NIMBUS 380 COMMANDER
BU ILT 2004 PR ICE £119 ,750
It’s no surprise that three of our four all-weather boats hail from Scandinavia, in this instance Sweden. Another cleverly conceived boat, it utilises some fairly unique design and layout ideas to create an astonishingly spacious sub-40 ft flybridge cruiser. INTERIOR
Like the little Aquador, there are three ways into the cabin, two sliding side doors plus access from the aft deck. Head through the latter and you’ll find a dinette opposite the galley, so far so normal. But move forward and you’ll find yourself going up steps, not down, to a raised separate pilothouse. The lower deck houses two cabins, the forward one featuring a vee berth (an offset double was an alternative) and the mid cabin utilising the extra height gained by that raised pilot house to increase headroom over the head of a double bed.
EXTERIOR The outside is pretty amazing, too, with an internal stairway from the pilothouse up to the flybridge augmenting another one from the aft cockpit. Decks are wide and rails sturdy in the traditional Scandinavian style. The flybridge is set back behind the pilothouse roof, but still offers plenty of space. The cockpit is unusual for having seating either side rather than across the transom.
PERFORMANCE
All twin installations, Nimbus gained interior volume by siting the engines beneath the cockpit floor and using vee drives to create conventional shaft drive layout beneath the hull. Early boats got Volvo Penta TAMD 41 at 200hp, then came Yanmar 230hp units and then Nimbus switched to the KAMD 43 230hp motors this boat has. Some of the last got Volvo Penta’s new generation D4-260. Expect speeds in the low to mid twenties.
SEAKEEPING
The hull is semi displacement rather than planing, with a small keel which should help directional stability and low-speed handling. At higher speeds the 380 is a good sea boat, albeit a little wetter than a full planing craft would be.