THE BOATAHOLIC
Nick Burnham: “I was completely wrong. The cabin is brilliant, and we use it a lot.”
Idon’t want a cabin cruiser, I want a low fast weekender”. It was 2016 and I was with boating buddy John looking at a Bavaria 25DC for sale with Clipper Marine. It certainly ticked the low, fast boxes with Windy-esque blue and white topsides, wrap-around windscreen and a big 260hp KAD 44 engine.
But there wasn’t actually a huge amount of cockpit and that racy low profile gave it a tiny cabin. I’d returned the keys and John had gently steered me toward a Sea Ray 240 Sundancer also for sale. A lowly 170hp KAD 32 sat in the engine room, and the looks were more cruiser than racer. But as we sat in the (comparatively) spacious cockpit I could see real merit. Down below was palatial in comparison, with standing headroom, a little galley and a separate loo. But years ago John and I had run a Targa 33, and although we’d had a few longer trips I was well aware that 90% of the time it got used as a big day boat, and pushing all that cabin around had seemed wasteful.
My dream boat at the time was a Windy 31 Zonda. Seventy-five per cent cockpit, and a cuddy cabin that has a double bed, a small galley and a separate loo. If money was no object I’d have headed for Berthons and slapped a deposit on Ben Toogood’s desk for one. I did consider a used Windy 28 Ghibli but that was out of reach. And I went to see a 25 Mirage, which was beautiful but simply too small. What I ended up buying of course was the Jeanneau 805 Leader. I’m the first to admit that it’s no Windy
in terms of build quality. But it does have a decently powerful engine and whilst the seakeeping might not be in Windy’s league, it’s very good. And of course it’s a cruiser, not a low, sleek weekender. So I got that big cabin I didn’t think I needed.
But here’s the thing. I was completely wrong. The cabin is brilliant and we use it a lot. Yes, we sleep on the boat (surprisingly often actually), but it’s more than that. We love to swim off the boat, even late in the season which can be ‘refreshing’. Having a big cabin with central heating to dive into afterwards is fantastic.
And then there are movie nights. Quite often a friend will come over of an evening and we’ll have a chat and stick a movie on. In the summer I’ve taken to hosting movie nights on the boat.
It’s brilliant – a fridge for the drinks and room to stretch out. It would be hard to do this in a cuddy cabin boat but more pertinently, it would be impossible in most modern ones as they’re eschewing small internal dinettes for fixed beds.
So there is literally nowhere to sit. You can use the cockpit with the canopy up but if I wanted to go camping I’d have bought a tent. That Zonda started this new trend, then the
Ghibli replacement, the 29 Coho continued it. And recent smaller weekenders like the Finnmaster T8 and Parker 850 Voyager are carrying on the trend.
I’m really not convinced by this new fashion, despite my earlier reservations, give me a decent cabin every time. And even if it’s just a cuddy cabin, at least give me somewhere to sit!