Yachts by the pound

Peter Poland weighs up the pride and joy of owning a steady and substantial motor sailer

- Peter Poland

Over a career spent as a boatbuilder and latterly as a freelance journalist, I have noticed that some owners of sportier yachts tend to trade up to bigger or more modern models on a fairly regular basis. And this was great for business, of course, when I was building and selling sportier yachts. However, owners of heavier and older models – many termed as motor sailers – tend to stick with what they’ve got for a long time. Indeed, often forever.

Part of this phenomenon could be down to fashion. Each year volume-production performance cruisers get wider, sprout chines and Skegness twin rudders, pack in more accommodation, have shorter chord keels and move towards flatter underwater shapes.

On the other hand heavier yachts with longer keels, protected helm positions, moderate beam and sea-kindly hull shapes tend to stay the way they always were. What’s more, very few are now built. So there’s scant chance of trading up to a new boat of this type even if you want to.

Much of this is down to price. Such yachts are not suited to speedy series production. They take longer to build so cost more. And of course weight comes into the equation.

My Dutch distributor once stuck a poster on one of his heavier cruisers (not our Hunter) at the HISWA boat show. Dutch visitors studied this... then burst out laughing. So I asked him to explain what his poster said. He replied “It helps clients understand the facts of life. It says ‘yachts

Three British motor sailers are like potatoes. The more they weigh, the more they cost’.”

And he’s right.