvers. And for the three of us having never roll-tacked together, we did a lot of tacks and jibes with no snafus.”

Davis, Morgan’s fellow judge, who was nursing a bum knee, noted that the cockpit spine goes beyond giving the boat its structural rigidity. “They made that into an ergonomic feature rather than an impediment, so for an older guy with a bad knee, it was great because it gave me something to support coming out of the tack.”

Davis notes that high-quality epoxy construction is what makes the Melges 19 feel “really solid and robust,” but he’s also cognizant of the fact that the boat is plenty powerful, with a generous amount of sail area and a hull that will always want to get-up-and-go. This is not targeted at entry-level families learning to sail, he says—although they certainly could—but rather the families that are already experienced. “For them,” he says, “this thing would be awesome.”

Cox says one reason they chose a daggerboard rather than a keel was to have the boat be easy to trailer and launch in any way—trailer, beach dolly or hoist. And cost considerations are a major factor in the package: from the aluminum rig, to the one-design class sails to stock hardware and ropes.

The intended race-weight range, Cox says, is 475 to 550 pounds, which is right around three average adults, and ideally, one junior sailor to mentor, but Ingham says the ideal number is likely at the bottom of that range. “In this kind of boat, crew weight will matter.”

With sheets and controls spread throughout the boat, the judges agreed with Cox’s pre-sail assessment that there is a job for everybody in the boat. “You can have the driver either just driving or driving and playing the main and backstay,” he says. “You can have the middle person doing the backstay, trimming the main and trimming the kite. You can have the bow person trimming the kite, dousing the kite, setting the kite. You know, you can split up the jobs depending on the skills that you have on the boat, which makes it super conducive to families.”

Ingham ranked the Melges 19 high on his list on account of it delivering perfection. He was especially appreciative of the deep cockpit floor that gave him the feel of being in a sportboat rather than a knees-to-your-chin dinghy. “There really is nothing like it in this modern three-person dinghy category today,” he says. “So for me, it does move the dial. It’s lighter than the legacy boats, it’s asymmetric and it’s a lot more comfortable to hike on. It just moves, and in the bigger puffs it never came close to feeling like it was gonna wipe out. A puff would come, you just bear off…easy and quick.”

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Nautor Swan’s Federico Michetti is a world-class sailor obsessed with perfection. Sail a short distance with him, and you’ll watch him make OCD-level adjustments. And when those adjustments come easy, as they do on the ClubSwan 28, he can’t help himself. Two-tenths of a knot slow? He feels it before the crash happens, and he’s already moving to the 28’s mast jack handle, the three-dimensional jib lead, the cunningham tugging the mainsail’s structured luff, or the myriad other controls that get a noticeable response from the 28-footer. Shift a gear and you feel it. Get it into a groove and it is lights-out fun, both upwind and downwind. This is Michetti’s kind of boat—a proper raceboat.

The judges agree, it’s Boat of the Year worthy.

“This thing is a pretty sexy boat,” judge Mike Ingham says. “I can definitely see the curb appeal, and we knew it was going to be sophisticated. Everything is ergonomically correct. It’s a performance boat, but it’s also a beautiful machine, and from the second we stepped on it, I was like, whoa. This is cool.”

Built in Cartagena, Spain, by the Sinergia Racing Group for Nautor Swan, the ClubSwan 28 is the smallest offering in ClubSwan one-design lineup that now stretches to 50-footers. Conceptually, Michetti explains to the judges, the boat is meant to bring new owners into the Nautor Swan stratosphere, with a no-hassle one-design boat and an organized and builder-supported regatta circuit.

The design itself is all Juan Kouyoumdjian: It is unique, technical and loves to sail on its rail. From the chines to the reverse sheer and deck chamfer, it all adds up to a fast and forgiving platform. “The whole package is about reducing drag and windage and saving material and weight,” says Dobbs Davis, an ORC measurer with a keen eye to the behaviors of modern hulls.

