Best of the Best Sailboats

Sailing World announces Boat of the Year winners, but who really makes the best sailboats?

Photo courtesy of the RS Sailing Facebook page

With Sailing World's recent announcement of their Boat of the Year awards, we decided to take a look at their top sailboats along with those of Sail Magazine's selections for their recent Best Boats Awards to see which boats were good enough to make both lists.

Sailing World's Boat of the Year contest is in its 25th year, and all six winners of the 2011 awards will be published in their January/February 2011 issue. Of course, in today’s tradition of instant gratification, you don’t have to wait for the old fashioned print version to find out which boats Sailing World selected as the best. Sailing World has already announced all six winners online.

The winners of Sailing World's 2011 Boat of the Year contest are:

• Overall Boat of the Year: RS Sailing RS100 (pictured. Hants, England)
• Best Crossover: Beneteau First 30 (Beneteau USA, Marion, S.C.)
• Best One-Design Keelboat: J/111 (J/Boats Inc., Newport, R.I.)
• Best Daysailor: C.W. Hood 32 (C.W. Hood Yachts, Marblehead, Mass.)
• Best Recreational: Hobie Mirage Tandem Island (Hobie Cat, Oceanside, Calif.)
• Best Grand Prix: Gunboat 66 (Gunboat, Newport, R.I.)

Details, reviews and photos of each of the 17 boats that were up for the honors are available at sailworld.com. Of course, this was not the only recent best sailboats announcement. Just last month, Sail Magazine released their Best Boats Awards for 2011 (December print issue).

The sailboats that received accolades from both magazines must truly be the best of the best, right? There were three boats among the six on the Sailing World list that also appear on the Sail Magazine list of best boats. Without any testing or reviewing of our own, we have decided to name these three boats as the first annual Daily Boater Best of the Best Sailboat winners:

And the winners are, in no particular order...

• Beneteau First 30
• J/Boats J/111
• Gunboat 66

So if your requirements for a sailboat fit into any of the three classifications that those three boats fall under, you would be wise to consider those three “Best of the Best” sailboats that appear on both magazines’ lists, and our first ever Best of the Best Sailboat award winners.

Surely more publications will release their own best boats lists over the next several weeks, and when they do, you’ll find them here on the Daily Boater.

###