Cruising World Honors Best New Sailboats in Annual Boat of the Year Awards

NEWPORT, R.I. (Dec. 8, 2016) – Cruising World magazine has announced winners for its 2017 Boat of the Year awards, an annual selection that recognizes the best of the year’s new sailboat models introduced in North America.

The 2017 Boat of the Year fleet of nominees was comprised of 24 sailboats ranging from 30 to 62 feet and priced at $215,000 to more than a million dollars, half of which were catamarans—the highest percentage of multihulls ever in the lineup. The new models reflected a truly international mix, with boats from the U.S., France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Slovenia, South Africa and Vietnam.

Judging took place during and immediately following the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Md., in October. A team of three independent industry experts, whose impartial task was to reward excellence without regard to the bottom line, conducted both dockside inspections and sea trials aboard each boat to determine how well they met their stated design purposes. This year, the sailing tests were conducted in varying wind conditions, from extremely light air to gusts over 20 knots.

An Intriguing X Factor

The story of how the Xquisite X5, the most fascinating and technically advanced yacht in the 2017 BOTY contest, came to be (and how it arrived at the Annapolis boat show) is at least as interesting as this special, intriguing catamaran. It’s a tale of chasing dreams, of youthful sailors and entrepreneurs, of translating lessons learned circum­navigating aboard their own cat into a vision of what modern multihulls can and should be. It’s also a tale with a happy ending, with the Xquisite X5 unanimously earning the prize as the Most Innovative Boat for 2017.

Having just beaten the deadline for completion at Phoenix Marine in South Africa, the X5 arrived in the Port of Baltimore aboard a freighter three short days before the start of the show. Over the next 72 hours, Xquisite’s Tamas Hamor, his wife, Sara, and their team delivered the boat to Annapolis, commissioned and re-rigged it, and amazingly had it ready for inspection just in time for the show’s opening.

The Hamors, having ­circled the globe aboard a twin-hulled Leopard, know a thing or two about cruising cats. They applied much of that knowledge in launching and marketing the Xquisite brand, built by Phoenix, a firm composed of many former employees of Dean Catamarans, which went out of business several years ago. If the finished product is any proof (and it is), the relationship between the couple and Phoenix is highly simpatico.

Ed Sherman sang the boat’s praises: “The fit and finish is just exceptional, without ­question. Considering the background of the company, it’s unbelievable to me that they were able to gather some of the best craftsmen in South Africa. The boat is further enhanced by the couple who showed it to us, who have a lot of practical experience. They’ve taken everything they’ve learned and said, ‘OK, we can make this better and that better.’ And they’ve tried — and succeeded — to apply all that real-world experience to the design of this boat.

“In terms of the systems,” he continued, “they’ve got one of the best applications of digital technology, with triple redundancy, which for all intents and purposes is aircraft-grade quality. They’re using the CZone system, which is a BEP/Mastervolt/Power Products line that was originally created in New Zealand and has evolved over the last five or 10 years. They’ve applied it so you’ve got a wireless control on an iPad on which you can monitor everything… tanks, air conditioning, lights, sailing instruments, everything. It’s just wonderful.

“If there’s a failure, there’s a wired interface via the Garmin navigation equipment that’s installed on the boat. If that fails, the CZone system has manual overrides that are readily accessible in the staterooms, so you can just switch the whole thing over to a fused, manually controlled setup. That’s unlike some of the other boats I’ve seen with digital switching, where the backups are set up to take over mission-critical circuitry only. On this boat, they did it for all the circuits, which adds considerable cost to the system. But it’s really worth it. On top of that, once underway, she went through the water very well.” A fine sailing vessel with state-of-the-art systems is something to admire.

And that’s the final chapter on the book of the Xquisite X5, a model — and marvel — of innovation.

Most Innovative: Xquisite X5

The 2017 Boat of the Year winners will be featured in the January/February issue of Cruising World, available on newsstands and the iPad on Dec. 27. For more information, see the full story Cruising World 2017 Boat of the Year.

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Best Large Multihull 50ft and above

This dedicated cruising catamaran from South Africa boasts an amazing list of standard features – including all sails, electric winches, a genset, a watermaker, air conditioning, a huge 900-watt solar array and a washing machine, to name just a few – all for the remarkable price of $1.2 million, an extremely competitive sum for a boat that is so well fitted out. What most impressed our judges, though, was the quality of the boat and how well-thought-out it is.

Construction is top-notch, with the fully foam-cored hull and deck set in epoxy and vinylester resins. All interior components and furniture are likewise foam-cored to reduce weight. To save pounds in the wiring department, the boat features a cutting-edge digitally controlled distributed power network that helped the X5 score another Best Boats nod in the systems department (see page 33).

Touring the boat in detail you’ll find a plethora of carefully considered features. The gutters on the coachroof, for example, lead into rain-catching water fills. Foot switches for the electric winches at the helm station leave hands free for handling lines. The touch-screen electronics have backup button controls for when conditions are snotty. The unique cantilevered bimini top over the helm is rock-solid and can be quickly folded away when desired. Solid handrails all around the deck allow for maximum security when moving around the boat. The belowdeck running-rigging network can be quickly accessed via removable panels when necessary. There’s even an overhead shower-head built into the targa arch so that you can bathe on deck in style.

All in all, our judges were unanimous in deciding this boat, which is billed as a turn-key luxury global cruising machine, more than delivers on that promise. xquisiteyachts.com

December 2016

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The Xquisite X5 catamaran is this year’s systems winner in recognition of its beautifully engineered digital switching system and numerous other thoughtful touches, such as universal wall outlets (which will accept European and American-style plugs), USB ports in every cabin, fabulous access to all the systems and wiring, and a universal input isolation transformer, which enables the boat to be plugged into shorepower anywhere in the world.

We first wrote about digital switching systems, also known as “distributed power,” the better part of 10 years ago. At that time, because every car built was already using these systems, taking advantage of the reduced wiring and increased functionality offered as compared to conventional wiring systems, it seemed a no-brainer that the marine world would soon follow (and indeed several systems were being offered to boatbuilders). However, the technology failed to gain traction with boatowners, as much as anything because many of these early systems were over-complicated, confusing owners and failing to deliver the promised benefits.

A well-thought-out digital switching system (above) and USB and universal wall outlets (inset) are among
the many features that make the Xquisite X5 a winner

The last few years, though, have seen major advances, which have finally made this technology more user-friendly. A couple of notable industry re-alignments, in which C-Zone from New Zealand has partnered with Mastervolt and the Marinco group, and EmpirBus from Sweden has partnered with RayMarine, is also bringing the marketing, distribution and support clout of these large companies into play.

With this in mind, the Xquisite X5 catamaran is a terrific showcase of a C-Zone system, demonstrating the best aspects of digital switching in a user-friendly application that includes such refinements as the ability to pull up the control system and all battery and tank information via a multifunction display or an iPad; the capability for remote troubleshooting from the factory; and an onboard maintenance manual with model and serial numbers for all key equipment on the boat. (The maintenance information is also stored on a server back at the factory in South Africa where it is updated any time the boat finds an internet connection.)

In short, as exemplified by the Xquisite X5, digital switching has finally come of age. With this in mind, we will be surprised if we do not finally see a major uptake of this technology by other boatbuilders over the next few years. xquisiteyachts.com

December 2016