Good hull design is nothing without a legitimate rig and sail package, however, and here Ingham was having fun with the boat’s easy-to-play sail controls—especially the hydraulic mast ram and the structured luff (the boat had a North Sails quiver for our test sail) for mast control in the absence of a backstay.

“It’s interesting because it’s got a ram that you can adjust throughout the race, but with the cunningham and the structured luff, you’re bending the mast with compression,” Ingham says. “The cunningham is led back to the main trimmer, just below the mainsheet block, and when you pull that on, mast bend is noticeable. It’s really sophisticated in that you have multiple ways to quickly depower, between the rig itself and the structured luff.”

Prepreg vinlyester construction gives the boat impressive stiffness and a solid feel underfoot, Davis says, and that was noticeable during their session in 10 to 15 knots and flat water. “When you get on a this boat, it is a completely different feeling. It really is. Things are tight as a drum and when we pulled the controls on hard, nothing flexed. It’s incredibly solid.”

Michetti, a world champion of a bunch of grand-prix one-design classes, has the experience to ensure the boat’s ergonomics were right. Access to lines, the layouts, and the overall crewing ergonomics were strong selling points for judge Monica Morgan.

“It was really comfortable,” she says, “the cockpit had plenty of room, and even on the rail it didn’t feel as if we were all bunched up. Being a smaller person, I could do most things on the boat, and that’s pretty cool. I can see it as being manageable by a novice owner that’s new to racing. And I could see a high-level sailor being able to push its limits. There’s plenty of power in the sails, it’s really responsive, and it’s especially fun downwind.”

At 2,600 pounds, the boat is light, and with an L-shaped keel that draws 6 feet, the ClubSwan 28 can be easily trailered and raced in skinny-water venues. Michetti says an experienced team can have the boat off the trailer, tuned and sailing in four hours or less. And as to professionals, one-design class rules have no limitations aside from an owner-driver restriction and a maximum crew weight of 400 kilograms. The owner, however, can declare a weight of 85 kilograms and be exempt from any crew weigh-in requirements.

There is only one class spinnaker allowed (maximum area is 936 square feet) and only two class jibs. At ClubSwan events, the race committee determines which sail is to be used across the fleet based on the wind strength.

ClubSwan regattas, of which there are plenty in Europe, give owners and crew a unique environment that hints at a modest level of exclusivity. The U.S. plan for the class—as of October 2025—is to launch a series in Pensacola, Florida in the winter and Newport, R.I., in the summer. Success of the endeavor will rest upon Nautor Swan remaining committed to the class stateside. Should that happen, there’s a fun future of high-level class racing for those who seek turnkey racing.

“That is the one cool thing about the ClubSwan concept and this boat. Aside from the M32 catamaran group and the IC37s for New York YC, which is a different sort of thing, nobody has done anything like this in the U.S. for a conventional keelboat class, so this is a new deal,” Davis says. “Federico said they’re very motivated for the U.S. market because they see the potential here as untapped.”

Michetti’s stated price for the boat, in October and the midst of the U.S. tariff uncertainty, was $283,000. The judges agree that while that may seem high initially, it is a reasonable cost to experience the ClubSwan racing sphere. But for this price, they add, there’s a lot that comes with it: a sophisticated carbon build, purposeful high-quality hardware and systems and access to the club. And yes, you can club race it, day sail it and show it off all you want. It is a Swan.

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With the BirdyFish Race resting its dolly on the sands of SkyBeach Resort, we watch as Tampa Bay glasses-off. With our Boat of the Year testing session on weather pause, we head to a beachside thatch hut for a debrief in the shade. Up next is the VX Two, described as a 15-foot ­doublehanded hiking skiff. Without any breeze, we are not rushing to go sailing because this beauty demands whitecaps.

While we wait for the sea breeze to kick in, the VX Two’s new US representative, Ed Furry, soon gives us the low-down. This boat is built by Mackay Boats in New Zealand, which also builds Olympic 470s, 29ers, 49ers and a list of other high-performance class hulls, and as expected, the VX Two is one sharp-looking vessel. The hull itself is identical to Mackay’s VX Evo hull, but the deck is all VX Two, configured for an intermediate doublehanded skiff team.

