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10 Best Sailboat Brands (And Why)

Last Updated by

Daniel Wade

December 20, 2023

‍ There's no denying that sailors are certainly a passionate bunch. We’re so passionate about our boats that we always try going for the best sailboats. To make it a lot easier for you, here are the best sailboat brands.

Owning a sailboat is an indulgence that many of us only dream about but very few ever have the privilege of sailing the seas in what they can actually call their own.

While there's nothing wrong with renting a sailboat, the honor of owning one is certain what many sailors dream of.

With a perfectly crafted sailboat as company, gliding through the water, waves, and wind brings some sort of unmatched comfort and peace.

Add this to the fact that sailing takes you far away from the daily hustles and bustles that we've become accustomed to in our daily lives and you'll see why the life of sailing is very appealing to the masses.

But without a proper sailboat, all this fun and the good life of sailing are thrown out of the window.

Contrary to the widespread opinion, owning a sailboat isn't beyond anyone's reach. It's something that we can all achieve. But before getting into that, it's important to know some of the best sailboat brands.

The best sailboat brands will make your life as a sailor a lot easier and more fun. The best sailboat brands have, for decades if not centuries, mastered the art of woodworking. They've dedicated their skills and immense amount of their time to designing and manufacturing nothing but the best quality of sailboats in the industry.

So if you've been looking for the best sailboat brands from all over the world, you've come to the right place. We'll discuss the best of the best, something that will give you a perfect getaway from your normal life.

Table of contents

‍ Must-Have Features for Your Sailboat

Before highlighting the best sailboat brands, it would be appropriate to jog your mind a little with some of the features that must be available in your sailboat.

Choosing a sailboat can sometimes be a matter of compromises. In other words, it's sometimes sensible to accept that a sailboat cannot have all the features that you desire.

As such, it's all about going with a sailboat that has the features that matter to you most.

For this reason, let's look at the most basic features that can make the difference in both safety and comfort while improving your sailing experience.

A Safe and Comfortable Sailing Cockpit

You'll most definitely be spending a huge amount of time in the cockpit. Whether you're keeping watch, trimming sails , helming, or just enjoying the scenery, there's no better place to do all these than from the cockpit. That being said, a good cockpit should have the following.

• Have a good depth for safety reasons and adequate drainage
• Should give you a quick and easy access to jammers, cleats, and other important parts of the winch system
• Should have a seat or seats that are about 35 cm high, 50 to 55 cm wide to provide ideal support
• The seats should be adjustable to offer maximum comfort and allow you to change your position

GPS Chartplotter

Use a GPS Chartplotter once and your sailing will never be the same without it. It not only allows you to map a course but is also a great way of ensuring that your sailboat exactly follows that course. It also gives you constant updates on ocean conditions, weather conditions , and potential hazards such as deadly currents and sandbars.

A GPS Chartplotter is also an important safety device that can help you in some very critical situations while out there on the water.

For instance, it has a man-overboard button that is essentially meant to allow you to receive coordinates of the exact location should someone fall off your boat.

Electric Winch System

This is an amazing addition to any sailboat. It allows you to sheet a jib even in high and strong winds with a simple press of a button. It also gives you the chance of trimming a mainsail easily while still carry out other essential tasks in the sailboat.

An electric winch system can be of great importance, especially if you're short on crew. This is because it can free up some crew members to carry other important tasks. In other words, it can make duties that would otherwise require more crew members a lot easier.

More importantly, an electric winch system can maintain safety even in the roughest of conditions, thereby preventing you and your crew from getting injured. In essence, an electric winch system will make your sailing a lot safer, less stressful, and more enjoyable.

Reverse Osmosis Watermaker

This is a very valuable accessory, especially if you're going on long sea voyages. You can spend days on end without drinking clean and safe water.

As the name suggests, you can use this accessory to turn seawater into purified drinking water. It uses the reverse osmosis method that's essential not only in removing bacteria and parasites from the water but also in turning the water into purified and safe drinking water.

Even though this device is pricey, it's a great way to mitigate the over-reliance on huge water tanks. All you have to do is to ensure that it's properly maintained and you'll have an endless streak of safe drinking water no matter where you are.

Wide and Clutter-free Deck

While the deck is often an overlooked feature of a sailboat, it can be the difference between a great sailing experience and a stressful one. In essence, the deck of a sailboat should be wide enough and clutter-free.

This is significant as it can enable you to quickly access different parts of your sailboat with hindrance or getting tangled. As you can see, this is particularly important in improving safety and reducing stress.

With that in mind, make sure that the deck is organized in such a way that you can have easy access to sails, masts, and winches.

You should, therefore, avoid sailboats with decks that are designed in such a way that you have to climb on top of the cabin just to access these features. Needless to say, this can be quite unstable and very dangerous especially when conditions are rough.

The Best Sailboat Brands and Why

1. hallberg-rassy.

Hallberg-Rassy is a Swedish yacht maker that's very well-known in the blue water cruising circles for making some of the highest quality and sturdiest sailboats. For many sailors, this is the number one sailboat brand as it offers absolute comfort, utmost safety, and good and easy handling.

This brand is not only synonymous with sturdy construction but you won't worry getting soaking wet while out there on the water. This is because it has a well-protected deck and cockpit, finished with nice woodwork, and has a powerful engine with a big tankage just to ensure that you can go on long voyages.

When designing its sailboats, this brand has made it a norm to add some features that stand out from the rest. For instance, the bowsprit is an integral feature that makes sailing a Hallberg-Rassy quite easy and much enjoyable. This is because it grants easy access to and from the deck. Its electric anchor winches facilitate smooth maneuvering. Even more, its large steering wheels makes it much easier to control the boat even in the roughest of conditions. In essence, this brand has features that provide good control and an extra sense of safety.

Although this brand has evolved over the years, you'll easily recognize it even from a distance. And why is this? A Hallberg-Rassy never goes out of style. This is a unique sailboat brand that has always stayed true to its principles and concept. No matter which part of the world you go, Hallberg-Rassy will remain the undisputed king of blue water cruising.

2. Nautor's Swan

For over 50 years, Nautor's Swan has endlessly raised the sailing levels by designing and manufacturing new sailboat models that not only push the boundaries but also meet that many requirements and demands of sailors across the world. Thanks to its wide range of seaworthy, timeless, elegant, and highly-performing sailboats, the Nautor's Swan remains one of the best if not the best sailboat makers in the world.

Based in Jakobstad, Finland, this brand has severally set the industry standard with its speedy and sleek models such as the Swan 48, Swan 65, Swan 98, Swan 78, and Swan 120. These models have one thing in common: they never compromise on safety. As a brand that puts safety first, it ensures that its models are made of foam-cored glass fiber and reinforced both with carbon-fiber and epoxy. In essence, Nautor's Swan is widely revered for its unmatched seafaring and safety records.

Additionally, Nautor's Swan models are incredibly responsive. You can easily tell this just by the feel of the wheel. This brand has models that will gracefully slice through the biggest of waves with ease. That's not all; the interior of these models that are very comfortable even when the going gets tough. This is, without a doubt, a brand that strives to create self-contained worlds with each model.

3. Beneteau

This is perhaps the most selling sailboat brand in the world. For over a century now, this brand has based its models in a combination of simplicity and performance. This is a brand that will serve you just right across all latitudes and in all circumstances. Whether you prefer the Oceanis Yacht 62 or the Figaro Beneteau 3, this brand will never let you down on all fronts.

This brand revolves around a simple concept of creating a link around the world. From the deck space to its design and light, this brand does everything possible not just to uniformly transform life at sea but also to open doors to new horizons in a very luxurious yet practical way. Its models are designed with clear deck plans, stable hulls, simplified maneuvering and interior materials and equipment that can be easily personalized.

Whether you're looking for a racing sailboat or something that's designed to explore and enjoy the world in the company of friends and family, Beneteau is a true combination of sensations and simplicity. This is a brand that brings to the seas fun, simplicity, smartness, toughness, safety, intuitiveness, as well as dazzling reinvention.

4. Amel Yachts

Based on the ethos of designing and manufacturing comfortable, robust, and easy-to-handle boats, this French brand has, for over five decades, offered sailors and other sailing enthusiasts the perfect opportunity to explore the seas with the utmost quality, comfort, and more importantly, safety.

Using 100% French know-how, this brand has brought to the sailing world some of the best boats such as the Santorini, the Mango, the Super Maramu, and the Maramu. We would be doing this brand total injustice if we said that they're distinctive. Truth be told, there's nothing comparable to an Amel model. Well Amel was and still is, the ultimate standard by which other sailboat models are measured.

From items such as electric winches and furling, to generators, Watermaker , and washing machine down to the simplest of items such as towels. Spare filters, bathrobes, deck brush, and a boat safe, the Amel is in reality with what the real life of a sailor is and should be.

Although some may say that Amel still has room for improvement in terms of specifications and personalization, it cannot be denied that the Amel is a serious brand that designs and manufactures complete boats. With this brand, you'll be guaranteed of a higher degree of reliability, safety, and an edge of fun while out there on the water.

5. Hinckley Yachts

Based in Maine, United States, Hinckley Yachts is a brand that has been building robust, luxury, and safe sailboats for more than 90 years now. In its sailboat class, you'll find several sailboats that have classic shapes, inner strength, dramatic lines, and features that are absolutely essential in dealing with the challenges of the North Atlantic.

This brand has been successful in integrating impeccable craftsmanship with new technologies to ensure that their models always stand out while articulating advanced sailing practices, timeless aesthetic, robust construction, and the utmost safety. Whether you choose the Bermuda 50, the Sou'wester 53 or any model for that matter, you'll never be short of advanced performance based on the best design and technology.

In terms of features, this brand provides sailboat models with modern performance hulls. These hulls are constructed with inner layers of carbon, outer layers of Kevlar, and are aligned with computer-designed load paths. Every feature is designed without compromising comfort.

To this end, this brand offers you a perfect combination of both fun and sail. This brand offers more than just sailing. Instead, it offers a unique sailing experience that's combined with the pure joys of sailing in the blue waters with an ease of ownership and maneuverability.

6. Oyster Yachts

If you've been looking for luxury more than anything else, Oyster Yachts provides you with numerous solutions. This British brand is widely known for manufacturing a wide range of luxury cruising sailing yachts. Its sailboats are among the finest in the world and are immensely capable of taking you to some of the far-flung places in the world without having to worry about high winds and hellish waves.

Whether you choose the iconic Oyster 565 or the immense Oyster 595 you never fall short of experiencing the new world like never before. These are models that will enable you to own your adventure, choose your destination, set your courses, pick your anchorage, and stay safe at all times. If you want to hold the wheel and pull the sail while feeling the tang of salt spray on your face, Oyster Yachts is the way to go.

This is, unquestionably, a brand that's meant for you if you want to explore the seas in comfort, luxury and utmost safety. From craftsmanship, sailboat design, to hull, deck, and keel configurations, everything is designed to allow you to circumnavigate the world in comfort, elegance, and style.

7. Tartan Yachts

Based in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, there's arguably no better to begin your sailing adventures than with a sailboat designed and manufactured by Tartan Yachts. With several award-winning designs and construction, this brand is widely known for providing easy handling, great performance, and an ultimately stable platform.

This brand always strives to deliver a unique and the best possible experience to every sailor. As a brand, Tartan fully understands that every sailor has his/her unique sailing needs. As such every component of their models is designed with engineering levels that guarantee optimum performance, excellent on-deck visibility, and luxurious interior.

