Fountaine Pajot’s Lipari 41 was tested on a cold, windy day.
Neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night could keep CW’s intrepid team of judges from completing their appointed boat tests. Okay, we actually try to get our boat tests wrapped up before it gets dark, but it sure did rain on us for part of our Boat of the Year judging down in Annapolis, Maryland, last week. We tested two beefy offshore cruisers, and a 41 foot cruising cat in a cold, wind driven rain, but hey, we’re sailors, we can take a little rain and a fresh breeze. In fact, the conditions turned out to be perfect. What better way to see how boats really perform in real-world conditions that to take them out for a spin in real-world conditions. It was the perfect capper on this year’s BOTY judging process where we put 18 boats in 5 different categories through their paces both during and after the Annapolis boat show. Now this short clip is no feature film, but it does provide just a little taste of what the BOTY judges were up to out on the water (rain or shine). Not only did we put this boat through it’s paces under sail (thanks to all the boat builders and reps that made the boats available to us for testing), the judges also collected meaningful data on how the boat motored and anchored, in addition to all the data that was collected during dockside visits during the show.