“It’s a simple boat to sail, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to sail,” Furry says. “It’s easy to sail and race, but it will require a bit more of a technical sailor. For someone coming out of junior sailing, it will be a little sportier—it’s a fast little boat.”    

Simple and slick are the first words that come to mind as Furry tours us through the boat. High-level development and tweaking of the systems by the engineers at Mackay before launching this boat into the world has produced a stunner. It’s as if all the temptations to over-tech and complicate it were ­intentionally avoided. From the transom to the bow and the spliced lines to minimalist hardware, there’s nothing superfluous about it. That’s the sort of obsessiveness to detail that gets them to 209 pounds all-up.

The flip-up rudder has a quick-release skewer, and the daggerboard slots flush into the trunk. To note, the foils are super-high-aspect specimens with razor-sharp edges and pointy tips that will need the tender loving care they deserve.

The mainsheet comes straight off the boom, skiff-style, which really opens up the cockpit and puts the sail load at hand. An experienced forward crew will appreciate floating-jib leads and the smooth-­running halyard purchases at the mast for quick and dynamic mode changes, as well as the curved carbon jib-cleat brackets that don’t have any hard edges. The spinnaker is a single-line launch-and-retrieval ­system for a high-clew kite that’s pulled through a large throat in the foredeck and into a sock on the cockpit floor. The rig is a tapered one-piece carbon extrusion, but future rigs will be two-part, Furry says.

Like the BirdyFish, the VX Two’s simplicity doesn’t require much of a briefing, so 30 minutes later, with diamonds on the bay, Boat of the Year judges Mike Ingham and Erik Shampain kick off their session in a 10-knot afternoon sea breeze. We give full-throttle chase in the RIB as they tear off across Tampa Bay. With the kite lifting the bow and the judges leaning aft, they’re easily pegging double digits on the boat’s Vakaros unit.

“We hit 13.7, and it was really easy to get there,” Shampain says. “And it isn’t hairy at all when you do get there. The kite is a small skiff design with a narrow clew box, like on the 49er and 29er, so it’s really easy to trim and pull around the zippered jib luff through jibes. Two big pulls on the sheet, and it’s through.”

What impresses Ingham the most is the feel on the helm. “It’s almost crazy-responsive both upwind and downwind,” he says. “And the boat is also really responsive to crew-weight movements. It’s a boat where you’re going to be really active and moving a lot, but it also has a decent amount of stability. Yes, it’s a skiff, but it feels much more like a big dinghy.”

“It’s super-efficient” is Shampain’s immediate assessment after sailing. “Everything runs so smoothly; there’s no friction anywhere. The sails are perfect, with a nice-looking main and the battens on the jib. At first, I thought the kite would be too small and flat, but it was really good for planing.”

What stands out most about the VX Two for Shampain, however, is the build quality and detailing. “It’s beautifully finished—elegant with the joins and the rounded corners—and the ergonomics were great. In the tacks, when I was ­forward, I wasn’t stumbling on the kite bag, and it was easy to get straight to the hiking strap.”

For Ingham, the angled contours of the cockpit tanks are comfortable for hiking. “It fits my body well, the straps are in the right place, and there aren’t any pressure points on the back of my legs.”

Both judges agree that the boat delivers next-level skiff-style dinghy sailing, so it will require some getting used to, but it’s the sort of boat you’ll be frothing to rig when the breeze is on. “You will get wet, but this boat will be forgiving at high speeds,” Shampain says.

In the event of a capsize, righting lines run beneath rails, but for our capsize test, Shampain, at only 145 pounds, went straight to the daggerboard and righted the boat himself, scooping me (at 185 pounds dry) in it, holding on to the hiking strap. Easy.The boat, as sailed, was priced at $26,000, which the judges find surprising given the quality of the boat and its performance. It is perhaps the price—the dollar-for-speed—that has Shampain pondering which of the fantastic four (J/7, Storm 18, BirdyFish Race, and VX Two tested in St. Petersburg) is most worthy of a Boat of the Year title. We’ll find out this fall; we have many more boats to consider. For now, it’s in the running, but all four delivered excellence.