From the Tartan 5300, the Tartan 4300, the Tartan 345 to the New 365 and the Fantail, this brand makes it a priority to ensure that its models are among the strongest, lightest, and more importantly, the safest in the sailing industry. In essence, this brand can be ideal if you appreciate performance. It has rewarding sailing features both in narrow water lines and wider passages. Add this to its easy handling and you'll have a top-notch performer in virtually every condition.

8. Catalina Yachts

As one of the most popular boat manufacturers in the world, this American brand is widely revered for building the sturdiest boats that can hold up perfectly well in real-world conditions. These are generally family-oriented boats that are intelligently designed to ensure that your entire family can have fun out there on the water.

Some of the models include the cruiser series such as the Catalina 315, the Catalina 385, the Catalina 425 while the sport series include the Catalina 12.5 Expo, the Catalina 16.5, and the Catalina 14.2 Expo. As the current winner of the "Boat of the Year" Cruising World, you'll rarely go wrong with a Catalina model.

It offers a wide range of sailboat sizes that suits your lifestyle. This brand makes it a priority to ensure that all their models are not only safe but offer the best ownership and sailing experience. If anything, this brand is widely known to have one of the most excellent resale values in the sailing industry.

9. Island Packet Yachts

From the IP 525, the IP 439 to the IP 379, the Island Packet Yachts is a brand that encourages its customers not to keep the world waiting. This brand is meant for sailors who want to explore the world in utmost comfort and safety.

The first thing you'll notice in an IP sailboat is its large aft deck. This is not only perfect for sunbathing but can also serve you well if you want an impromptu dinner with friends and family while out there on the water. The living space is also large enough to carry most of your belongings, which is an added advantage especially if you've been planning to spend longer periods in the seas.

With modern evolution and refinement, as well as proven features, this brand is known to offer sailors maximum comfort, luxury, and safety. You'll have better access to the cockpit, have enough space, and are excellently designed to provide superior seafaring and the best features to enable you to spend extended periods when cruising.

10. Sparkman & Stephens

For more than 90 years, Sparkman & Stephens has been at the forefront of the belief that sailboat excellence goes beyond hull lines and deck plans. Instead, this brand believes in excellent naval architecture, innovation, sophistication, and beauty. This is a brand that has laid the foundation of sailboat as a sport not just in America but all over the world.

These models have graced the world for decades and bring immense pleasure to their owners in terms of innovation, performance, and excellence. Though rooted in tradition, the brand has pushed sophistication, technology, and sailing experience to a whole new level. You'll be a proud owner of the Sparkman & Stephens model.

There you have it; these are the best sailboat brands in the world. Although there are several other sailboat brands to choose from, the-above described brands stand shoulder above others in terms of quality, safety, performances and luxury.

Hopefully, you're at a much better place when it comes to choosing a sailboat that suits your lifestyle, needs, and budget .

Happy sailing!

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I've personally had thousands of questions about sailing and sailboats over the years. As I learn and experience sailing, and the community, I share the answers that work and make sense to me, here on Life of Sailing.

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A Comprehensive List of the United States Sailboat Manufacturers of the last 100 Years!

Published by sail on march 18, 2023 march 18, 2023.

Here are some of the most notable United States sailboat manufacturers of the past 100 years, along with a brief description of each:

Catalina Yachts –

Founded in 1970, Catalina Yachts is one of the largest sailboat manufacturers in the United States. Their boats range from 12 to 50 feet in length and are popular among both recreational sailors and serious cruisers.

Hunter Marine –

Hunter Marine was founded in 1973 and has built a reputation for producing high-quality sailboats that are both comfortable and seaworthy. Their boats range from 15 to 50 feet in length and are popular among cruisers.

Beneteau USA –

Beneteau is a French boat manufacturer with a strong presence in the United States. They produce a wide range of sailboats, from small day-sailers to large ocean-going cruisers.

J/Boats –

J/Boats is a racing-oriented sailboat manufacturer that was founded in 1977. Their boats are known for their speed and performance, and are popular among both amateur and professional sailors.

Pearson Yachts –

Pearson Yachts was founded in 1957 and produced a range of popular sailboats, including the Pearson Triton and Pearson 30. They went out of business in 1991, but many of their boats are still sailing today.

Tartan Yachts –

Tartan Yachts has been producing high-quality sailboats since 1960. Their boats are known for their classic design and seaworthiness, and are popular among both cruising sailors and racing enthusiasts.

Island Packet Yachts –

Island Packet Yachts was founded in 1979 and has built a reputation for producing high-quality cruising sailboats that are comfortable and seaworthy. Their boats range from 26 to 52 feet in length.

O’Day Yachts –

O’Day Yachts was founded in 1958 and produced a wide range of sailboats, from small day-sailers to large cruising boats. They went out of business in 1989, but many of their boats are still sailing today.

Cape Dory Yachts –

Cape Dory Yachts was founded in 1963 and produced a range of popular cruising sailboats, including the Cape Dory 25, Cape Dory 30, and Cape Dory 36. They went out of business in 1991, but many of their boats are still sailing today.

C&C Yachts –

C&C Yachts was founded in 1969 and produced a range of high-performance sailboats, including the C&C 35, C&C 41, and C&C 44. They went out of business in 2003, but many of their boats are still sailing today.

Here are additional United States sailboat manufacturers from the past 100 years:

Bristol yachts –.

Bristol Yachts was founded in 1966 and built high-quality cruising sailboats, including the Bristol 32, Bristol 35.5, and Bristol 41.1. The company went out of business in 1997.

Hinckley Yachts –

Hinckley Yachts was founded in 1928 and is known for its high-quality, custom-built sailing yachts, including the Hinckley Bermuda 40, Hinckley Sou’wester 51, and Hinckley Picnic Boat. The company continues to produce boats today.

Sabre Yachts –

Sabre Yachts was founded in 1970 and produces a range of high-quality sailing yachts, including the Sabre 34, Sabre 42, and Sabre 48. The company continues to produce boats today.

Ericson Yachts –

Ericson Yachts was founded in 1963 and produced a range of popular sailboats, including the Ericson 27, Ericson 35, and Ericson 38. The company went out of business in 1990, but many of their boats are still sailing today.

Cal Yachts –

Cal Yachts was founded in 1956 and produced a range of popular sailboats, including the Cal 25, Cal 40, and Cal 48. The company went out of business in 1989, but many of their boats are still sailing today.

Columbia Yachts –

Columbia Yachts was founded in 1958 and produced a range of popular sailboats, including the Columbia 22, Columbia 34, and Columbia 50. The company went out of business in 1986, but many of their boats are still sailing today.

Tartan C&C –

Tartan C&C was formed in 2003 when the Tartan and C&C brands were merged. They produce a range of high-performance cruising sailboats, including the Tartan 3700, Tartan 4300, and Tartan 4700.

Pacific Seacraft –

Pacific Seacraft was founded in 1976 and produced a range of high-quality cruising sailboats, including the Pacific Seacraft 34, Pacific Seacraft 37, and Pacific Seacraft 44. The company went out of business in 2018.

Islander Yachts –

Islander Yachts was founded in 1956 and produced a range of popular sailboats, including the Islander 28, Islander 36, and Islander 40. The company went out of business in 1987, but many of their boats are still sailing today.

Cheoy Lee Yachts –

Cheoy Lee Yachts was founded in 1870 and produced a wide range of boats, including sailboats. They are known for their high-quality craftsmanship and innovative design. The company continues to produce boats today.

Island Packet Yachts was founded in 1979 and is known for producing high-quality cruising sailboats, including the Island Packet 31, Island Packet 38, and Island Packet 420. The company continues to produce boats today.

J Boats –

J Boats was founded in 1977 and produces a range of high-performance racing sailboats, including the J/22, J/24, and J/111. The company continues to produce boats today.

Morris Yachts –

Morris Yachts was founded in 1972 and is known for producing high-quality custom-built sailboats, including the Morris M36, Morris M42, and Morris M52. The company continues to produce boats today.

Shannon Yachts –

Shannon Yachts was founded in 1975 and produces a range of high-quality cruising sailboats, including the Shannon 28, Shannon 38, and Shannon 53. The company continues to produce boats today.

Swan Yachts –

Swan Yachts was founded in 1966 and produces a range of high-end racing and cruising sailboats, including the Swan 45, Swan 60, and Swan 115. The company continues to produce boats today.

Tayana Yachts –

Tayana Yachts was founded in 1973 and produces a range of high-quality cruising sailboats, including the Tayana 37, Tayana 42, and Tayana 52. The company continues to produce boats today.

TPI Composites –

TPI Composites was founded in 1968 and is known for producing high-performance racing sailboats, including the J/22, J/24, and J/105. The company also produces components for wind turbines and other industries.

Vanguard Sailboats –

Vanguard Sailboats was founded in 1964 and produces a range of sailboats, including the Laser, Sunfish, and Vanguard 15. The company also produces kayaks and other watercraft.

Westerly Marine –

Westerly Marine was founded in 1956 and produced a range of popular sailboats, including the Westerly Centaur, Westerly Renown, and Westerly Oceanranger. The company went out of business in 2000, but many of their boats are still sailing today.

W.D. Schock Corporation –

W.D. Schock Corporation was founded in 1946 and produces a range of sailboats, including the Santana 20, Schock 35, and Harbor 20. The company continues to produce boats today.

O’Day Corporation –

O’Day Corporation was founded in 1958 and produced a range of popular sailboats, including the O’Day 22, O’Day 27, and O’Day 40. The company went out of business in 1989.

Cal Boats –

Cal Boats was founded in 1957 and produced a range of popular sailboats, including the Cal 20, Cal 25, and Cal 40. The company went out of business in 1989.

Pearson Yachts was founded in 1959 and produced a range of popular sailboats, including the Pearson Triton, Pearson Ensign, and Pearson 30. The company went out of business in 1991.

Columbia Yachts was founded in 1958 and produced a range of popular sailboats, including the Columbia 26, Columbia 29, and Columbia 45. The company went out of business in 1987.

Tartan Yachts was founded in 1960 and produced a range of high-quality cruising sailboats, including the Tartan 27, Tartan 37, and Tartan 4400. The company continues to produce boats today.

Hinckley Yachts was founded in 1928 and is known for producing high-quality custom-built sailboats, including the Hinckley Bermuda 40, Hinckley Sou’wester 42, and Hinckley Talaria 55. The company continues to produce boats today.

Wauquiez Yachts –

Wauquiez Yachts was founded in 1965 and produced a range of high-end cruising sailboats, including the Wauquiez Centurion 32, Wauquiez Pretorien 35, and Wauquiez Pilot Saloon 48. The company went out of business in 2020.

Hunter Marine was founded in 1973 and produced a range of popular cruising sailboats, including the Hunter 25, Hunter 33, and Hunter 45. The company went out of business in 2012.

Catalina Yachts was founded in 1969 and produces a range of popular cruising sailboats, including the Catalina 22, Catalina 36, and Catalina 445. The company continues to produce boats today.

Com-Pac Yachts –

Com-Pac Yachts was founded in 1974 and produces a range of compact cruising sailboats, including the Com-Pac 16, Com-Pac Horizon Cat, and Com-Pac Eclipse. The company continues to produce boats today.

Precision Boat Works –

Precision Boat Works was founded in 1979 and produces a range of small sailboats, including the Precision 15, Precision 18, and Precision 23. The company continues to produce boats today.

Ericson Yachts was founded in 1963 and produced a range of popular cruising sailboats, including the Ericson 29, Ericson 35, and Ericson 38. The company went out of business in 1990.

