Boat of the Year 2026 Preview: Changes in the Weather
Explore More of Cruising World‘s 2026 Boat of the Year Competition
It was the concluding day of the Annapolis Sailboat Show in Maryland. Along with longtime sailing mates and colleagues Tim Murphy and Ralph Naranjo, I was the third member of the judging panel for Cruising World’s 2026 Boat of the Year contest, with sea trials scheduled to commence on Chesapeake Bay the next day. And yet, all I could think of was the early Bob Dylan classic A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.
Unbeknownst to Dylan, he’d nailed the short-term forecast. An early autumn nor’easter was spinning up the mid-Atlantic coastline, accompanied by serious breeze and heavy precipitation to match. Cruising World Editor-in-Chief Andrew Parkinson had already called off the next day’s full sailing schedule for the contest’s 14 current nominees, and was scrambling to assemble a workable plan B for the rest of the week. (We did manage a windy, truncated test sail aboard the intriguing Leopard 52 hybrid-power catamaran in the pelting rain, but will hope to line up another spin in better conditions at a later date.)
As it turned out, though, good things—and for our purposes, exceedingly sweet sailing conditions—come to those who wait. A ridge of high pressure filled in across the bay after the storm, pumping in ideal northwesterly winds under sunny skies for the remainder of the week. We put the entire slate of entrants through their paces in the sort of steady breeze they were intended to sail. And once underway, we were in for one treat after another. It may not have been the largest Boat of the Year fleet ever, at 14 nominees, but it was an incredibly diverse, intriguing and well-rounded roster of yachts.
Personally, I’ve had a long and intimate history with the Boat of the Year contest. Indeed, I organized, established the rules for, and conducted the testing for the very first competition in the early 1990s. Since then, with the exception of a few years near the turn of this century when I was off on my own sailing adventures, I’ve participated in every contest as the director or a judge. I’ve sailed, inspected and reviewed hundreds of boats, nearly every production sailboat introduced in the United States the past several decades.
As a cruising and racing sailor, being part of this contest has been a huge privilege and significant opportunity to review and sail the latest offerings consistently, often in the company of their builders and designers. It has also given me the chance to witness firsthand the latest trends in designs, building practices, evolving systems and emerging technology.
With all of that perspective, I can tell you that weather isn’t the only thing changing on Chesapeake Bay. So, too, are the locations where U.S. imports are being built, how their systems are evolving, and what sailors prioritize when shopping for new vessels.
Crunching Numbers
The fleet of new boats for 2026 was manufactured in China, Denmark, France, Germany, Slovenia, South Africa and Thailand. The rather glaring, obvious omission? For the first time in the long history of the contest, there was not a single production boat from the United States. (To add insult to injury, during the boat show, longtime industry stalwart Catalina Yachts announced that it was ceasing production, at least temporarily, at its Florida facility.)
The reasons behind the collapse in American boatbuilding are worthy of an entire article, but if you’d told me as recently as a year ago that Slovenia (with an interesting pair of Boat of the Year nominees) would surpass the United States in creating production sailboats, I wouldn’t have believed it.
The cost of new boats also made me blink twice. At $200,000, the sweet-sailing Beneteau First 30 was the least-expensive boat in the fleet; at the opposite side of the ledger was the Balance 580, with a price tag of $3.6 million. But the Balance had plenty of company up in the stratosphere, with the asking price of a half dozen nominees cresting the million-dollar mark. In fact, the average price of new boats for 2026 is close to a rather remarkable $1.3 million.
As judges, one of our standard questions to builders is: “Who do you see in the marketplace as your main competition?” This year, one of the marine-industry veterans we’ve sailed with over the course of many contests took a long moment before answering: “Used boats.” It was the first time I’d heard that one, and it turns out part of the reason why is that many of the brokerage boats sold during the pandemic are now back on the market. More than a few first-time owners have come to the realization that when you buy a boat, that first check you write will be far from the last. Discerning buyers, as always, will consider all their options, perhaps now more than ever.
On the docks of Annapolis this year, we also heard a new word being bandied about: “tariffs.” A sign prominently posted on one of the imports we inspected stated: “This vessel is not for sale. It is under temporary import bond and is on display only as a sample of the builder’s prospect.” (It was, of course, for sale, but the transaction could be a relatively complicated one.) Similar signs, with slightly different language, appeared on other Boat of the Year entrants.