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The first nominee on the list for Sailing World’s Boat of the Year judging team in February is the J/7, which J Boats unveiled in the dead of Rhode Island’s winter in December 2024, ice on deck and all. Here in St. Petersburg, basking in its slip at the SkyBeach Resort, it looks better already. On board to brief us is Chris Tait, a dealer from the Northeast who’s handling the J/7’s Florida roadshow. He’s sold a lot of J Boats over the years, but this one, he tells us, has everyone’s attention. Small is the new big.

“This boat really fills a void in the marketplace for a small keelboat daysailer,” Tait says. “It’s a simple family boat, a first-time boat, a club boat, a program boat. It ticks a lot of boxes.”

It’s amazing how many people the boat’s cockpit swallows and still sails impeccably, he adds, drawing our attention to 8 feet of comfortable seating. There are even seats aft of the ­end-boom mainsheet bridle. The J/7 is indeed spacious, and the ­coamings are angled outboard, which makes them comfortable when sitting inboard or on the rail for a better view. 

“You want to hike so bad, but you don’t have to,” Tait says. “We’re all used to ­hiking on a boat, but this is just as comfortable sitting back, chilling out, and enjoying the sail.”
US yacht clubs are increasingly turning to club-owned fleets to attract and retain members; the J/7, Tait says, encompasses all of what they are asking for: a simple and durable boat with low offseason maintenance. Belowdecks on the J/7 is glossy white gelcoat, a 6-foot V-berth, and 5-foot settees. There’s no battery, electronics or facilities. There’s not a single piece of wood on the boat or a ­redundant piece of hardware.

For the jib, 2-to-1 sheets lead to Harken SnubAir winches. The mainsheet cascades to a swivel cleat on a post, and the Dyneema backstay splits and snap-shackles to the cockpit walls. The rig is a deck-stepped (hinged) aluminum spar on a compression post. There’s a ring on the mast for symmetric sailing and an optional bolt-on prod for an asymmetric spinnaker. There are no downwind sails for our demo, but the judges sure wish they were.

Keeping it simple also keeps the price down for club-flee­­­t purchases, and to that end, we’re told that the China-built and US-assembled base-boat price is just shy of $55,000, excluding sails. The full sail-away package brings it to $70,000 with a trailer (there’s a single lift point for hoists, and the boat weighs 2,300 pounds).

Shallow draft was high on the priority list for designer Al Johnstone, and the result is a 3.8-foot trapezoidal-shaped bulb keel, ideal for skinny coastal waters and inland freshwater playgrounds. We’re happy to have it when sailing through Tampa Bay’s shifty shoals.

With the boat brief complete, the judges exit the marina under mainsail and into a 10-knot northerly that lays the water board flat.

BOTY judges Erik Shampain and Mike Ingham promptly have it gliding upwind, wishing they had another J/7 to line up against. It’s in their nature to tweak, so they fidget with leads and controls and their weight placement, and soon settle in and relax. There’s not much they can do but sit back and enjoy the sail. That is the point.

Before turning downwind, Ingham spins the boat through a mock 720 penalty turn, and the boat circles its length. The boat’s straight and deep ­rudder blade glides it through the turns, even without any kinetic assist, confirming that it would be a responsive boat for ­club-level team- and match-racing skirmishes.

Once they turn downwind, Shampain instinctively moves forward and crouches at the shrouds to wing the jib, wishing instead he had a spinnaker sheet in hand. Still, the boat tracks nicely dead-downwind with a slight weather heel, responding to subtle weight movements.

“I really like the idea of a short sprit and a furling ­spinnaker,” Shampain says with a grin after a few minutes of fighting the jib clew. “Or a jib boom. But, ­definitely, a spinnaker is a must.”

Ingham, who has spent more time on the helm, notes after sailing that the boat “has really nice stability and steers really well, even from a dead-stop. There’s always flow on the rudder, so I can see how this would be a really fun club racing boat. It’s pretty darn simple.”