Newport Boats –

Newport Boats was founded in 1945 and produced a range of popular cruising sailboats, including the Newport 30, Newport 41, and Newport 46. The company went out of business in the 1990s.

Bristol Yachts was founded in 1966 and produced a range of high-quality cruising sailboats, including the Bristol 27, Bristol 32, and Bristol 45.5. The company went out of business in 1997.

Allied Boat Company –

Allied Boat Company was founded in 1962 and produced a range of sturdy, ocean-going sailboats, including the Allied Seawind, Allied Luders 33, and Allied Princess. The company went out of business in the 1980s.

C&C Yachts was founded in 1969 and produced a range of high-performance racing sailboats, including the C&C 27, C&C 30, and C&C 44. The company went out of business in 2008.

Columbia Yachts (Modern) –

Columbia Yachts (Modern) was founded in 2007 and produces a range of modern cruising sailboats, including the Columbia 32, Columbia 45, and Columbia 50. The company continues to produce boats today.

For a complete picture, please use our free searchable database here!

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• Sailboat Guide

Philip Rhodes

Philip L. Rhodes is one of the best known American boat designers of the 20th century. His career spanned more than 50 years. Rhodes had worked at a number of firms before joining Cox & Stevens, Inc., New York City in 1934. By 1947 this had become Philip L. Rhodes, Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. Rhodes and his firm were pioneers in the development of fiberglass construction methods. The Bounty II for Coleman Plastics in 1956 became one of the earliest yachts built of fiberglass, and established the viability of the new material for larger production boats. By the 1950’s, Philip Rhodes spent most of his time as a manager of the firm. For many years, James McCurdy served as head of the Yacht Design Section. The actual designs of boats followed certain formula and guidelines Rhodes had developed earlier. Much of the later basic design work was done by his son Philip H. (“Bodie”) Rhodes. Detailed layouts and drawings were done by Al Mason, Charles Jannace, and Dick Davis. Other designers worked on motor yachts, and commercial and military boats. In addition, Rhodes’ other son Daniel Rhodes did brokerage work in the office. Philip Rhodes retired in 1970. Jim McCurdy and his son Bodie Rhodes had created their own yacht design company (McCurdy and Rhodes) in 1968. Most of the Rhodes material is archived at the Daniel S. Gregory Ships Plans Library, (Philip L. Rhodes Collection) Mystic Seaport Museum. Listed here are some of the better known, ‘series built’ designs.

60 Sailboats designed by Philip Rhodes

Rhodes 19 CB

Rhodes Bantam

Petrel 12 (Rhodes)

Rhodes 22 continental.

Pearson Vanguard 33

O'Day Tempest 23

Cheoy lee offshore 40.

Swiftsure 33 (Rhodes)

Chesapeake 32

O'Day Outlaw 26

Pearson Rhodes 41

Rhodes reliant 41.

Annapolis 30 (Rhodes)

Traveller 32

Evergreen (Rhodes)

Cabrillo 32.

Week-Ender (Rhodes)

Grumman Dinghy

Robin (Rhodes)

Lake one-design (rhodes), northern 25, seafarer 36c sloop.

Rhodes Idler

Pearson rhodes 41 yawl.

Whistler Class (Rhodes)

Dater (Rhodes)

Mariner 19 CB

Little Sister (Rhodes)

Hurricane 19

Marlin 18 (Rhodes)

Temptress 32

Mariner 19 fk.

Kingfisher III

Edgartown Rover

Seafarer 38 Ketch

Seafarer rhodes 38.

Seafarer 38C

Seafarer 36C

Rhodes Ranger 29

Seafarer bahama 35 ms.

Seafarer 38C KR

Seafarer Meridian 25

Bounty (Rhodes)

Arrowhead (rhodes).

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America’s 10 Best Yacht Builders

In America, the yachting industry might not be as established. Yet, today, America’s best luxury yacht builders continue to put out award-winning and state-of-the-art designs. Who are America’s best yacht builders?

From Christensen to Trinity, we countdown the best yacht builders in America and highlight what makes each shipyard unique. Here are our favorites:

1. Christensen

Christensen is one of the most established yacht builders in the U.S., and the company is known for its completely custom yachts. Each yacht the company produces is designed according to owner specifications.

Known for its classic hull design, and upscale finishes, Christensen produces some of the most luxurious superyachts in the U.S. That’s thanks in part to the builder’s in-house design team. Many other builders outsource design. Plus, the builder is known for its exquisite interiors, featuring spacious layouts and the finest finishes. Christensen also regularly wins innovation awards for their efficient and powerful displacement systems and state-of-the-art stabilization.

2. Westport

Since 1964, Westport has been a leader in yacht design and manufacturing in the U.S. And its earned a reputation for developing sporty, classically-styled superyachts.

That wasn’t always the case. Originally, Westport designed and built commercial fishing vessels, but today, Westport focuses exclusively on luxury motor yachts, including 34-, 38-, 40- and 50-meter yachts. Westport’s raised pilothouse and tri-deck yachts feature classic nautical hulls with modern touches. The interiors are sleek and comfortable and known for their spacious outdoor deck areas.

3. Derecktor

Derecktor is one of the country’s oldest yacht builders. It was founded on Long Island, NY in 1947, and during its early years, the company produced commercial fishing and passenger vessels. (Even today, Derecktor manufacturers high-speed ferries for cities around the world.)

Derecktor’s output has changed quite a bit in its 70-year history. Today, the company continues to build commercial vessels, but it’s also a top builder of custom motor yachts. Derecktor produces both explorer yachts and motor yachts, and many of its luxury motor yachts feature explorer-inspired designs. Many Derecktor yachts, for example, feature towering superstructures positioned forward. This opens up an abundance of aft-deck space for outdoor dining areas, beach clubs, and even helipads.

In addition to style, Derecktor yachts are renowned for their performance. They might be sizable. But they’re fast, and the ride is stable.

4. Hatteras

Hatteras is a legendary name in American shipbuilding, known for its high-speed and beautiful motor yachts. Initially, the shipyard focused entirely on sportfish yachts – something they’re still known for today. Yet, the company’s line-up of motor yachts offers the best of the best in luxury yachting.

Hatteras offers a full range of superyachts, including the 100 RPH, a stunning 102-foot raised pilothouse motoryacht, and the M90. Hatteras certainly shows its sporty roots in all of its designs; Hatteras exteriors are sleek and streamlined, sharing design details with its sportfish line.

At Trinity , size is the name of the game. The Gulfport-based shipyard produces yachts up to 123 meters (400 feet), including some of the largest luxury yachts ever built in the U.S.

The yachtbuilder has many signatures. For example, classic nautical architecture is one. Trinity produces some of the most inspiring superstructure designs that feature sleek lines and an abundance of glass. When you charter a Trinity yacht, you’ll have plenty of places to relax, as most of their designs incorporate an abundance of deck space. In the past, that’s include beautiful sky lounges and sprawling aft-deck dining/bar areas.

Below deck, Trinity yachts delivers spacious layouts. The yachtbuilder is know for their opulent owner’s suites and staterooms, as well as stunning salons.

6. Broward Marine

Founded by legendary boatbuilder Frank Denison in the 1950s, Broward Marine has been a leader in superyacht design throughout its history. For example, in 1954, Broward launched its first luxury superyacht, ALISA V. At the time, the 96-footer was a behemoth – similar in grandness to today’s megayachts of 150+ feet.

The Alisa paved a path for the company, which shifted its focus exclusively to luxury motoryachts. In the 1980s, for example, Broward was quick to respond to the trend of the superyachts; Broward sold some 80 yachts in the 1980s, an impressive sales feat.

Under new management in the early 2000s, the company continued its focus on stunning megayachts in the 100- to 160-foot range. Broward yachts are grand in scale, with stunning tri-deck and raised pilothouse designs, and they’re also some of the first to feature farmhouse kitchens. Today, the company focuses primarily on refits, but many of their majestic yachts are still available for charter.

7. Hargrave

Hargrave has been producing yachts since the 1950s, and throughout its history, the shipyard has built a reputation for inspiring yacht designs. In fact, the company initially only focused on design. Founder Jack Hargrave, the famed nautical designer, worked closely with other top U.S. yacht builders including Burger and Hatteras, helping to launch numerous brands.

In 1997, the company transitioned from design to designing and building its own luxury yachts. The company quickly made a name for itself. Hargrave has won numerous awards for its sporty tri-decks and sportfish-inspired motoryachts. Hargrave yachts feature contemporary interiors, matched with sleek profiles.

A Horizon yacht has a distinctive look. The company’s yachts have stately exteriors with tons of classic nautical architectural details. Inside, too, Horizon yachts have a lot of character. Most Horizon yachts feature sprawling windows, creating light and airy interior spaces.

Today, the company produces yachts in the 56- to 150-foot range, and their offerings include power catamarans, tri-decks and raised pilothouse motor yachts.

If you’re looking for a power cat, that’s a Horizon specialty. The company’s PC Series features a range of mid-sized power cats up to about 80 feet, with numerous concept yachts in the works. Yet, Horizon does it all. You’ll find Horizon yachts in just about any style, from Fast Displacement yachts (FD Series), to customized tri-decks (CC Series).

The Burger Boat Company is one of the most historic shipbuilders in the U.S. Originally launched in 1863, the company has built more than 500 yachts in its history (more than 250 of which are still in operation). The company was a pioneer in steel yacht building, but today, Burger primary builds aluminum yachts.

Burger produces a range of custom tri-deck motor yachts, ranging from 112- to 214-foot motor yachts. Burger boats have a distinctive look and feel. They have spacious deck areas, like the wrap-around deck on its current 214-foot tri-deck concept, as well as innovative exterior lounge areas.

10. Delta Marine

For more than 50 years, Delta Marine has been producing world-class motor yachts from its headquarters in Seattle. The boatbuilder is known for its sleek exterior designs. Delta Marine yachts feature clean, flowing lines throughout, and the company produces a range of raised pilothouse and tri-deck motor yachts.

Plus, the interiors are completely custom. As such, no two Delta Marine yachts look the same, and the interiors are as unique as their owners. Delta yachts are also well-known for their performance. Many feature performance-minded hulls, and feature state-of-the-art displacement systems.

Plan Your Next Luxury Yacht Charter with Worldwide Boat

Worldwide Boat offers exclusive access to vessels from America’s best luxury yacht builders. Want to hire a Trinity Yacht for your next vacation? We can help.

Plus, our charter brokers are experts on each builder’s specialties. Contact your broker today to learn more about any of our exclusive charter yachts .

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American 18

The American 18 Daysailer is ideal for those who are seeking a spacious and comfortable daysailer which is also designed for speed and performance. Design features include a self bailing cockpit, molded in drink cooler storage areas, three storage compartments, kickup rudder and centerboard, adjustable jib tracks, Harken hardware, and stainless rigging. As with all American Sail products, the American 18 is constructed of hand-laid fiberglass with positive foam floatation for a durable and safe boat. The wide beam and flat bottom planing hull allow for exceptional performance in a light breeze or in a heavy wind. This boat is designed to sail flat with minimal heel. It is Offered as a package with boat, sails, and galvanized trailer. Optional features include roller furling jib, outboard engines or trolling motor, trailering cover, and mooring cover.  Definitely one of the best small sailboats you will find available on the market!