The tariff situation is obviously a moving target, and many overseas builders expressed their cross-fingered hope that it’s a temporary obstacle. In the meantime, everyone affected is approaching it steadfastly and in different ways. For European imports, at press time, the tariffs add 15 percent to the cost of a new boat. For the many catamarans now being built in South Africa, that figure rises to 30 percent. Some builders have folded that tariff number into the bottom-line cost of the boat with the duty included and paid; others are delivering yachts ultimately destined for U.S. ports to offshore locations to work around the tariffs. Everyone is being creative. In challenging economic times, it’s one more challenge.
Last, my fellow judge Tim Murphy’s “day job” is serving as education director at the American Boat & Yacht Council. His technical expertise and insights are always enlightening. One of the design vectors he applies when evaluating new boats on his detailed spreadsheets is what he labels “$/Disp.” It’s is quite simply the cost per pound to produce any given boat.
By that metric, the most expensive yachts in the 2026 contest were the Dragonfly 36 trimaran ($89.71 per pound), the HH52 catamaran ($97.70 per pound) and the aforementioned Balance 580 ($97.95 per pound). These are all produced in relatively limited numbers.
At the opposite end of the scale, the Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 415 ($28.38 per pound) and Beneteau First 30 ($29.85 per pound) were the least-costly boats to produce. That makes sense. They will have significantly higher production runs and benefit from operations that purchase materials, engines, hardware and equipment in much higher numbers.
Still, Murphy cautions that these figures should be viewed in their proper perspectives, and with a close look at the boats themselves. “Those $/Disp figures accurately depict the quality of construction,” he said. “The three boats in the $90 $/lb category are unquestionably the best-built boats in the fleet on a strength/weight basis: lots of carbon, and post-cured epoxy or vinylester resin. Still, that $/Disp figure has long been a controversial one. The key is to hold each boat’s respective D/L ratio in your mind at the same time. Together, they tell you a lot about how to compare boats in the fleet.”
Between 2000 and 2008, production boats came in between $12 and $15 per pound. After 2010, boats from high-production builders were in the low $20s per pound. Since the pandemic, they’re near $30 per pound.
A Hybrid Revolution?
The rapid advancement of lithium-ion battery technology has led to its widespread use in everyday life, including marine applications. Compared to lead-acid batteries, deep-cycle 12- and 24-volt lithium-ion batteries offer significant benefits: They can be deeply discharged to a 10-percent state of charge (compared to 50 percent with lead-acid batteries) and they take charging current much faster than lead-acid counterparts. In real life at anchor, that means much less engine run-time to charge batteries. It’s your basic win-win proposition with a true quality-of-life improvement.
This has prompted more and more builders to explore hybrid solutions to address auxiliary propulsion and battery-charging options, including parallel diesel engine/electric drive tandems; and electric motors in concert with a standard diesel genset. Each of these options is almost always supplemented by solar arrays, and sometimes wind and water generators. These hybrid approaches are rapidly gaining traction and popularity, and were on display aboard several 2026 Boat of the Year contestants.
These systems are inherently complex, but the percentage of yachts with dedicated or optional hybrid approaches increases every year. For 2026, nearly half the nominees offered varying approaches to electric-drive systems: the Balance 580, Dufour 48 Smart Electric, HH52, Island Spirit 525e, Leopard 52 Hybrid and Royal Cape Majestic 530 Hybrid.
“We’re seeing a trend toward high-capacity 24- and 48-volt DC power systems with the goal of eliminating or at least mitigating genset usage,” Murphy says, drawing on his work at the ABYC. “This includes the 400- and 480-volt DC management systems like the Joool OneBox system with a charger and controller that we’re seeing from Dufour and Leopard. The outermost example we reviewed was on the RC Majestic, an approach largely conceived by its owner, a former Microsoft software engineer. It generates or consumes 25 to 30 kW-hours per day and stores 90 kW-hours. Just for comparison, my marginally insulated, 1850 farmhouse in Massachusetts consumes 17.3 kW-hours per day, and that includes an EV car charger. Seeing the new consumption rate on today’s boats is stunning. But today’s lithium-ion technology makes it possible to live on the water as you would at home.”
For me, at least, all this comes with a steep learning curve, as I suspect it will for many owners. And it comes with some growing pains. In a recent Boat of the Year contest, we inspected the first HH44 all-hybrid cat, and at the end of our test sail, Murphy predicted there would be some blips along the way as the tech came online. That proved to be a prescient observation.
