HANSE 460

THIS FIRST OF A NEW RANGE OF HANSES, FROM NEW DESIGNERS, IS ALREADY A BIG HIT, WITH OVER 200 SOLD AND A EUROPEAN YACHT OF THE YEAR WIN TO ITS NAME. DAVID HARDING REPORTS

For some of us, sailing has always been about the functional and fundamental. We enjoy sailing for sailing's sake. But today people want so much more from a boat and, in many respects, today's yachts undoubtedly offer a lot more.

What you might loosely call the mainstream European builders of family cruising yachts have been following this path for some time, making each generation of designs bigger and plusher than the last. For Hanse in particular, it has been a rapid evolution from the small, basic and functional to the large and luxurious.

This latest Hanse is the first to be designed by BerretRacoupeau. After the earliest models, which used the moulds of discontinued, slim-hulled Scandinavian designs, every Hanse has been designed by Judel/Vrolijk in what became one of boatbuilding's most enduring and successful partnerships.

In line with modern trends, each new wave of Hanses has been higher, wider and more voluminous than the last. Founder Michael Schmidt never lost sight of the performance side, however. For all their growing girths and towering topsides, Hanse has always made boats that sail - competitively-priced, high-volume cruisers but with easy handling (self-tacking jibs were used from the early days) and better performance than many of the alternatives.

The 460 is different. Very different. The first model from a new alliance with the French designers, it promptly won the European Yacht of the Year Family Cruiser category for 2022. A 510 version now follows.

The big question was whether Hanse had managed to do something different while retaining the qualities that its owners had traditionally sought.