 Contact for Current Pricing

American 18 Parts

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The Top Sailboat Manufacturers (According to Sailors)

Whether you are buying or chartering a boat, or whether you simply want to stay informed, you might be asking the question: who are the top sailboat manufacturers? As is the case with most 'who's the best' questions, the answer isn't simple. So this article takes a stroll among the crowds and asks - “who's your favorite?” .

What are the top sailboat manufacturers?

Groupe beneteau.

This is the ultimate all-star list. Now let’s see why.

First of all - I want to make this lineup relatively short. There are tens of names that bounce around when you ask about favorite manufacturers, and if I had made this a long list, in the end, it wouldn’t represent the famous all-stars that really stand out in the eyes of the people. If you want a longer, less detailed list, check out our article about 50 popular sailboat brands . This time though, we are looking only at the manufacturer champions of the ‘popular choice’ contest.

“This is a loaded question!”, the internet forums yell, “there are thousands of options!”, they cry, enraged, “it’s not about the boat, but about the crew!” they scream. But we don’t give up and continue, determined to find out who you all like the most.

Cover Image : Bavaria Cruiser 55 - Copyright BavariaYachtbau under CC BY-SA 4.0

I know, I know, I hear you. Let’s start with the cons of these boats to quench the thirst of the bloodthirsty critics. Yes, Wallys are very costly, they go all the way up to tens of millions of dollars and so won’t be more than a bedroom poster for most of the readers.

That’s about it when it comes to the negatives, though. The reason they made it on this list despite their price tag is that they are pioneers in many aspects. Visually they are beyond gorgeous, and their price allows for exquisite build quality. The cost of these hi-end racer/cruisers means they aren’t particularly user friendly since most users won’t be able to use them, but just as Rolls Royce belongs on the list of the best cars, Wally belongs on the list of the best boats. They are the brainchild of Luca Bassani, founder and chief of the brand, a stylish Italian man who knows what’s right.

And it is this poster worthiness that gained them popularity among the crowds. A video of a simple Atlantic crossing on a 100 foot Wally has millions of views not necessarily because that particular journey would be exciting, in fact, it is quite an uneventful one, but because it is on a boat that makes the design junkies salivate. The Wally designs alone were the reason these boats made it into Hollywood feature films and series, and if you look at one, you’ll understand why. This is what happens when extravaganza meets good taste and has all the money in the world to realize the idea.

What do they make in terms of sailboats? Superyachts around 100 ft long, each focused on sporty cruising, design, and comfort. They only make custom sailboats, no factory models here. Buying a used one is a safe situation, they hold up even after a long time both in terms of quality, performance as well as design. During their existence, Wally only made a handful of boats, so if you ever stumble upon one, take a selfie. It is like meeting a celebrity.

To level the scales, let’s now jump at the opposite side of the spectrum and have a look at Catalina, the people pleaser. If Wally was the Rolls Royce of the boating world, Catalina is the Ford, making, as they say, “honest, sturdy boats that hold up to real-world conditions, perform well and cost less to maintain”. The mission of this company then seems to be to make boats as practical as possible for the common folk. That means: a practical interior layout, practical handling, and last but definitely not least, a practical price.

And this strategy has worked out well - according to experiences of hundreds of thousands of sailors, Catalinas stand up to their reputation of a boat that’s got your back. It is one of the largest boat producers in the world, with over sixty thousand of its boats sailing the world. Boat manufacturers oftentimes go through quite a lot of rough patches, that turn into bankruptcy for many, it isn’t an easy business to be in, but Catalina has been on a roll for decades. And this success has come with its perks - the business stability allowed for some impressive manufacturing facilities, which helps mass production, which in turn helps drive the price down. So with Catalina, you’ll likely be getting more bang for your buck than from their competition.

They make boats ranging from tiny daysailers all the way to 50-foot seaworthy vessels. What made them the most famous though are their mid-sized cruisers - the staple of the classical American sailing fan. Whether you like it or not, slow and steady is the name of the game when it comes to mainstream, and that is precisely what Catalina understands so well. They don’t take large risks. Their models are long-running with slight tweaks and facelifts, concepts that don’t surprise or insult, but offer stability. This conservativeness has been what some sailors hold against Catalinas, which is easy to understand when looking at many other brands that offer more in terms of fanciness, but this is the Catalina way, and it has worked out splendidly for them.

The long years of experience make for a great manufacturer that makes boats which won’t be the fastest, won’t be the prettiest or the boldest in terms of design or technological innovation, but they will do precisely what they are made to do - their job.

Bavaria is to Europe what Catalina is to the United States. Affordable, practical, nothing special, but does what it’s supposed to. It is the main diet of many Mediterranean sailors. To stay with the cars equivalent, just because I like it so much, if Catalinas were the Ford, Bavarias would be the Volkswagen. They are generally cheaper than Catalinas but don’t see that as an indicator, sailors can’t seem to find one or the other significantly worse or better in build quality. There are of course a few voices rooting for one or the other, but that can be assigned to fandom rather than to actual benefits. The price difference is there partly due to a different manufacturing process, the Bavaria factories are more efficient (they are German after all), and the production is more streamlined, allowing cutting costs without cutting corners.

Reliability, ease of use, and affordability are aspects that lead the design decisions here - which is what makes them so prevalent in charter companies. Even a nonexperienced sailor can get on a Bavaria and operate it with relative ease. But as I’ve been told by the boss of an unnamed charter company, after five or so years, you will start to feel the lower price tag as their reliability starts to go down unless money is put into repairs. With an older Bavaria, you will feel its age more than with other manufacturers. As one owner puts it, they tend to get “quite exhausted”.

So in case you belong among the Bavaria fans and have your eye on a used one, keep the above sentences in mind and when shopping, make sure you understand the ‘health’ of the boat in question. Moreover, be aware of the difference between a boat that was used by a handful of sailors over the years versus one that was chartered to more people than you could count. In other words, you wouldn’t want to buy a few-year-old rental car because who knows what the poor thing had to suffer, - especially since you can bet that many of the clients weren’t particularly good sailors due to generous sailing license policies in Croatia, which allows virtually anybody to ‘become a sailor’ within hours for a friendly fee.

What can you expect when you get on one? Good things - the manufacturers know what their products are used for, and that is why Bavarias are designed as easy comfortable cruisers. Everything you need to have within reach will be within reach, to the point of you having something to hold on almost all the time wherever you go through the boat - Bavaria knows well that many of its users won’t have their ‘sea legs’ and act accordingly. Even smaller models have generous amounts of space because it is the smaller models that are charter kings - Bavaria gives a lot of attention to them. The layouts will be comfy, so Bavarias make good boats for longer voyages - pair that with reliability and price and you will understand why the vox populi speaks so fondly of them.

The reason I am mentioning the name of the parent company here is that they own both Beneteau and Jeanneau, brands that are distinguishable on the surface, but if you look close enough, you will find them pretty similar, down to the fact that they are produced in the same factory. So since both Beneteau and Jeanneau are very popular sailor’s choices, both deserve a place on this list, but dedicating a subchapter to each would feel like making a duplicate.

By the way, Groupe Beneteau also owns Lagoon, a renowned catamaran maker, Prestige, luxury yacht manufacturer, Monte Carlo Yachts, CNB Yacht builder, the semi-custom sailboat maker, Four Winns, Glastron, Scarab, Wellcraft, Excess, and Delphia… some of these make motor yachts only, but if you combine fans of all of these, you get a sizable crowd. This company has figured out what people of various tastes want and serves quite a few of these niches.

Business aside, let’s see how this French company managed to find its way into the hearts of so many. Well, first of all, they are French. So chic style is to be expected. And with this, fans come. Image wise (and design-wise to a bit) Jeanneau is the sporty one that sails better, while Beneteau aims at the family comfort market. But on both, you will feel loved by the designer. They are made to make you feel good when you use them, and they’ll spoil you with luxury that fits within the specific price tag.

Comfort is a big deal here. On Jeanneaus for instance, you will sometimes find quite unique layouts, often different from the traditional ones, to really pamper the sailors - such as their two master bedroom setup, with the stern one being under the cockpit. A lot of them come with the 360 docking system, which allows you to move the boat around with a joystick and makes maneuvering in marinas so easy you feel like you are cheating. Or consider their decision to make the hull finer to cut through the water better, resulting in less movement - something that helps with comfort. All of this comes for a price but less so than you would expect since the buying power of the enormous Groupe Beneteau helps with shaving off dollars where smaller manufacturers couldn’t. This is, for instance, the reason why they can afford to use wood on their crafts to an extent you wouldn’t expect from a production boat for that price - again, buying volume allows for this even without you necessarily having to pay the expected premium.

Of course, you will mostly find them in Europe, where they are plentiful in marinas, though the aforementioned Bavarias dominate as far as numbers go. But that is mostly because of charters, since last year, over 80 percent of chartered boats were Bavarias. As personal boats, products of Groupe Beneteau belong among the top choices.

Now, this is a bit of a tricky one. The manufacturer doesn’t exist anymore, in fact, it produced boats from 1960 to 1989, making it over thirty years old, but despite that, the Cal models are still a favorite and worthy member of the cruising as well as performance world.

During the company’s existence, almost twenty thousand boats were built, partially because they were one of the first brands to mass-produce fiberglass sailboats. That, along with Cal models winning impressively in races, helped them to make a name for themselves, a name that still sounds to this day.

Why is it on this list? Partially because of its prevalence on the seas, partially because of its prevalence in internet forums and pub talks. Cal sailboats are loved by their owners mostly for their responsiveness when under sail, good build quality, (even though many say the interior could have been done way better) as well as reliability even after long years of use. Many of the design features have indeed been improved since, so if thirty years ago you could dominate races with Cals, today you won’t be on the lightest and most up to date boat around anymore. But you won’t be sailing a cruiser either. The boat might not be a pureblood racer, but it was built with racing in mind. Which might give the more sporty ones of your peace of mind that no Bavaria or any traditional cruiser will provide.

Quite a few owners say though that the success from the sixties gained Cal a name that you will pay for when buying one. If you are one of those who want to make sure they are paying for physical value rather than reputation, this might be a dealbreaker for you. There is a certain portion of slight arrogance that comes with racing success, one that shows in later models. But given the brand’s popularity, this is not too big of a deal.

So if cruising is your goal, if long crossings are what you desire, if you simply want a boat that was built with honesty and can take you basically anywhere you want, Cals are a safe bet. You’ll be joining a big, happy and an old family. And an affordable one at that.

In conclusion

To sum it all up, it seems that practicality, affordability, and reliability are the main factors that influence whether a sailboat manufacturer will become popular among sailors or not. As well as extravagant design and beauty, but that’s another story.

There have been many shipyards throughout the ages, some long-lasting, some surviving but a couple of years. Each tried to come up with an angle to sell well. Sometimes it was quirky design, and sometimes it was an intriguing feature, sometimes it was the use of new technology. Sometimes it worked out quite well, other times it did not. But in the end what sailors seem to want is a boat that will not fail them when they need it the most, a boat that is well built enough to cross oceans, because that gives one a sense of freedom and a boat that is built with the user-friendliness in mind. Simply, a boat that is your good friend.

A road to a sailor’s heart is simple, after all.

Daniel O'Connell

Really good article. I was enlightened.

Dan O’Connell

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40 Best Sailboats

• By Cruising World Editors
• Updated: April 18, 2019

Sailors are certainly passionate about their boats, and if you doubt that bold statement, try posting an article dubbed “ 40 Best Sailboats ” and see what happens.