“In some of these instances,” Murphy says now, “I’d boil down the question to prospective owners to this: Are you willing to be part of the builder’s experiment? Some owners are. But you need to go in knowing that’s what’s happening.”
It all begs the question: Is the growing hybrid-power approach revolutionary? It remains to be seen. The late, great Gil Scott-Heron once proclaimed that “the revolution will not be televised.” But if the builders advancing this emerging technology have a say, it will be marinized.
Performance and Perspectives
At the end of the day, at least for me, the best part of the Boat of the Year experience inevitably happens when the sails are raised, and we all get the chance to take the helm. I always get a completely different perspective when testing a yacht once we’re untethered from the dock, free from the boat-show mobs, and happily underway. For 2026, as always, the real insights and excitement came from the simple act of going sailing.
And this year, there were a series of standout moments. The sheer variety of this latest collection of new boats was notable and outstanding.
It’s always a thrill sailing the latest offering from Balance Catamarans, and driving the 580 as the breeze crested into the high teens and we trucked along at nearly 13 knots was not something I’ll soon forget. It was also the perfect opportunity to really check out the company’s dual Versa-Helm arrangement, which provides two driving options. A raised wheel accesses the heightened steering station; when it’s lowered, you drive at cockpit-deck level and have excellent sightlines forward, which was a welcome arrangement once the spray started to fly. And I always learn something when sailing with Balance’s Phil Berman. For instance, I never knew that raising the leeward daggerboard on a cat in breezy conditions equates to tucking a reef in the mainsail.
It’s also always educational when I’m testing one of the latest Dragonfly trimarans from Denmark’s Quorning Boats, because builder and designer Jens Quorning is the sailor putting the boat (and us) through its paces. The Dragonfly 36 is exquisitely rendered and crafted, and it hauls the mail under sail. In about 12 to 14 knots of true wind, we sliced to weather at 8 and 9 knots. But the real fun came when we swapped the jib for a code zero and went into power-reach mode, zipping along in the low teens. The best part was Quorning’s infectious, joyous response to it all: “You feel alive on this boat!” he shouted, with a huge smile. “You feel like you’re really sailing!” Yes, I did.
The smallest boat in the fleet, the Beneteau First 30 (one of those two Slovenian-built craft, the other being the Pegasus 50) punched way above its weight with performance chops, and justified its nickname as a “planing cruiser.” I’ve always been a sucker for a tiller-steered boat, where I’m more or less linked directly to the rudder, and every small adjustment elicits an immediate response. This is a minimalistic boat, something I really relate to, and is an absolute blast to sail. Once we cracked off and unfurled the screecher, the “joy of planing” wasn’t just a slogan, but a reality.
The Slovenian cousin, the 50-foot Pegasus, is the polar opposite of the Beneteau, and there’s nothing minimal about it: The yacht is a true all-oceans cruiser with a “tandem keel” that is basically a pair of deep fins connected by a substantial lead bulb. I loved just about everything on this boat, from the triple-headsail rig and twin rudders to the innovative, spacious, protected cockpit to the well-thought-out technical locker below. The fact that the boat sailed like a witch—8.5 knots to weather under jib, nearly 10 knots on a tight reach with the code zero deployed—was icing on the cake. This was my first exposure to the Pegasus brand, and I sincerely hope it wasn’t the last.
Finally, I’d be remiss without a shout-out to a quartet of boats that also left me with positive and lasting impressions.
When it comes to production-sailboat performance, I’ve always been especially fond of the Jeanneau line, and we had a wonderful sail on the Sun Odyssey 415. It was so good, in fact, that I couldn’t help myself and tacked right under the Severn River Bridge, much to the dismay of the company’s reps. (Sorry, guys!)
The Sirius 35 DS was a remarkable little yacht in every way, an innovative testament to German engineering with true bluewater capability.
It’s always fun testing the latest Excess offering with the builder’s enthusiastic French team, and the 42-foot Excess 13 continues their legacy: a sailboat by and for sailors.
And taking command of the tiller of the fast, light HH52 cat in the aft, outboard bucket seat—creaming along at double-digit speeds with the water ripping past—is an experience I wish every true sailor could enjoy.
The prizes for the 2026 Boat of the Year contest are yet to be determined, but I came away from the latest competition with one surefire impression. After several days of sailing on this gleaming collection of new boats, I was a bona fide winner.
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