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The Storm 18, which its creators categorized as a daysailer when entering this new US-built small craft into Sailing World’s 2026 Boat of the Year competition, is so much more. The design brief is for a versatile craft for clubs and hyperactive ­sailing centers that need a boat for teaching first, racing second, and for the adults and the youth squads expanding into team and match racing.

The backstory on the Storm 18 is a long one, but it takes root in the Northeast, where a number of Long Island Sound-based yacht clubs have been pushing their vintage Ideal 18s well past expiration dates. Storm Marine, a new company formed to bring this boat to market, identified a demand for a lower-­cost US-built boat for clubs and community sailing programs. A collective of industry veterans conceptualized the boat, produced a prototype, and for the better part of a year, put it into the hands of opinionated sailors and program directors. What was presented to the judges in St. Petersburg in February was close to final, but there was more tweaking to come. By early spring, they said, they would be into production with the real deal.

The 1,300-pounder is expected to “deliver an exceptional sailing experience,” Storm Marine’s Bill Crane says, “a stable and safe platform that is versatile enough to be used by learn-to-sail participants, junior sailors, family racing, interclub racing (fleet racing, team racing, and match racing) and ­institutional staff.”

That’s a lot of boxes to check, but after a few hours of sailing, both BOTY judges, Mike Ingham and Erik Shampain agree that they’ve somehow managed to tick them all.

“They found their niche,” Ingham says. “It’s not flashy, but they got it right for what they want to do with it, which is a lot.”

As the boat skews heavily to institutional usage, it is essentially overbuilt, Crane says. “Whereas a lot of boats have stringers and bulkheads, this boat has two main pieces. With just two transverse frames, the vacuum-bagged hull and deck are flat-bonded along the rail, which is protected with a rub rail.”

One interesting approach used by the builder, Fulcrum Speedworks, is gluing all fittings to the laminate. No holes required: Every piece of hardware is mounted to glued G-Tech plates with stainless-steel threaded inserts. This approach has also allowed them to experiment with hardware locations and refine the boat’s ergonomics during its development, and there is a lot of hardware to handle the asymmetric- and symmetric-­spinnaker setups. For the asymmetric, there’s a retractable pole in a foredeck trough, and the spinnaker pole is loosely stowed inside stainless-­steel brackets on the boom.

The aluminum boom is a ­substantial rectangular section and quite a head-knocker (I can attest). According to Crane, the prototype’s boom had already been raised 40 mm from its original location, and will be raised another 120 mm. The boom will also be lengthened 100 mm to offset the change. Another change to the final version includes ditching the heavy and expensive aluminum rudder head. They will instead slot the tiller directly into the top of the rudder. What was, for our test, a kick-up rudder will be fixed.

Sailing it doublehanded in 10 knots and flat water, Ingham’s assessment is that “it’s a ­pleasure to drive. It’s very ­sensitive to body weight and sail trim.”

Shampain agrees, adding: “It does have a nice balance and a sportboat sort of feeling, but there’s some weight to it that gets it through the chop. It’s really responsive to crew weight and heel, but it did feel like a heavier boat at times when it got really light.”

Crane is OK with the boat being overbuilt. He likes the ­slogan: “It’s a fast slow boat.”

Inexperienced sailors should feel safe, he says, and experienced sailors will have fun with it. It is, indeed, stable at the dock and under sail, the judges note. They tried to force a capsize, but the fin keel and 245 kilograms of ballast weren’t having it.

Having been left with a ­positive ­lasting impression, both Ingham and Shampain return to shore pleased with the responsiveness of the spade rudder and the overall comfort of the boat. Four adults max would be about right, but it would be an easy singlehander too.

“It was a real pleasure to drive,” Shampain says. “And all the right systems and sail controls are there in the right place to teach everything—vang, outhaul, cunningham and traveler. I like that they didn’t oversimplify the boat; it’s just techie enough, but with all the seating and the soft deck [SeaDek panels], it would be a great little boat for harbor sailing.”

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