Barely had the list gone live, when one reader responded, “Where do I begin? So many glaring omissions!” Like scores of others, he listed a number of sailboats and brands that we were too stupid to think of, but unlike some, he did sign off on a somewhat upbeat note: “If it weren’t for the presence of the Bermuda 40 in Cruising World’s list, I wouldn’t even have bothered to vote.”

By vote, he means that he, like hundreds of other readers, took the time to click through to an accompanying page where we asked you to help us reshuffle our alphabetical listing of noteworthy production sailboats so that we could rank them instead by popularity. So we ask you to keep in mind that this list of the best sailboats was created by our readers.

The quest to building this list all began with such a simple question, one that’s probably been posed at one time or another in any bar where sailors meet to raise a glass or two: If you had to pick, what’re the best sailboats ever built?

In no time, a dozen or more from a variety of sailboat manufacturers were on the table and the debate was on. And so, having fun with it, we decided to put the same question to a handful of CW ‘s friends: writers and sailors and designers and builders whose opinions we value. Their favorites poured in and soon an inkling of a list began to take shape. To corral things a bit and avoid going all the way back to Joshua Slocum and his venerable Spray —Hell, to Noah and his infamous Ark —we decided to focus our concentration on production monohull sailboats, which literally opened up the sport to anyone who wanted to get out on the water. And since CW is on the verge or turning 40, we decided that would be a nice round number at which to draw the line and usher in our coming ruby anniversary.

If you enjoy scrolling through this list, which includes all types of sailboats, then perhaps you would also be interested in browsing our list of the Best Cruising Sailboats . Check it out and, of course, feel free to add your favorite boat, too. Here at Cruising World , we like nothing better than talking about boats, and it turns out, so do you.

40. Moore 24

39. Pearson Vanguard

38. Dufour Arpege 30

37. Alerion Express 28

36. Mason 43/44

35. Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 43DS

34. Nor’Sea 27

33. Freedom 40

32. Beneteau Sense 50

31. Nonsuch 30

30. Swan 44

29. C&C Landfall 38

28. Gulfstar 50

27. Sabre 36

26. Pearson Triton

25. Islander 36

24. Gozzard 36

23. Bristol 40

22. Tartan 34

21. Morgan Out Island 41

20. Hylas 49

19. Contessa 26

18. Whitby 42

17. Columbia 50

16. Morris 36

15. Hunter 356

13. Beneteau 423

12. Westsail 32

10. Alberg 30

9. Island Packet 38

8. Passport 40

7. Tayana 37

6. Peterson 44

5. Pacific Seacraft 37

4. Hallberg-Rassy 42

3. Catalina 30

2. Hinckley Bermuda 40

1. Valiant 40

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The 12m Class and the America’s Cup By Halsey C. Herreshoff

Credit: www.herreshoff.org

The 150-year history of the America’s Cup, the oldest and most distinguished prize in world sport, is summarized from the author’s vantage point of belonging to a family of boat designers and builders who contributed to the dominance of American yachts from the beginning into the 1980s. Particulars and performances of the most important designs are described from AMERICA to the current International America’s Cup Class.

Introduction

The America’s Cup is the Holy Grail of yacht racing. It is much more. This Cup, in competition for a period of 150 years, is the oldest and most distinguished trophy in all sport, outdating the World Cup, Davis Cup, Stanley Cup, Walker Cup, and all others of significance. Excepting the lavish excesses of big time modern professional sport, more talent, effort, and money have been devoted to the America’s Cup than for any other sport competitions. From the standpoint of naval architecture, America’s Cup intensity has inspired countless design breakthroughs, fallout from which benefit all yachts today to an extent generally unrealized by those who sail. Here, a highly focused pursuit of excellence has provided quality, boldness, and dedication to be the best. The most elegant hull lines, most efficient construction, best sails, and most skillful sailing techniques have evolved from America’s Cup competition.

For 132 years (1851 to 1983), the United States enjoyed the longest winning streak in all sport. There were close calls but always the U.S. won the series and most of the individual races. Through that time, American yachts were generally, though not always, the fastest; thus, it may be fairly stated that victories followed very much from technical prowess.

As with any ship design, a sailing yacht embodies many necessary elements, which must dovetail to accomplish its mission. What is nice about America’s Cup design is that the only mission is speed, maneuverability and reliability to best a single match race rival around a closed course. Size, weight, wetted surface, hull form, light but strong construction, efficient rigs with good sails, sea kindliness and maneuverability are necessary. In general the successful boats embody acceptable or superior selections in the above categories. Bold innovation has been rewarded, but nearly always, extremes have failed. In a series of yacht races encompassing generally a variety of wind and sea conditions, an overall good boat wins.

It is appropriate to divide America’s Cup history into seven logical chronological divisions. The outstanding or most interesting yacht of each period will be addressed herewith. Listed below are the America’s Cup competitions by era with the names of the winning and defeated yachts respectively. In each case the focus yacht is in boldface type.

The l2-Metre era: 1958-1987

Following World War II, the conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic was that the America’s Cup was done. The world was rebuilding and there seemed little prospect of funding further J boats given their assumed greatly accelerated cost. The Cup itself remained the pride of the New York Yacht Club, continually on display in the trophy room of the 44th Street Club House. Most of us expected it to just remain there for a long time, perhaps never to be raced for again.

Enter Commodores Henry Sears and Henry Morgan of the New York Yacht Club. By petitioning the Supreme Court of the State of New York, they modified the Deed of Gift to allow smaller yachts without the previous demand that challengers must cross the ocean on their own bottoms. It was agreed to compete in the International 12-Metre Class, which had provided excellent racing for several years before the war. Designed to the rather tight specifications of the International Rule, these boats did not really fit the grand traditions of the Cup but nevertheless provided nearly three decades of some of the finest match racing ever.

1958-1987: The 12-Metres 1958 COLUMBIA vs. SCEPTRE 1962 WEATHERLY vs. GRETEL 1964 CONSTELLATION vs. SOVEREIGN 1967 INTREPID vs. DAME PATTIE 1970 INTREPID vs. GRETEL II 1974 COURAGEOUS vs. SOUTHERN CROSS 1977 COURAGEOUS vs. AUSTRALIA 1980 FREEDOM vs. AUSTRALIA 1983 AUSTRALIA II vs. LIBERTY 1987 STARS & STRIPES vs. KOOKABURRA III

I can write more knowledgeably about the 12-Metre era than any other, as I was an active participant for 25 years and an observer for the full 29 years. Through acquaintance with Harry Sears, I was excused from other duties as a naval officer to sail aboard COLUMBIA, the 1958 Cup Defender, as bowman. Sailing aboard the 12’s in most of their seasons, I participated in four America’s Cup series, a total of 20 races; it was all about the greatest fun I’ve ever had.

The International Rule is an inelegant arbitrary formula that controls and restricts the design of these boats within narrow limits. There is a minimum length, maximum draft, maximum rig heights, and a set relation between length and displacement. Scantlings first in wood and later in aluminum are tightly controlled by specifics of the rule, Nevertheless, innovation in design particularly by Olin Stephens brought about nearly continual improvement of the boats, and the design edge of the United States long seemed to assure retention of the Cup as it did over many matches through 1980.

Curiously, some of the finest racing of all was in the finals of the first selection trials between COLUMBIA, sailed by Briggs Cunningham and designed by Sparkman & Stephens against Stephens prewar 12-Metre VIM. These were great tactical battles with racing margins of a few seconds in many races. The Cup race itself that year was a walk; SCEPTRE was a quite inferior design that had never faced competition before the match. As had happened a few times before, WEATHERLY, a weak American boat, won in 1962 by the brilliance of Bus Mobacher, her skipper. That was the first year of an Australian challenger and GRETEL won a race demonstrating the aggressive posture of Australian sailors.

Another S&S yacht, CONSTELLATION won in 1964. She was a quite elegant all-round boat, which was selected as Cup Defender over the large and powerful AMERICAN EAGLE, which was only superior in heavy weather. This should have been a tip off to the future but the true significance of having to design the smallest possible 12-Metre for Newport conditions was not generally appreciated until Australia II lifted the Cup in 1983. The reason 12-Metres form an exception to the axiom “design big” is the idiosyncrasy of the rule, particularly the prescription of increased displacement with length.

Olin Stephens’ INTREPID of 1967 was a breakthrough yacht. Wetted surface was drastically reduced with a shorter keel and separate rudder and the boat had numerous refinements. With outstanding management and the skill of Mosbacher again as skipper, INTREPID was unbeatable. The quest for further breakthroughs led to some peculiar and unsuccessful designs over the next two seasons.

The 1970 match was saved by repeat defense of INTREPID. In 1974, Olin Stephens designed another very fine boat, COURAGEOUS. Built of aluminum under new scantling rules, COURAGEOUS was powerful and superior in a breeze but did not easily defeat INTREPID, striving for a third defense. The selection trials reduced to a memorable sudden-death race in a 30-knot northeast breeze that COURAGEOUS won through both superior speed and better sailing. While I personally believe that Stephens’s 1977 boat, ENTERPRISE, was a further improvement in the same direction, Ted Turner sailing COURAGEOUS beat her out for the defense. Though not of demonstrably different dimensions, FREEDOM of 1980 seemed very superior. One difference was lower freeboard – providing a lower center of gravity and less hull windage. The new ingredient was a brilliant program of development of sails, gear and crew established by skipper Dennis Conner over a two-year program. The success of the program altered America’s Cup procedures from then on. Even with that, FREEDOM did lose one of the races of the match principally owing to a light-air advantage of Australia employing a rule-beating mainsail that gave her superior windward speed in light air.

Then, in 1983, the unthinkable happened in Newport when AUSTRALIA II beat LIBERTY in “The Race of the Century,” the sudden-death seventh race of that match. AUSTRALIA II was the best 12-Metre yacht to sail in the 25-year history of competition at Newport. Her extraordinary and controversial winged keel was, of course, the conspicuous feature. The ballyhoo about that masked the significant facts that AUSTRALIA II was the first boat to go to minimum 12-Metre length and displacement and that she had significantly less wetted surface than any other Twelve; this latter fact won the Cup! Less wetted surface followed naturally from a smaller boat but also from a keel of radically small planform. Where that had failed 13 years earlier in VALIANT with a conventional keel, it succeeded in spades on AUSTRALIA II because the winged keel provided sufficient hydrodynamic lift (side force) without the conventional large area. Because 12’s have draft limited by a function of length, they crave more draft or the equivalent effect. The lift-enhancing action of the “end plate” wings provided that very effectively.

While the racing ended at Newport in 1983 with the victory by the wonderful AUSTRALIA II, the subsequent events are equally interesting. Dennis Conner took charge again and with a brilliantly conceived and executed plan won back the Cup the first time sailing Twelves in the challenging waters of western Australia. The final STARS & STRIPES was a one-weather boat, big and powerful for the consistent “Doctor” (strong winds) of Freemantle. Others did not have the strength of their convictions to go with such a big and powerful boat. Dennis’s crew and tactics were admirable in this most wonderful challenge at a spectacular sailing locale.

The one-weather quality of STARS & STRIPES was abundantly clear from her total failure to win light-weather 12-Metre races in European waters later in 1987. An AUSTRALIA II type boat was needed there or would have been for continued 12-Metre races in Newport or San Diego.

Yachting World

• Digital Edition

America’s Cup boats: How they work and why they’re unique

• Toby Heppell
• February 5, 2021

The America's Cup boats to be used on the 2021 edition of the event are unlike anything we have seen before. They might be officially sailing craft but they behave in some remarkable ways.

