Cornell world cruising boats
A wide range of cruising sailors—57 crews of vessels fashioned out of everything from plywood to fiberglass, aluminum, and steel, from 33 to 74 feet in length, mono and multi—participated in this survey conducted by bluewater veteran Jimmy Cornell as part of his research for World Voyage Planner, his newest book.
The purpose of the survey was to determine essential features of a boat fit for a world voyage. Cornell also asked them to rate their overall level of satisfaction with their own boats. Among the 57 owners, satisfaction was quite high with the majority (47) granting their boats percentages of 90 and above. Eleven among them gave the maximum percentage, there were six at 99 percent, and twelve at 95 percent, one of the former explaining that “99 percent is about right as most will agree that 99 percent of boats are 1 foot too short,” while among the latter one owner explained that “it would have cost too much money to get rid of the final 5 percent.”
Granting such a rating to your boat is obviously a very subjective assessment but Cornell found it very significant that among such a large sample there was only one owner who was disappointed with his choice, while only six others qualified their level of overall satisfaction by giving ratings between 70 and 85 percent. Several owners pointed out that whereas they found it easy to give an overall rating for their boat, there were specific instances where a lower rating would have been more accurate. Javier Visiers was among them. “I would give Antaviana 100 percent overall, but only 85 percent for the Mediterranean where catamarans are far from perfect.”
