SAIL’s 2017 Best Boats Awards

SAIL Magazine has announced the winners of SAIL’s 2017 Best Boats Awards. After a flurry of radical innovations in recent years, SAIL’s executive editor Adam Cort says the Best Boats winners for 2017 might appear a tad less “cutting-edge” than their predecessors. However, anyone who thinks the boatbuilders and naval architects of the world are losing their edge couldn’t be more wrong.

The latest generation of production boats may not offer anything as radically different as full-foiling performance was a couple of years ago, but it is still breaking new ground: whether it be in the form of a cutting-edge electrical system or a ‘family’ sailboat that provides boatspeeds in the teens.

For those in search of the strange and new, there’s even a beach cat that rows as well as it sails. “Every year we find ourselves wondering what the boatbuilders out there are going to come up with this time around, and every year they more than rise to the occasion,” says Cort. “Congratulations again, not just to this year’s Best Boats winners, but the entire industry.”

This year’s team of Best Boats judges included systems specialist and SAIL contributor Nigel Calder, SAIL’s executive editor Adam Cort, SAIL’s cruising editor Charles J. Doane, veteran boat-reviewer Tom Dove, and SAIL’s charter editor Zuzana Prochazka.

The winners of SAIL’s 2017 Best Boats Awards are as follows:
• Large Monohull 50ft and above: Solaris 50
• Large Multihull 50ft and above: Xquisite X5
• Monohull Cruising Boat 40-50ft: Catalina 425
• Multihull Cruising Boat 40-50ft: Lagoon 42
• Monohull Cruising Boat 30-40ft: Elan E4
• Small Cruiser: Seascape 24
• Performance Boat under 30ft: VX-Evo
• Performance Boat over 30ft: J/112e
• Daysailer: X-Cat
• Systems: Xquisite X5

Source: SAIL Magazine