The AC75s, the America’s Cup boats currently racing in the Prada Cup and that will be used for next month’s Cup match showdown, are arguably the most radical boat the America’s Cup has ever seen. 

The America’s Cup is, fundamentally, a design competition, and successive America’s Cups have featured the most extreme yachts yet – for their time – ever since the first race in 1851 .  

However, the foiling boats we have seen in the last three editions of America’s Cup racing (the AC72 and AC50 catamarans, and now the AC75 monohulls ) do represent a new direction for the highest level of sailing. 

There are plenty who argue that this technology is so far beyond the bounds of what most people consider sailing as to be an entirely different sport. Equally, there are those who believe this is simply a continuation of the development that the America’s Cup has always pushed to the fore, from Bermudan rigs, to composite materials, winged keels, and everything in between.

Good arguments can be made either way and foiling in the world’s oldest sporting trophy will always be a subjective and controversial topic. But one thing is certain: the current America’s Cup boats, the AC75s, are unlike anything seen before and are showcasing to the world just what is possible under sail power alone.   

American Magic hit an impressive 53.3 knots on their final weekend of racing. Photo: COR 36/Studio Borlenghi

1 Unimaginable speed

In their final race before being knocked out of the competition , American Magic’s Patriot registered a top speed of 53.3 knots during a bear away. 

Topping the 50-knot barrier used to be the preserve of extreme speed record craft and kiteboarders. A World Speed Sailing Record was set in 2009 of 51.36 knots by Alain Thebault in his early foiling trimaran, Hydroptere , and was bested in 2010 by kite boarder, Alexandre Caizergues who managed 54.10 knots.

O nly one craft has ever topped 60-knots, the asymmetric Vestas Sail Rocket , which was designed for straight line speed only and could no more get around an America’s Cup course than cross an ocean. Such records are set by sailing an average speed over the course of 500m, usually over a perfectly straight, flat course in optimum conditions.

America’s Cup class yachts, designed to sail windward/leeward courses around marks, are now hitting speeds that just over a decade ago were the preserve of specialist record attempts, while mid-race.

Perhaps even more impressive, in the right conditions when racing we have seen some boats managing 40 knots of boatspeed upwind in around 17 knots of wind. That is simply unheard of in performance terms and almost unimaginable just three or so years ago. 

Photo: COR 36/Studio Borlenghi

2 A storm onboard America’s Cup boats

Related to the speeds the boats are sailing through the water, particularly upwind, is the wind speeds the sailors will feel on deck. 

When sailing, the forward motion affects the wind we experience onboard, known as apparent wind. The oft’ trotted out explanation of how apparent wind works is to imagine driving your car at 50mph. Roll down the window and stick your hand out of it and there will be 50mph of wind hitting your hand from the direction your car is travelling.

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So when an AC75 is sailing upwind in 18 knots of breeze at a boatspeed of 40 knots, the crew on deck will be experiencing 40 knots of wind over the decks plus a percentage of the true wind speed – depending on their angle to the wind. 

The AC75 crews might be sailing in only 18 knots of breeze – what would feel like a decent summer breeze on any other boat – but they experience winds of around 50 knots.

To put that into context, that is a storm force 10 on the Beaufort scale!

Once up on the foil, everything to windward of the leeward foil generates righting moment. Photo: COR 36/Studio Borlenghi

3 Righting moment changes  

The single most radical development of the AC75 is to take a 75ft ‘keelboat’, but put no keel on it whatsoever. 

When the America’s Cup Defender and the Challenger of Record, Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli respectively, announced the 36th America’s Cup would be sailed in 75ft monohulls, conventional wisdom had it that the boats would look something like a TP52 or a Maxi72 – both impressively high performance keelboats.  

By doing away with the keel entirely, the design is now like nothing we have ever seen, particularly when it comes to how dynamic the power transition is between foiling and not foiling. 

The boats are designed to foil on the leeward foil, with the windward one raised to help increase righting moment: to help balance the boat. This means that when the AC75 is not foiling they are extremely tippy – much more so than most other boats of the same size.

Essentially, when the wind catches the sails, the boat wants to fall over as there is too much sail area for the amount of weight underneath the boat – something a lead keel usually counters on a yacht or keelboat. 

Once the boat is up and on the foils, however, that all changes, as everything to windward of the single foil in the water balances the sails. That means, the hull, the crew weight, the sail and rig weight, and the windward foil, all work to counter the sails. 

What all this means is that the boats go from being extremely tippy, to hugely powerful in just the few seconds it takes to get up on the foil. “The [AC75s] are really very tippy pre-foiling and then they go through the transition where they will need to build significant power. Then immediately [once they lift off] you have more stability than, well, take your pick, but certainly more righting moment than something like a Volvo 70 with a big canting keel.

“That change all happens in a very short space of time,” explained Burns Fallow of North Sails, who was one of the team who developed the soft wing concept back when the concept was revealed. 

With lift created to windward by the foils, it is possible that the boats can sail diagonally to windward. Photo: COR 36/Studio Borlenghi

4 America’s Cup boats may not be heading where they point

With the AC75 sailing on its foil, drag is dramatically reduced, vast amounts of power can be generated and so speeds rapidly increase. But the foils can serve another purpose too. 

In order to be able to lift each foil out of the water, the foil arms must be able to be raised and lowered. Hence the foil wings, which sit at the bottom of the foil arms (and are usually a T or Y shape), do not always sit perpendicular to the water surface and the AC75s often sail with them canted over to something nearer 45º to the surface.

The further out the leeward foil arm is canted – essentially more raised – the closer the AC75 flies to surface and, crucially, the more righting moment is generated as the hull and rest of the boat gets further from the lifting surface of the foil.  

There is another positive to this: as the lifting foil is angled, it produces lift to windward, which can force the boat more towards the wind than the angle it is sailing. 

Due to this negative leeway (as it is known when a foil creates lift to windward) the boat can be pointing at a compass heading of say 180º but in fact will be sailing at eg 177º as the foil pushes the boat sideways and to weather, essentially sailing to windward somewhat diagonally. 

5 The foils are heavy. Very heavy.

As the foils work to provide stability to the boat (when it is stationary both foils are dropped all the way down to stop it tipping over) and to provide massive amounts of righting moment, they are incredibly heavy.

A pair of foil wings and flaps (excluding the one-design foil arm which attaches them to the boat and lifts them up and down) weigh 1842kg. To put that into perspective, the entire boat itself with all equipment (but without the crew) weighs between 6508kg and 6538kg. So the foil wings at the base of the foil arms are nearly ⅓ of the total weight of the boat. 

It is partly due to this that you will see some teams with bulbs on their foils. If you decide to go for a skinny foil wing (which would be low drag and so faster) then there will not be enough volume to cram sufficient material in to make the foil weigh enough. So some teams have decided to add a bulb in order to make it weigh enough but to also keep a less draggy, slimmer foil shape. 

6 Sails can invert at the head

As with everything on the AC75, the mainsail is a relatively new concept. It consists of two mainsails which are attached to both corners of a D-shaped mast tube. This has the effect of creating a profile similar to a wing. 

It is well established that solid wing sails are more efficient at generating power than a soft sail and for this reason solid wings were used in both the America’s Cup in 2013 and 2017. But there are drawbacks with a wing: they cannot be lowered if something goes wrong and require a significant amount of manpower and a crane to put it on or take it off a boat. 

One reason a wing makes for such a powerful sail is that the shape can be manipulated from top to bottom fairly easily with the right controls. With the AC75 the designers wanted a sail that could have some of this manipulation, produce similar power but could also be dropped while out on the water. The twin skin, ‘soft wing’ is what they came up with for this class of America’s Cup boat.

In addition to the usual sail controls, within the rules, the teams are allowed to develop systems for controlling the top 2m of the mainsail and the bottom 1.5m. 

What this means is that the teams are able to manipulate their mainsail in a number of different ways to develop power and control where that power is produced in the sail. But it also means that they have the ability to invert the head of the sail. 

Doing this effectively means ‘tacking’ the top of the sail while the rest of the sail is in its usual shape. The advantage here is that instead of trying to tip the boat to leeward, the very top of the sail will be trying to push the boat upright and so creating even more righting moment. The disadvantage is that it would come at the cost of increased aerodynamic drag. 

We know that a number of America’s Cup teams are able to do this, though whether it is effective is another question and it is very hard to spot this technique being used while the boats are racing at lightning speeds.

Photo: Emirates Team New Zealand

7 An America’s Cup boat generates lots of data

A new America’s Cup boat is a vastly complex bit of kit. Each team has incredibly powerful Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software packages and simulators in order to try to understand the various gains and losses. 

To make these simulators and computer projections as accurate as possible each team has been getting as much data as they can over their three year development cycle.

In the case of this America’s Cup it does seem the development process is genuinely getting closer to Formula 1 (albeit with smaller budgets than a modern F1 team has behind them).

INEOS Team UK have been able to work alongside the all powerful Mercedes F1 team (both of who are backed by INEOS) and have been open about how much this has helped their development process. They even have some Mercedes staff out with the team in Auckland assessing their data.  

“It’s really similar to F1,” explains Mercedes Applied Science Principal Engineer Thomas Batch who has 11 F1 titles to his name and is with INEOS in Auckland. “Certainly in this campaign the technology is close to what we have in F1. 

“In terms of raw sensors on the boat you are probably talking in the 100s but then we take that and we make that into mass channels and additional analysis with computational versions of those channels that we then analyse and get into in more detail. So you are looking at 1000s of plots that we can delve into [per race or training session].

“That level of data analysis and then feedback with the sailors is very similar to working with an [F1] driver.” 

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American Magic sails new 'Patriot' AC75 for the first time ahead of 37th America's Cup

T uesday in Barcelona, Spain, American Magic took its first spin in the boat it hopes to sail to victory in the 37th America's Cup.

The 75-foot boat took to the waters with its mainsail sporting a large "Pensacola, Florida" logo that it will carry for the entire international race series this fall.

Before sailing, the New York Yacht Club Vice Commodore Clare Harrington christened the new AC75 as "Patriot," the second boat sailed by American Magic to carry that name.

The previous Patriot was also an AC75 and sailed many times in Pensacola as the team gathered data and trained for the version unveiled this week. The previous Patriot had its last sail i n the waters of Pensacola Bay in February 2023 .

American Magic lease approved: Find out what's included

Much like the rules of Formula 1 racing, the sailboat is a 75-foot foiling monohull that meets the AC75 design rules laid out by the America's Cup. Still, within those rules, the American Magic team has made its own designs to give it an edge in the racing competition set to take place this fall.

"The New York Yacht Club has never wavered from its core purpose of ensuring international competition at the highest level of skill and performance," Harrington said at the Patriot's christening. "That is our tradition. However, the launch of Patriot also signifies innovation, blending two distinct elements: tradition and innovation. And so I bring to American Magic the heartfelt wishes of all 3,400 plus members of the New York Yacht Club for your success in the upcoming competition, maintaining the club's tradition through your inspired innovation."

The team said that more than 108,000 design hours and 65,000 construction hours went into making the Patriot.

"We followed our own design path with Patriot as we pushed the limits of the AC75 rule while tailoring for the Barcelona venue," American Magic Design Coordinator Scott Ferguson said in a team press release.

The team had the boat foiling after running some initial tests on it, before having to bring it back to the dock as the weather forecast in Barcelona called for thunderstorms.

"As far as first days go inside the American Magic program, really, this was probably our best day," Terry Hutchinson, president of sailing operations at American Magic, told an America's Cup camera crew after the sail.

The Patriot was built and designed at the American Magic's previous headquarters in Rhode Island, but the boat will return to Pensacola after the America's Cup this fall. The next AC 75 for the 38th America's Cup is planned to be designed and built at the team's new headquarters at the Port of Pensacola.

The 37th America's Cup will hold its third preliminary regatta this August in Barcelona as a final full-scale practice race.

Then the Louis Vuitton Cup will take place in August and September 2024, where the teams will compete for the right to race against the defending team, Emirates New Zealand, in the actual 37th America's Cup in October 2024.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: American Magic sails new 'Patriot' AC75 for the first time ahead of 37th America's Cup

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One-of-a-Kind Pots and Lamps Among the Shirtdresses

A craft show of aapi designers at 3.1 phillip lim..

At the 3.1 Phillip Lim store on Great Jones Street, in between racks of deconstructed button-down shirts and soft leather bags, you might encounter a candy-colored neon light framed with silk flowers or a row of knobby ceramics that look like otherworldly tree stumps arranged on a plywood podium. The pieces don’t exactly blend in, but they also look at home in the space — as if a spare downtown gallery has crept into a few corners of the boutique. It’s not uncommon to see something like this in Milan during its Design Week, when fashion brands from Gucci to Bottega Veneta to Loro Piana launch new homeware collections or otherwise display design objects in their showrooms. But it’s not a regular part of New York’s Design Week, and Phillip Lim is not branching out into home goods. It’s “Crafting Selfhood,” a group show of ceramics, weavings, and light fixtures made by 13 women AAPI artists.

For the second year in a row, curators Lora Appleton and Karen Wong, with help from Wen Zhou, the CEO of 3.1 Phillip Lim, have brought together a group of artists to fill the brand’s New York outpost with art. Appleton, founder of kinder MODERN and the Female Design Council , and Wong , former deputy director of the New Museum and board member at the Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific American Center , wanted in particular to bring a group of Asian American and Pacific Islander artists together, and the theme links to a new accessory collection by Phillip Lim inspired by a treasured ID bracelet. Appleton, who has curated work in retail settings before, says she appreciates the challenge of fitting pieces within an already existing setting, but it’s made easier by the store’s spare aesthetic. Below are some of our favorite pieces from the exhibition, on view through May 23.

Eny Lee Parker’s Floor Lamp

This piece by Parker , a New York–based designer of lighting, furniture, and art objects who has shown at Art Basel and collaborated with brands Lulu and Georgia and Hudson Valley Lighting, has built in an element of discovery: The dimmers, rendered as snails and shells with a natural, swirling curvature, are linked to different globes, creating a puzzle to be solved each time the lamp is turned on. “You can imagine forgetting that every time for quite some time, if you owned the lamp,” says Appleton.

Janny Baek’s Ceramics

Baek, born in Seoul and raised in Queens, utilizes gradients of vibrant colors in her intricate, organic-looking ceramics, which evoke images of sea creatures and alien landscapes. The placement of Baek’s pieces, says Appleton, required some careful planning: “We wanted to display very colorful ceramics in front of the store’s large mirror so that you could get the 360 view of these incredible pieces, but we also opted for not having them on pedestals, because they’re also very delicate, and in putting this exhibition together we also had to be thinking about retail traffic!”

Phaan Howng’s Otherworldly Plants

Taiwanese American artist Howng’s work is inspired by landscape theory and Victorian-era anthropology, and these pieces with cobalt-blue bases and leaves sculpted from wire and foam mix the exuberant shapes of well-loved houseplants with a colorful, fantastical sense of otherworldliness. They sit on the top layer of the store’s set of wood steps.

Steffany Tran ’s Lamps

Tran, a New York–based ceramicist and industrial designer (and member of the Female Design Council herself), creates objects that are both decorative and genuinely useful — think tabletop lamps in layered, neutral tones with texture. It’s not a stretch for her, since she brings her art to projects with MTA Metro-North and the NYC Design Studio, where she thinks about creative solutions to civic-design issues. Tran makes her oversize bulb-shaped lampshades using 100-year-old paper, a particularly finicky material: “They can only be made twice a year because of the humidity and pressing process,” explains Appleton.

Sonya Yong James’s Wall Hangings

James, a multidisciplinary artist born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and now based in Atlanta, crafted this wall hanging from thread and repurposed cloth using weaving techniques she notes are often associated with women’s labor and housework. The result is a piece of art that looks like ’70s macramé crossed with a wildly overgrown plant, the strands and globules in different shades of black. It’s lush but also slightly menacing.

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Fashion designer, 50, found dead with scarf around neck in nyc home: sources.

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A Brooklyn-based fashion designer was found dead with a scarf around her neck inside her home this week, law enforcement sources said Friday. 

Svitlana Indelicato, 50 – who designed handbags as well as scarves and Pashmina shawls – was unconscious and unresponsive when her husband claimed he found her inside a room in the Bensonhurst home on 80th Street near 16th Avenue and called the police around 5 a.m. Thursday, the sources said.

A scarf was wrapped around her neck, the sources said. 

EMS workers responded and Indelicato was pronounced dead at the scene, cops said. 

The NYPD described her injuries as “trauma” to the neck.

No arrests have been made, and the city’s medical examiner’s office will officially determine how she died.

Indelicato sold bags on her Etsy shop VitalTemptation, and scarves on the shop ScarfObsession. 

“I work with wool, silk and other natural fibers using very unique and almost forgotten techniques while creating my designs,” Indelicato wrote on LinkedIn , describing her work.

“I use felting, [which] is an ancient textile art, where manipulating wool, warm soapy water and rolling, squeezing and rubbing creates a very special one-of-a-kind piece.”

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NMAD Unveils Latest Designs of New Permanent Exhibitions Page URL copied to clipboard!

The National Museum of American Diplomacy (NMAD) has reached 100% design for multiple exhibitions, which are anticipated to open to the public in the summer of 2025.

The Discover Diplomacy hall in the Hillary Rodham Clinton pavilion and The Impact of Diplomacy hall in the renovated Founding Ambassadors Concourse will be housed in NMAD’s 20,000-square-foot glass pavilion, located at the 21st Street entrance of the Harry S Truman Building—the home of the U.S. Department of State.

The upper level of the pavilion will feature the Discover Diplomacy hall. This welcome and orientation space for the museum will provide an overview of the principles of diplomacy and an introduction to the people, places, and issues that are crucial to the work of diplomacy today.

The lower level will be the renovated Founding Ambassadors Concourse. This floor will feature a new home for temporary exhibitions and a renovated public programming space. The first exhibit rotation will be Gifts of State , which will display a selection of official diplomatic gifts.

The halls were designed by C&G Partners, a creative studio specializing in cultural organizations and museums, working in creative partnership with the museum architects Beyer Blender Belle (BBB).

The installation of these exhibitions is part of NMAD’s phased approach to opening and signifies the completion of Phase 2. NMAD completed Phase 1 of construction in 2017, with the opening of the pavilion.

Phase 3 will be the opening of The History of American Diplomacy hall and The Practice of Diplomacy hall. This will involve renovating an additional 20,000 square feet of offices within the Truman Building with state-of-the-art technology to house exhibitions including selected items from our collection of over 11,000 items.

The final phase is Phase 4, during which NMAD will renovate the historic 21st Street lobby mezzanine space to house the Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection exhibition. The exhibit is on loan to the National Museum of American Diplomacy and will be donated to the museum upon the completion of the gallery space. The space will also feature items from the Madam Secretary TV series (2014-2019).

Take a look at the exhibitions to come and follow us on social media for the latest opening dates.

Diplomacy Is Our Mission, anticipated to open in the summer of 2025.

Diplomacy is Relationships

Orientation Theater

The Spokesperson’s Podium

Diplomacy is Connecting People

The Impact of Diplomacy hall in the Founding Ambassadors Concourse.

The Gifts of State exhibition, anticipated to open in the summer of 2025.

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Ai industrial policy takes shape in washington.

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US President Joe Biden discusses his Administration's commitment to seizing the opportunities and ... [+] managing the risks of Artificial Intelligence, in San Francisco, California, June 20, 2023. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP) (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

The CHIPS and Science Act and the Biden administration’s export controls for semiconductors produce a comprehensive industrial policy for advanced semiconductors. Now, a similar discussion is beginning around artificial intelligence. The work is still in its infancy and it may take several years to fully develop a policy. However, with Washington’s focus on the technology from a national security perspective, unsurprisingly, federal officials are eyeing a promote and protect approach to AI.

An increase in government funding for domestic nondefense AI innovation would drive the promote half of the industrial policy. In the road map released earlier this week, the Senate’s bipartisan working group called for appropriations to reach “at least $32 billion per year for (non-defense) AI innovation” as soon as possible. This number was recommended by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in its final report published in 2021. While far greater than the funds appropriated in the CHIPS and Science Act, the resemblance is unmistakable, and it is no surprise that two of the Senate’s leading architects on both efforts are Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.).

The working group’s proposal has yet to be turned into a bill, and it may be a few months before legislative text is published as the senators collect feedback on their road map. Still, even when a draft is released, there is no promise that the proposal will pass quickly or at all, especially in the divided Congress. There is a bipartisan consensus in wanting to support domestic AI innovation, but the high price tag may scare away some more budget-conscious conservatives seeking to lower government spending.

Few, if any, meaningful bills are expected to clear Congress between now and the end of the year, other than must-pass legislation, which leaves only a handful of opportunities for the AI funding provisions to catch a ride this year. This timing may be okay with the Senate working group members as they seem more interested in building a genuine bipartisan consensus than rushing through a partisan version of the legislation. The House also has its own bipartisan AI task force, which is expected to produce its own report on addressing the new technology, giving a better sense of the overlap and divide between the two chambers.

The second part of this industrial policy is to protect the U.S.’ advanced AI models from foreign adversaries, particularly China. According to Reuters , the Commerce Department is considering export controls for the most advanced AI models, similar to what it has done with semiconductors. The rules would limit access to the backend software powering the models but not downstream applications created with the software. The logistics of enforcing these controls are likely to be more difficult than restricting semiconductor sales as no physical product is involved. But this may not stop the Biden administration from moving forward with proposed regulations.

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The metrics used to determine which models would fall under these restrictions have yet to be determined. One potential standard from President Joe Biden’s 2023 AI executive order would be the computing power needed to train the model. However, if the measure in the EO were used, no existing models would be covered. Another approach could be to use a lower computer power threshold and consider other factors like the type of data used and the model’s intended use.

While the increased government funding and export control efforts are in their beginning stages, the focus on AI among officials could mean that this industrial policy will come to bear over the next couple of years. The CHIPS and Science Act took a few years to be conceived before it was passed. So, it is more than possible for AI to experience a similarly prolonged timeline. The discussions happening now are still crucial to follow as they will shape the contours for future action. They also will indicate lawmakers’ regulatory priorities for the technology and any partisan fault lines that could hamper legislative efforts.

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Inside American Ballet Theatre’s Stylish Spring Gala

By Freya Drohan

There’s a first time for everything! While the city’s American Ballet Theatre supporters are used to donning a black tie and hot-footing it to The Metropolitan Opera House for the annual ABT Spring Gala and summer season preview, this year looked a little different. Instead, guests gathered at Cipriani 42nd Street, giving a whole new meaning to the terms ‘dinner and a show,’ and ‘up close and personal.’

Fashion-wise, the guests delivered. Aoki Lee Simmons cut a cool figure in a Roger Vivier vest and black slacks. Katie Holmes wore a floaty Pucci number. And a gaggle of girls wore vintage—Alessia Fendi wore vintage Bob Mackie, Lauren Levison wore an incredible black Yves Saint Laurent Haute Couture Runway piece from 1987, and Eileen Kelly was in a powdery blue vintage Valentino gown. The dancers also served looks. Styled by PJ Pascual, Stella Abrera wore Marchesa, Gillian Murphy wore Oscar de la Renta, Erica Lall wore Et Ochs.

Post-cocktail hour, attendees took their seats adjacent to a temporary stage that had been installed in the stately ballroom for one night only. The evening’s program began with an honor for Chai Vasarhelyi, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind projects such as Nyad, Free Solo, and The Rescue. The work my husband and I do might thrill some of you, she said, referring to her co-director Jimmy Chin, “but we are always thrilled by the beauty, athleticism, and passion of this amazing dance company. The world is a tricky place right now, but, hopefully, we’ll always be able to escape into the world of dance.”

That momentary escapism came in the form of several excerpts previewing what’s to come this summer season, which takes place from June 18 to July 20. Given the floor plan and the dinner tables’ proximity to the action, patrons were indeed thrilled to be able to see their favorite dancers’ every move in intricate, awe-inspiring detail.

A particular highlight that was on everyone’s lips came in the form of two previews of world-renowned British choreographer Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works. The award-winning ballet, accompanied by music composed by Max Richter and inspired by the writings of Virginia Woolf, will have its New York premiere this June having made its North American debut via ABT in California last month. Giving a sense of what’s to come, Calvin Royal III and Chloe Misseldine, and James Whiteside and Devon Teuscher, respectively, performed excerpts from two of the ambitious and artistic work’s three acts.

Dancers Skylar Brandt and Jake Roxander, Gillian Murphy and Thomas Forster, Christine Shevchenko and Cory Stearns, Isabella Boylston and Joo Won Ahn, Cassandra Trenary and Herman Cornejo, and Catherine Hurlin and Aran Bell also took to the stage to perform teasers of crowd-favorites including Swan Lake , Romeo and Juliet , Onegin, and Like Water for Chocolate; the latter of which enjoyed its New York premiere during ABT’s summer season last year.

As always, attendees were invited to take a leaf out of the dancers’ books and join them on the dancefloor following dessert. As for those too shy, they can get their kicks in the audience of the Metropolitan Opera House next month instead.

Katie Holmes in Pucci

Aoki Lee Simmons in Roger Vivier

Romilly Newman in Tanner Flecher, Ivy Getty in Roger Vivier, Eileen Kelly in vintage Valentino

Sai De Silva, Carly Cushnie

Isabella Massanet and Prince Achileas-Andreas

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Mary Cassatt’s Women Didn’t Sit Pretty

The American painter depicted women caring for children, not posing for the male gaze. New exhibitions and books reappraise her legacy 100 years later.

By Deborah Solomon

The writer, an art critic, is the author of biographies of Joseph Cornell and Norman Rockwell and of a forthcoming life of Jasper Johns.

In the epic story of modern art, Mary Cassatt has been cast as the premier painter of mothers and babies. Yet she created a world in which no one ever changed a diaper or ran out of milk. Her paintings are set amid the privileged spaces of 19th-century parlors and gardens, where women sew or read or nurse an infant, uninterrupted by men. They typically wear bonnets and ankle-length dresses, bows and ruffles, and do not glance at us. Rather, they avert their eyes, consumed by their own thoughts.

Cassatt, who was born into enormous wealth in Pittsburgh and spent most of her life expatriated to France, fell out of fashion after her death, in 1926, at age 82. For decades she was dismissed as a paintbrush-wielding patrician unconnected to the make-it-new spirit of modern art. Yet at least since 1998, when the British feminist Griselda Pollock published the book “Mary Cassatt: Painter of Modern Women,” Cassatt has been rehabilitated as a proto-feminist who supported women’s suffrage and experimented daringly in her work.

The approaching centennial of Cassatt’s death is inspiring a new round of exhibitions and books, and a reappraisal is welcome. “Mary Cassatt at Work,” the first major exhibition of her art in a generation, opens on May 18 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (and will travel in the fall to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco). The show will attempt to rebrand her as, of all things, a friend of labor.

Its theme — work with a capital W — is two-pronged, seeking to establish Cassatt as an exemplary professional and to “challenge the idea that her oeuvre focuses solely on moments of leisure,” as the curators Jennifer A. Thompson and Laurel Garber write in the accompanying catalog. They contend that the women in Cassatt’s paintings could only be accused of idleness by people who are ignorant about the wearying demands of child care and housekeeping.

Who was Mary Cassatt? She stood five foot six, with cool gray eyes and a confident, sometimes caustic manner. Born in 1844, she left home soon after the Civil War and settled in Paris. Rejecting the ways of women of her class (her brother Alexander became the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad), she never married or had children. Instead, she worked tirelessly at her art and found her way to the center of the French avant-garde. As the story goes, one day she admired a few radiant pastels of ballet dancers in a store window in Paris. Their creator, Edgar Degas, soon became a close friend and a foundational influence. He encouraged her to take up printmaking and, more generally, to jettison the stable, centered views of the past in favor of sharply angled perspectives — the radical cut or crop.

He also invited her to exhibit alongside his fellow French Impressionists; she was the only American to do so. For years, scholars hinted at a possible romance between Degas and his American disciple, who was a decade younger. But more recent research has focused on Cassatt’s relationships with women, including the American collector Louisine Havemeyer and Mathilde Valet, her longtime maid and companion. Cassatt’s will of 1911 bequeathed Valet a chunk of cash and a painting of her choosing. In a revised will that unsettled her relatives, Cassatt bequeathed Valet all of the artwork in her possession — some 300 paintings, drawings, pastels and prints.

Cassatt had a second career as an art adviser. She worked closely with Havemeyer , who lived in a mansion on Fifth Avenue chock-a-block with masterworks, many of which wound up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In her forthcoming book on Cassatt (“Mary Cassatt between Paris and New York”), the art historian Ruth E. Iskin stresses that Cassatt’s collecting activities were “a patriotic act” driven by her desire to enrich American museums and end this country’s reputation as an art wasteland.

As to the nature of Cassatt’s intimate relations, nothing is known. Letters, diaries, account books and calling cards were destroyed before or upon her death. For decades she lived and worked in the remote French countryside, at Beaufresne, a stone château with long rows of shuttered windows. The Philadelphia exhibition will open with a teasing comment of hers, from 1909, writ large on a wall: “What one would like to leave behind one is superior art, & a hidden personality.”

Judged in terms of inventiveness, Cassatt cannot be said to inhabit the same exalted plane as Degas or Manet. She belongs to the second tier of Impressionists. Nonetheless, she is one of America’s greats.

For starters, she produced her share of masterworks, especially in the field of experimental printmaking. In 1890, inspired by a Paris exhibition of a Japanese woodblock prints, she undertook a series of ten etchings that remain among the most striking images in 19th-century art. In “Woman Bathing,” in which the sinuous curve of a woman’s back gleams against a washy blue wall, she suffused the contours of Western self-care with the taut linearity and pancake flatness of Japanese art. “The Letter,” in which a dark-haired woman with thick lashes sits at a desk, sealing an envelope, similarly sets off an ingenious opposition between rich pattern and visual economy.

Although her paintings of mothers cooing at their babies might seem as unrehearsed as a snapshot, Cassatt stage-directed most of her scenes, hiring models and often pairing them with neighborhood babies of no relation. She was, in other words, creating fictions of contented domesticity, and tended to favor, among her models, stocky women and chubby babies.

Consider the smallish but potent “Maternal Caress” (1896). A mother in a mint green dress, her hair in a bun, is seen from the back gazing at her spirited little girl, an inquisitive child with gray eyes and lustrous waves of red hair, her face flushed from outside. Note the eloquent articulation of the girl’s plump fingers as they press into the flesh of her mother’s malleable-as-clay face. Is the girl trying to silence her mother, as some writers have contended, or is she instead reveling in their physical connection? In other words, is Cassatt here creating an electric emotional linkage or trying to visualize “the unwaged labor of mothers,” to borrow a phrase from the catalog?

Yes, of course, motherhood is work, lots of it. On the other hand, it’s hard to accept the premise that Cassatt’s paintings take as their subject the aches and infelicities of unpaid labor. Cassatt remained securely seated in the upper-class milieu from which she sprang. The idea of her as a champion of work seems especially strained when one recalls such genuine Impressionist odes to labor as Degas’s bone-weary laundresses ironing sheets, or Gustave Caillebotte’s “Floor Scrapers,” with its three hunched workers renovating an upscale apartment.

In trying to make sense of Cassatt’s work, it helps to know that her childhood was shadowed by illness and death. In 1851, when she was 7, her family sailed to Europe seeking medical help for an older brother, Robbie, who was suffering from a wasting disease believed to be bone cancer. After four years abroad and countless failed treatments, Robbie died in Germany, and the grieving Cassatt family promptly returned to the States.

His death came two days after Mary’s 11th birthday and represented an incalculable heartbreak for her. Of her five siblings, “Robbie was the closest to her in age and was her steady companion during the many moves of her childhood,” the art historian Nancy Mowll Mathews wrote in her pioneering 1994 biography of her artist. (Mathews is now writing an essay on Cassatt’s friendship with Berthe Morisot, the subject of an exhibition to be held next year at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.)

One might speculate that Cassatt, who witnessed so much sickness as a child, was spurred by feelings of loss to create a world in which mothers and children are forever infused with the glow of good health. While other Impressionists painted stylish people holding parasols and strolling through green landscapes, Cassatt preferred close-ups, and her main subject was the luminosity of flesh, rendered with a realist’s fanatic attention to skin tones and textures.

She painted men far less frequently, and far less vividly. Unlike her women, with their intertwined faces and hands, their figural entanglements, her men exude a sense of separateness. Her largest painting, the National Gallery of Art’s “The Boating Party” (1893-4) — it once graced a U.S. postage stamp — began as a homage to Manet’s “Boating,” which was owned by the Havemeyers. But, in place of Manet’s dashing oarsman, Cassatt creates a specter. Black-hatted and black-clothed, he is shown from the back in silhouette. Is he the partner of the female passenger and her baby, or is he a boatman-for-hire trapping them behind the sweeping diagonal of his wooden oar?

Some of her most memorable paintings are devoid of babies. “The Tea,” (1880), which is owned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, is a tour de force of suppressed emotionalism. Two 40-ish matrons sit side by side on a small sofa, exchanging confidences in a parlor decorated in red-and-silver opulence. The women stare in different directions as they sip tea poured from a silver teapot. What are they discussing? They’ll never tell. They could have stepped out from the moneyed and ultra-discrete ranks of Edith Wharton’s fiction.

Most of the women in Cassatt’s work might seem to share a similar propriety. They do not smoke, drink alcohol or bat their lashes at the viewer. In contrast to the near-naked odalisques forever reclining on couches and beds in 19th-century art, Cassatt’s women are not only clothed but tend to have plain, sometimes homely faces and bodies that lean toward physical heft. By her own admission, she was uncomfortable painting the female nude, which she claimed existed solely as a sex object for male delectation.

Instead, she gave us something new in art. Women who are there for themselves and for each other, unwilling to squeeze their flesh into a constrictive corset. Or, to use the parlance of the moment, Cassatt embraced body positivity and the added radiance that can come from a few extra pounds.

Deborah Solomon is an art critic and biographer who is currently writing a biography of Jasper Johns. More about Deborah Solomon